The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters

by Story, Ronald

  Traditional religion has also rejected my views for the very good reason that it raises some difficult issues. For instance, are UFOs really supernatural, or are they just advanced technology? If one takes too technological an approach, God seems to get left out, as in Josef Blunuich’s work The Spaceships of Ezekiel (1974). But if one takes the spiritual approach, then why are UFOs apparently acting like scientists who take Earth people on board to give physical exams, as in the Betty and Barney Hill abduction case?

  The tentative answer to these questions is: The supernatural is a very “free” reality and can therefore take on technological form if it so desires.

  In regard to “contact” cases like the Hills, it can be argued that they are modern forms of “revelation,” and that contact must be interpreted symbolically rather than literally. Thus, in the Betty and Barney Hill case, we must see their examination as a way of saying to the whole human race: “We know you inside and out, and we are watching you.” This is a very old biblical religious message of what God’s angels are doing.

  Recent studies have shown that people who have not had UFO contacts can, under hypnosis, nevertheless be led very easily to tell of UFO contact experiences. This does not mean the Hill case did not occur. It means that the UFO reality has found a way to hide itself from our scientific study, while at the same time making known to us what it wants to.

  The miraculous conversion of St. Paul

  Perhaps the one element that religion can contribute at this point to UFO studies is one of attitude: humility. Religion has always approached God with respect, seeking to know Him in His own terms, not by putting Him in a cage like a rat. Science, in order to study UFOs, may have to learn from religion that, whatever UFOs are, they are bigger than we are, and they had best be treated with respect and humility.

  —BARRY H. DOWNING

  References

  Blumrich, Josef F. The Spaceships of Ezekiel (Bantam Books, 1974).

  Clark, Jerome, and Coleman, Loren. The Unidentified (Warner Paperback Library, 1975).

  Dione, R. L. God Drives a Flying Saucer (Bantam Books, 1973).

  Downing, Barry. The Bible and Flying Saucers (J. B. Lippincott, 1968; Avon, 1970; Sphere Books, 1973; Marlowe, 1997).

  Jessup, Morris K. UFO and the Bible (The Cidadel Press, 1956).

  Jung, C.G. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (Routledge & Kegan Paul/Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1959; Signet/NAL, 1969; Princeton University Press, 1978). Original German edition published in 1958.

  Peters, Ted. UFOs—God’s Chariots? (John Knox Press, 1977),

  Sagan, Carl, and Page, Thornton, eds. UFOs—A Scientific Debate (W. W. Norton, 1974).

  Vallée, Jacques. The Invisible College (E. P. Dutton, 1975).

  Von Däniken, Erich. Chariots of the Gods? (Bantam Books, 1970). Original German edtion published in 1968.

  ———. Miracles of the Gods (Dell, 1976).

  Weldon, John, and Levitt, Zola. UFOs: What on Earth is Happening? (Harvest House, 1975)

  Wilson, Clifford. UFOs and Their Mission Impossible (Signet/NAL, 1974)

  religious movements and UFOs The UFO experience has seemed for many fraught with spiritual or religious meaning. This is understandable, for the sense of wonder evoked by the thought of otherworldly visitants flows easily, for people of a certain susceptibility, into those feelings of the presence of the numinous and the transcendent which characterizes religious experience.

  The religious response to UFOs takes many forms. There are those for whom it is purely personal and subjective. Others translate revelation of the sacred meaning of UFOs into books and lectures, which win some attention but do not form specific groups or movements. In still other cases, the response takes the shape of a group with discernible structure and continuity, however fragile and ephemeral it may appear in comparison with major religious institutions. These groups may be called UFO religious movements.

  A religious movement is more than a personal religious experience or belief, but less than a religious institution. It catches up two or more people in the mystique of the same experience and belief, it has some extension in time, some distinct practices or meetings, and a definable sociology. In regard to the last, generally one finds a leader endowed with charisma by a special blessing he has received, and a tight or loose company of followers. Yet groups concerned with the spiritual meaning of UFOs have generally not achieved the permanence and institutional structure one would associate with a religion.

