by Colin Wilson
Vallee was to write three more books—a trilogy—to try to summarise his conclusions about the UFO phenomenon. But while Dimensions (1988), Confrontations (1990), and Revelations (1991) sparkle with ideas and insights, and are as obsessively readable as ever, they fail to bring us any closer to a total understanding of the phenomenon.
Dimensions is Vallee’s longest book, and his most substantial. It is an attempt at a summary of all his previous books, and to catch up with the latest developments, such as abductions. In his introduction, Whitley Strieber, author of the bestselling Communion, remarks: ‘If we come to a correct understanding of the UFO phenomenon, we may well in the process destroy the whole basis of our present beliefs about reality’. And Vallee comments that he does not believe that UFOs are extraterrestrial objects in the normal sense, but that ‘they present an exciting challenge to our concept of reality itself’. This view is again expressed at the end of the book, when he suggests that the reality that surrounds us is a ‘multiverse’ rather than a universe, and cites Hugh Everett’s suggestion that quantum theory can be made fully consistent only by assuming that there is not one reality, but a series of parallel realities or universes.
The only logical follow-up to this view would be a book that goes into further detail about quantum physics, and how it could help to explain some of the paradoxes of the UFO phenomenon—a topic we shall consider in the last chapter. In fact, Vallee’s next book, Confrontations, is about some research that he and Janine Vallee conducted in South America, which made it clear that UFOs can kill, and that they sometimes appear to do so deliberately—as in the case of a Brazilian named Salvador de Santos, who was hit by a beam of light one day in 1946, and died with his flesh falling off his bones as if he had been boiled in water. (Vallee speculates that the beam may have consisted of microwaves.) The book is an important—and disturbing—piece of research, but brings us no closer to a solution.
Revelations, the last of the trilogy, returns to the problem of human deception already explored in Messengers of Deception—such as the strange affair of the ‘Majestic 12’ documents, apparently a revelation of the government’s duplicity, but which are now generally regarded as forgeries (the signature of President Truman having been lifted from another document). He concludes that ‘someone is going to an awful lot of trouble to convince the world that we are threatened by beings from outer space’, and that ‘the time has come to mount an effort to restore some sanity to this field of research’. Yet his penetrating criticisms of some of the wilder conspiracy theories bring us no closer to solving the problem he presented so clearly a quarter of a century earlier in Anatomy of a Phenomenon.
What is this ‘new concept of reality’ that Vallee is speaking about? It seems to me that one of the most interesting passages in his books occurs towards the end of Messengers of Deception.
This describes how, in 1976, Vallee was investigating the Melchizedek groups. He wanted to know more about the biblical prophet Melchizedek but was unable to find more than brief entries in reference books. On 21 February 1976, he took a taxi to a Los Angeles radio station, and asked the woman driver for a receipt. It was signed ‘M. Melchizedek’. He said that it was as if he had put a notice on some universal notice board: ‘Wanted: Melchizedeks’, and some incompetent guardian angel had presented him with a taxi driver.
Wondering if the surname Melchizedek was common in Los Angeles, he looked in the vast Los Angeles telephone directory. There was only one Melchizedek—his taxi driver.
This is an example of what Jung calls synchronicity, or meaningful coincidence. It was a subject that had interested me for many years, because I had noticed how often they seemed to occur in my own life—particularly when I was feeling highly motivated and optimistic. In 1971 I was writing a book called The Occult, and needed a reference on alchemy. I was not quite sure where to find it, and took the wrong book off my shelf. The next book fell off the shelf on to the floor—open at the right page.
In 1986, I was writing an article about synchronicity for an encyclopedia of unsolved mysteries, and I told various stories of synchronicities that had happened to me, and went on to cite the Jacques Vallee anecdote. Having written it, I broke off my work to take the dogs for a walk. About to leave my study, I noticed lying on the camp bed a volume I did not recognise; it was called You Are Sentenced to Life by W. D. Chesney, and was about life after death. I had bought it a long time ago, but had never even glanced at it. Now I took it upstairs to read when I got back from my walk. When I did so, an hour and a half later, the first thing I saw was a heading across the top of the last page: ORDER OF MELCHIZEDEK, followed by a letter from Grace Hooper Pettipher to the author of the book. It was as if the god of chance had whispered in my ear, ‘You think Jacques’s taxi driver is a preposterous coincidence—I’ll go one better’.