  The connection of UFOs with the sacred has existed almost from the beginning of modem UFOlogy with the 1947 sightings by Kenneth Arnold. In the early 1950s, a number of contactee experiences were reported, the most notable of them being probably those of Dan Fry in 1950; George Van Tassel in 1951; George Adamski, Truman Bethurum, and George Hunt Williamson in 1952; George King in 1954; and Orfeo Angelucci in 1955.

  All of these persons lectured widely, wrote books about their experiences that were widely read in saucerian circles, and gave glowing accounts of the saucer people as being masters or elder brothers of the human race. These “Space Brothers” are described as kind and wise beyond our imagining, and able and eager to help us. Whether a simple contact with a message and vision or a ride in the UFO—like a shaman’s flight—the experience in these cases had all the overtones of an initiation into a universe of infinitely richer marvel and meaning than the ordinary. It left the recipient with a sense of mission, of having an ethic to follow and a message of hope or salvation to deliver.

  The 1950s were, in fact, the golden age of UFO religion. The dazzlingly beautiful and spiritual entities of these contact accounts contrast strikingly with the bizarre, slit-mouthed UFO occupants (including the medical examiners) of the 1960s and 70s reports. It was only of the 1950s type of contacts that religious movements would likely be derived, and it was in the 1950s that the major movements started. The 50s aliens were, in the words of the famous analytic psychologist Carl G. Jung, “technological angels”—beings coming to a scientific age in the vehicles required by its worldview but having the power and mission of the mythic descending saviors and guardian spirits of old.

  Several of these contacts developed into specific religious movements. Their practices and forms of expression seem mostly derived from spiritualism, with the principal contactee playing the role of a major me dium. Apart from the initial hierophany, saucer contact is mostly “mental” and transmitted through mediumship and automatic writing.

  While most of these groups dwindled away in subsequent decades, other UFO religions—like the Raelians—have achieved a significant following at the start of the new millennium. Saucer group meetings typically consist of lectures, chanting (which produces an atmosphere conducive to transmittal), mediumistic messages from the saucer friends, and perhaps “circle” messages in which various members of the group will spontaneously receive and contribute to the transmission coming in. The scenario compares closely to the format of spiritualist services and séances, and one is not surprised to find that a large percentage of UFO religionists have a background in spiritualism and other forms of occultism.

  One of the oldest and most enduring of the saucer movements is Understanding, Inc., founded by Dan Fry. The latter says that he had his initial UFO experience in 1950, although the book describing it was not published until 1954, the year before Understanding, Inc., was started. Fry states that on July 4, 1950, he encountered a UFO when alone in the desert at the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico; the celestial vehicle took him for a ride to New York and back in half an hour. In the course of this journey he was given instruction by ALan, his invisible mentor, on true science, the importance of understanding, and information that the saucer people are the remnant of a past supercivilization on Earth. The organization, however, has not been as concerned with promoting these particular views as with providing a forum for contactee and other saucerian speakers with a spiritual emphasis. In this respect, it is different from most of the oth
ers, which are mediumistic and related to particular saucer contacts.

  The best-known of these is undoubtedly the Aetherius Society, founded by the late George King in England, which is still active both there and in the United States. It centers around transmissions through Mr. King from masters on flying saucers and other planets. Members perform a diversity of spiritual work under their direction designed to initiate a new spiritual age on Earth. The services of Aetherius are rather formal. The inner group is close-knit and the doctrine is heavily influenced by occultism of the theosophical sort.

  Another activity which should be mentioned is the Giant Rock Space Convention, formerly held by the contactee George Van Tassel at his small airport near Yucca Valley, California, on the Mojave Desert between 1954 and 1970. The conventions were held for two days every September and brought together many of the major religious contactees and their followers in the atmosphere of a camp meeting, with speeches, transmissions, and fellowship abounding.