Admittedly, Chesney is a Los Angeles doctor, so this reduced the odds. What still puzzles me is how the book got on to the bed, so I noticed it; it would normally have been tucked away on a shelf.
In the conclusion of Messengers of Deception, Vallee admits that he had not enjoyed writing it. The facts he has unearthed ‘shocked earlier theories of mine’. He had started out, in Anatomy of a Phenomenon and Challenge to Science, with a scientific attempt to record and analyse the data. Passport to Magonia had added an interesting new dimension: the recognition that the UFO phenomenon may be a manifestation of something that has been on Earth for thousands of years. The Invisible College bubbles with excitement as he recognises the ‘psychic dimension’—that there is undoubtedly a close parallel between UFOs and the kind of thing the Society for Psychical Research was investigating in the nineteenth century. But Messengers of Deception, while as stimulating as ever, seemed to be a step backward into conspiracy theories. Only the end, with its Melchizedek story, seems to break new ground, suggesting that perhaps reality is not as straightforward and rational as a library, where books are arranged from A to Z, but is more like a computer, where information is stored associatively, rather than sequentially. (‘You request the intersection of “microwave” and “headache”, and you find twenty articles you never suspected existed’.)
It would seem to me that the Melchizedek story illustrates more clearly than anything elsewhere in his books what Vallee means by a new concept of reality. The Melchizedek incident could, of course, have been mere coincidence. But my own odd postscript to it makes me feel that this was a genuine example of what Jung calls synchronicity—which seems to imply either (a) that the unconscious mind is able to manipulate reality, or
(b) that some unknown force manipulates reality.
Whichever is true, it suggests that our normal, down-to-Earth way of viewing reality—which is also the way of science—is somehow mistaken.
[1]. ‘The People Problem’, in Phenomenon, edited by John Spencer and Hilary Evans.
[2]. Also published as UFOs, The Psychic Connection.
5
GOBLINS FROM CYBERSPACE
After giving a lecture at the Architects’ Association in London, Jacques Vallee received a letter from a woman who had been in his audience, and who had been greatly struck by a slide he had shown of two ‘scorpion men’ on a Phoenician amulet, standing below a ‘winged disc’. Vallee had been suggesting that the ‘winged disc’ might be a UFO.
In her letter, the woman described how, in the summer of 1968, she and a companion were driving towards Stratford-on-Avon to visit friends when, in broad daylight, they saw a shining disc in the sky. It was about the size of the full moon, and darted around, ‘almost as if to show off its abilities’. When it vanished behind some trees, they drove on.
During the remainder of the drive, she had
some novel insights into what I can only describe as the Nature of Reality. These were connected in some way to this shining disc, and have had a profound effect on me, causing what is commonly known as a personality change. I won’t try to explain what those insights were, since almost all the religions o
f the world have tried to do this and have failed. (In that afternoon I changed from an agnostic into a gnostic, if that means anything at all.) However, these insights hit me like bolts from the blue, as though from outside, one after the other. I’ve never had a similar experience since.
(Dimensions, 1988)
This semi-mystical experience was followed later by one that was altogether more disturbing. That evening, after dinner, they were sitting in a room that had French windows open on to the lawn. She crossed to the window to breathe fresh air, and on the lawn, in the light from the room, she saw a strange figure that reminded her of the Phoenician scorpion men, or the god Pan.
It had dog or goat-like legs. It was covered in silky, downy fur, dark and glinting in the light. It was unmistakably humanoid, and to my mind malevolent. It crouched, and stared unblinkingly at me with light, grape-green eyes that slanted upwards and had no pupils. The eyes shone, and they were by far the most frightening thing about it. It was, I think retrospectively, trying to communicate with me, but my panic interfered with any message I might have received. If it had stood to full height, it would have been about four to five feet tall. It had pointed ears and a long muzzle. It gave the impression of emaciation; its hands and fingers were as thin as sticks.
(Dimensions)
Thinking she might be hallucinating, she went and sat down until the fear had subsided, then went back again. It was still there, although it had moved farther into the shadows. She kept away from the window for the rest of the evening.
The first thing that strikes us is the oddness of her reaction. We would expect her to call to her host, ‘Come and look at this’ or ‘Can you see what I can see?’—or just to scream. In fact, we encounter her reaction again and again in people who have seen UFOs, aliens or other strange creatures. It is as if the entity is able to somehow block the thought of calling another person or reaching for a camera.
There are several possible interpretations of what happened to her. Jacques Vallee quotes her letter because it seems to confirm his view that UFOs and mythological creatures often go together. But we might also speculate that the UFO sighting aroused a sense of mystery, a feeling that the universe is a bigger and stranger place than we normally realise, and that this is why she changed from an agnostic to a ‘gnostic’ in an hour’s drive. However, it is worth paying attention to her words that these insights hit her like bolts from the blue ‘as though from outside’. They might suggest that such glimpses of the nature of reality were being given to her.
Then how do we interpret the appearance of the satyr or scorpion man? Had the insights somehow caused the veil that separates us from the paranormal dimension to become semitransparent, so that she saw some kind of Pan-like nature deity or elemental? Or was the creature an alien connected with the UFO? The slanting eyes without pupils certainly seem to support that interpretation. Then there is her interesting comment: ‘It was, I think retrospectively, trying to communicate with me’. Was it simply trying to communicate telepathically, like so many aliens in contact reports? Or was it trying to communicate some further insight to supplement the ‘bolts from the blue’ of the afternoon?
Here, a personal comment. Immediately after writing the above lines, I picked up a book called The Goblin Universe by F. W. Holiday, to look up his views on the subject of what he calls ‘the phantom menagerie’—of lake monsters, black dogs, Bigfoots and other semi-mythological creatures. I opened it casually while moving a book to make room for it. When my eyes fell on the page, I found it had opened at ‘Pan, the goatfooted god, is not so funny when you encounter him’. He goes on to tell a story of a climber who had experienced sudden panic on Ben MacDhui, in the Scottish Cairngorms, after hearing crunching footsteps and sensing an invisible presence, and who fled all the way down the mountain. This climber was one of many who have experienced a sudden irrational panic on Ben MacDhui.
Although I had written the introduction to The Goblin Universe—more than ten years earlier—I had forgotten that he even mentions Pan. This seems to be typical of the kind of synchronicity that happens when you enter this field where one reality touches another—a point that Holiday notes repeatedly in his books.
At all events, because of the curious role synchronicity seems to play in the world of UFOs and the paranormal, I feel that this intervention of the god Pan may be an indication that this is the point where I should speak about Holiday and his work.
Frederick William Holiday—known to his friends as Ted—was a journalist who wrote about fishing and other topics relating to the open air. In 1962, when he was forty-one, he drove up to Loch Ness to try to catch a glimpse of the monster, which had been reported so many times since 1933, when a road was built along the north shore. That first evening, preparing to settle down in his tent, he experienced an odd nervousness that he felt was more than imagination. ‘After dark, I felt that Loch Ness was better left alone’.
It was a still night, yet at midnight, when he woke up in the totally silent glen, he was puzzled to hear waves crashing on the beach, even though there was no boat out on the loch.
Two days later, at dawn, he saw the monster. Peering through his binoculars, he observed something black and glistening appear above the surface—a huge hump. When it dived, it produced an upsurge of water, like a diving hippopotamus. He could still make out the shape below the surface, thick in the middle and tapering towards its extremities, blackish-grey in colour, and about forty-five feet long. Then a workman began hammering on a nearby pier, and it vanished.