  Something of the saucerian atmosphere of the 1950s returned in 1975 with the strange phenomenon of the movement headed by a man and a woman called The Two, or Bo and Peep. After they gave lectures on UFOs in several western cities, a couple of hundred people, mostly young, left all to follow them to isolated mountain camps, where they would be purified in preparation to being taken imminently by UFOs to a paradisal world. Many left when these hopes were not immediately fulfilled, but a small core remained.

  The cult later became known to the world as the infamous “Heaven’s Gate,” shortly after their leader, Marshall Applewhite instigated a mass suicide of 39 cult members at Rancho Sante Fe, California, in March of 1997.

  Robert Balch and David Taylor, in a sociological study of this group (years before the mass suicide), determined something probably true of all UFO religious movements: that the preponderance of participants were people with a long history of involvement in other occult, spiritualist, and “metaphysical” organizations.

  Several scores of other groups qualify as UFO religious movements, including the Solar Cross, the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs (led by Gabriel Green), the Inner Circle, Light of the Universe, Solar Light Center, Unarius, and the Etherean Society. One UFO group, which believed that the world would be destroyed on a particular date when the Space Brothers would rescue believers, but which transmuted the expected apocalypse into a spiritual hope when the destruction and rescue did not take place, was the subject of a celebrated sociological study, When Prophecy Fails (1956). Most, however, have received little fame beyond their small host of friends and adherents. But all represent modern transformations of humankind’s age-old need for wonder and for supernormal companionship in this vast and lonely universe.

  —ROBERT S. ELLWOOD, JR.

  Rendlesham Forest incident Several UFO incidents, including multiplewitness sightings by military personnel, ground traces and radioactive anomalies were reported from Rendlesham Forest, an area between two British NATO bases in Suffolk, East England. Both bases, RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge (since closed down), were at that time leased to the U.S. Air Force.

  The incidents took place between December 27 and 30, 1980. According to an official report (dated January 13, 1981; released in 1983 under F.O.I.A.) by RAF Woodbridge’s deputy base commander Lt. Col. Charles Halt, the events were as follows:

  1. Early in the morning of 27 December 1980, (approximately 0300L) two USAF security police patrolmen saw unusual lights outside the back gate at RAF Woodbridge. Thinking an aircraft might have crashed or been forced down, they called for permission to go outside the gate to investigate. The on-duty flight chief responded and allowed three patrolmen to proceed on foot. The individuals reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest. The object was described as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three meters [six to nine feet] across the base and approximately two meters [six feet] high. It illuminated the entire forest with a white light. The object itself had a pulsing red light on top and a bank(s) of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering or on legs. As the patrolmen approached the object it maneuvered through the trees and disappeared. At this time the animals on a nearby farm went into a frenzy. The object was briefly sighted approximately an hour later near the back gate.

  2. The next day, three depressions 1 ½” [inches] deep and 7” [inches] in diameter were found where the object had been sighted on the ground. The following night (29 Dec 80) the area was checked for radiation. Beta/gamma readings of 0.1 milliroentgens were recorded with peak readings in the three depressions and near the center of the triangle formed by the depressions. A tree had moderate (.05-.07) readings on the side of the tree towards the depressions.

  3. Later in the night a red sunlike light was seen through the trees. It moved about and pulsed. At one point it appeared to throw off glowing particles and then broke into five separate white objects and then disappeared. Immediately thereafter three starlike objects were noticed in the sky…. The objects moved rapidly in sharp angular movements and displayed red, green and blue lights. The objects to the north appeared to be elliptical…. The object to the south was visible for two or three hours and beamed down a stream of light from time to time. Numerous individuals, including the undersigned, witnessed the activities in paragraphs 2 and 3.

  Later, an audiotape was released which contained Col. Halt’s recording during the nightly investigation in Rendlesham forest on the night of December 29, 1980. In this, Halt describes how first the animals of a nearby farm started to make noise when he saw a “yellow thing” approaching and releasing luminous “pieces.”

  When it was only 200-300 yards away, the Colonel said “it looks like an eye wink ing at you, still moving from side to side.” Furthermore he reported “one object still hovering over Woodbridge base,” beaming down rays of light.