He saw it again in 1965, from three different positions, as he raced along the shore of the lake in his car. After that, he felt that what he had seen was a kind of giant slug, which could probably change colour. In his 1968 book The Great Orm of Loch Ness (orm is old English for worm—or dragon), he suggests that the monster is a huge version of a slug called Tullimonstrum gregarium. Yet at the end of that book, he notes casually that, in folklore, dragons are associated with evil. He had spoken to two fishermen who had seen the monster at close range; they described it as having a head like a bulldog, very wide and ugly, and a fringe of coarse black hair round its neck. He wrote to a fellow monster-hunter, Tim Dinsdale: ‘When people are confronted with this fantastic animal at close quarters they seem to be stunned. There is something strange about Nessie that has nothing to do with size or appearance. Odd, isn’t it?’
He was also intrigued that lake—and sea—monsters seem so hard to photograph; he once had his finger on the button when the Loch Ness monster submerged. Could it be telepathic?
In 1968, his investigations took a new turn when he heard of a monster in Lough Fadda, Connemara, in Ireland; witnesses included two priests and a middle-aged librarian. Yet, when he went to Lough Fadda, he was puzzled: it was obviously too small to house a monster—anything as large as that would soon eat up all the fish. Many had noted this problem before—a man called Thomas Croker had published a book about Irish lake monsters, and, when he sent it to Sir Walter Scott, Scott observed that many people near his own home, Abbotsford, swore to seeing a ‘water horse’ emerge from a nearby loch which was certainly too small for anything of that size.
Ted Holiday also spent some time at Lough Nahooin, where a water monster had again been reported by many witnesses. Again it was too small for a monster; yet, when he set nets across the lake, something disturbed them in the night.
Ted had encountered the paranormal during the war, when he was in the RAF, and stationed in Egypt, near Heliopolis. A friend sitting in the guard tent heard approaching footsteps, which entered the tent; but no one was visible. He fled, and encountered Ted with a police patrol guard dog. But the guard dog was obviously afraid and refused to enter the tent. And close to the same spot, two nights later, two guard dogs behaved as if they were terrified, staring at something that Ted and his fellow guard could not see.
Back in England, he investigated a haunted house, with a poltergeist that switched the light on and off, and footsteps followe
d him around the house.
In 1969, while he was investigating Irish lake monsters, Ted went to stay at a haunted house on the Isle of Mull. He was awakened in the early morning by footsteps that he recognised—from previous experience—as ‘peculiar’, as if, he says, they had a kind of double echo. They were heavy boots coming upstairs. He sat up in bed, expecting a phantom visitant through the door. Instead, it took a short cut through the wall, and stood by the headboard of his bed. A Belfast-accented voice demanded, ‘Who the hell are ye?’, and a heavy blow landed on the headboard of the bed. Then, slowly, the tension drained out of the atmosphere, the entity obviously having used up all its energy. Ted lay awake until dawn. It was clear to him that not only had he encountered a ghost, but the ghost had encountered him, and been indignant at finding its bed occupied.
He also had an odd experience when driving his motorcycle in open country, and, just before roaring round a steep bend, heard a voice say clearly, ‘Mind the cows’. He slowed down, and found the road around the bend full of cows that had broken out of a field. Without the warning, there would certainly have been an unpleasant accident.
While he was investigating water monsters, personal experience also led him to take an interest in UFOs. In January 1966, fishing on a harbour wall near his home in Wales, he saw a luminous object skimming a hundred feet above the waves—a spherical mass of white light that pulsated once every two seconds.
In October of that year, he saw another UFO—this time a small luminous cloud orbiting against the night sky in a circle. Then a dark object came out of the cloud and beamed down a ray of intense ruby light on Ted and some other fishermen. Then both objects moved apart in opposite directions and were quickly out of sight.
A week later, driving along a mountain road, he saw a moving light in the sky and stopped to look at it through binoculars. It was a flattened oval, about twenty or twenty-five feet long, golden in colour, and apparently of some ‘glowing, translucent substance’. It passed out of sight over the hills.