  Already in January of 1981, the first rumors about the incident surfaced and two local UFO investigators, Brenda Butler and Dot Street, started to investigate. They were immediately confronted with bizarre rumors including that base commander General Gordon Williams met three small humanoids who came out in a beam of light from a landed UFO in Rendlesham forest on December 27th. Still skeptical, they learned that an unidentified object was recorded on radar at the time in question by RAF Wharton, a British air base. During their investigation and also after the publication of their book Sky Crash (together with Jenny Randles), Butler and Street were able to locate and interview several dozen eyewitnesses of the event. The subsequent release of the Halt memorandum confirmed most of their testimony. Furthermore, interviewed by Omni editor Eric Mischera, Bentwaters Base Commander Col. Ted Conrad confirmed: “It was a large craft, mounted on tripod legs. It had no windows but was covered in red and blue lights. It definitely demonstrated intelligent control. After almost an hour it flew off at phenomenal speed. It left behind a triangular set of marks evidently formed by the tripod legs. A later investigation proved the marks to be problematic.”

  When this UFO landing seems to be an undebatable fact, other aspects of several eyewitness testimonies are rather bizarre and were never confirmed, including the claim of an encounter with small humanoids and even of abduction-like experiences related to the sightings.

  Two British Ministry of Defense officials, Ralph Noyes, a retired under-secretary of the MoD, and Nick Pope of the MoD’s UFO Desk, inquired about the incident. Pope learned about claims that the pencilthin rays beamed down by the craft (mentioned by Col. Halt) penetrated the walls of the nuclear weapon storage areas of RAF Woodbridge.

  On July 24, 1996, the Rendlesham Forest Incident became subject of a Parliamentary Questioning by the British House of Commons representative Mr. Redmond. The reply of the MoD spokesman Mr. Soames was that the incident contained “nothing of defense significance” and that therefore “no further action was taken.”

  —MICHAEL HESEMANN

  Report On Communion (William Morrow, 1989). San Antonio newspaper reporter Ed Conroy, after
interviewing San Antonio native Whitley Strieber for a feature story, decided to investigate Strieber’s alien abduction account in more depth by interviewing his family and friends and by following Strieber around. Conroy describes in this book how he began to experience his own nighttime visitations by mysterious entities and buzzings at all hours by unmarked helicopters.

  —RANDALL FITZGERALD

  Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, The (Doubleday, 1956). Former chief of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, Edward J. Ruppelt, who first coined the term Unidentified Flying Object (UFO), describes the most intriguing cases of his two years spent investigating UFO reports. He tells how he was under orders to publicly discuss only the sightings that had been solved and to denigrate the significance of the 20 percent of cases investigated that remained unexplained.

  —RANDALL FITZGERALD

  reptoids The word reptoid is considered by UFO buffs to be a contraction of reptilian humanoid rather than an exotic form of reptile. They are invariably bipedal with a human torso. The word is first used among UFO buffs in the mid to late 1980s in the context of EBE lore surrounding the Dulce Base. Earlier, the word appeared in comic books. It appears in the 1977 Thor Annual #6 (Marvel comics) as the name of a species of bipedal reptiles inhabiting the planet Tayp circling a distant star called Kormuk.

  Reptilian aliens are second only to humanoid forms in their popularity among comic book aliens. A file of alien races from The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe has nineteen reptilian races. Though far less than the ninety-one humanoid and semi-humanoid races listed, it is well more than the eight examples of insectoid races and three examples of amoeboid races. Still farther down in frequency are forms based on fish, plants, cats, dogs, snails, horses, hippos, pigs, and sentient energy. Examples in the science fiction tradition go back as far as the highly intelligent reptiles on a planet around the star Mirach in Edgar Fawcett’s The Ghost of Guy Thyrle (1895). Pulp-master Edmond Hamilton has a race of lizard-men threatening the doom of mankind in “The Abysmal Invaders”(1929).