Alien Universe

by Don Lincoln

  A cautionary tale, indeed. The similarity to the closing speech of The Day the Earth Stood Still might be a coincidence. Or not.

  The story told in The Flying Saucers Have Landed took only a couple of dozen pages. However Adamski’s 1955 book Inside the Space Ships, was far more adventurous. It tells that he encountered Aliens dressed as businessmen at a hotel in Los Angeles, who drove him around in a black Pontiac sedan. He also flew in space with: a Venusian named Orthon, a Martian named Firkon, and a Saturnian called Ramu, three members of a civilization called “Space Brothers,” named for their harmonious culture. He assures us that these aren’t their real names, but how he decided to name them. On the ship, he met the two previously mentioned lovely women from Venus and Mars. He also goes on to describe their deity, about which he and the Aliens had long philosophical and religious discussions. It is unsurprising perhaps that these “Space Brothers” told of a cosmic brotherhood and affirmed that Adamski’s teachings of the 1930s were exactly correct. This incredible similarity is the dominant reason why so many people are suspicious of his story. Well, that and the two beautiful and statuesque female “Venusian bodyguards” that accompanied him on his lecture tours.

  For tour Adamski did, as did his coauthor Desmond Leslie. Perhaps the most notorious engagement was in May 1959, when Adamski had a private audience with Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. Juliana had a reputation for being interested in faith healing and similar sorts of sketchy phenomena.

  Adamski’s popularity waned in the 1960s when the Soviet space probe Luna 3 showed barren wasteland on the far side of the moon, where he had reported snow-covered mountains. His response? The Soviets had faked the photos. More than one wag has claimed he should recognize a faked photo when he saw one. We now realize that Venus is quite the antithesis of the paradise that he claimed in his books, although modern Adamski believers have noted that he did state that the Venusian cities were underground and at least a few diehards have invoked parallel dimensions and claimed that Orthon’s home isn’t in our universe.

  It’s easy to see the allure of Adamski’s message. His Aliens are recognizably angelic (albeit without the halos). The Space Brothers believed in peace and harmony and hoped that humanity would eventually join them in cosmic brotherhood. Adamski’s antinuclear message also resonated with an American public who well remembered the destruction of World War II and were quite worried about the territorial ambitions of the nuclear-armed Soviet Union. Given his poor track record at predicting the environment on other planets in the solar system, Adamski is now considered an unreliable prophet, but his message of peace and cosmic harmony did spawn imitators and some of them exist to this day. For instance the Raëlians follow the teachings of the French journalist Claude Vorilhon, who now calls himself the prophet Raël after a purported 1973 encounter with an Alien called Yaweh.

  Adamski died on April 12, 1965, but it appears that death was but an ephemeral state for him. As reported in Eileen Buckle’s 1967 book The Scoriton Mystery, another contactee by the name of Ernest Bryant claimed to have met three Space Brothers on April 24, 1965. One of the three Aliens he met was a young man named “Yamski,” who was supposed to be George Adamski, returned to bodily form.

  One can abbreviate Adamski’s life story the following way: A charismatic man of modest origins claimed to have discovered a way to live a fulfilling and enlightened life. He gathered acolytes around him whom he taught. One day, he took a few of his students and a couple of people interested in his teachings into the desert to a location that he knew intuitively to be right. He separated from his companions and ventured alone into the desert where he met an angelic being who told him cosmic truths and left him with a cryptic message in the earth, which Adamski brought back for interpretation. After a life of speaking to larger groups, bringing them the message of peace from the angelic beings from above, Adamski died, only to rise from the dead twelve days later in a different form to speak to a true believer.

  Stated that way, it is rather unsurprising that some religions or cults have sprung up around Adamski and his teachings, no? Even if not directly related, other groups have begun with a similar message, including the Aetherius Society and Raëlism, although there are others. The teachings of the Aetherius Society blend earthly religions, yoga, “spiritual batteries” (which can avert disaster), and an extraterrestrial messiah who will one day bring humanity into the community of the stars. Some, like the Heaven’s Gate cult, espouse not quite the same message as Adamski’s teachings but do incorporate extraterrestrial elements. Scientology claims that 75 million years ago, a leader named Xenu destroyed billions of Aliens in atomic explosions here on Earth, and those souls, called thetans, are among us. These quasi-religious beliefs have had modest impact on society’s vision of Aliens, but they pale in comparison to our next story.

  Abducted!

  If contact by space angels is an uplifting and spiritual experience, not all interactions with Aliens are as positive. The next paradigm in the saga of Aliens on Earth began in 1961, when Betty and Barney Hill encountered a new brand of extraterrestrials.

  An interracial couple in conservative New Hampshire in 1961, they were a little more liberal than some of their neighbors. But otherwise the Hills were pretty ordinary. Betty was a social worker, while Barney worked for the postal service. They were active members in a Unitarian Universalist congregation and the NAACP. Sometimes nicknamed “Ma and Pa front porch,” they inspire more credibility than do some of the attention-seeking people we encounter in the UFO saga.

  Betty and Barney were driving south through New Hampshire on their way home from vacation. It was about ten o’clock on the night of September 19, 1961, and they had just stopped for dinner in Colebrook. A cup of coffee and a cigarette for alertness and then they were back on the road, Barney behind the wheel.

  They drove on, expecting to get home around three o’clock in the morning. Betty noticed a bright star or planet near the moon, not at all an unusual occurrence. When she looked at the moon some time later, she saw a second star near the first one. However the second star seemed to be getting bigger. They dismissed it as probably a satellite or something.

  They had brought their dog along for this trip, and she began to get antsy. So Betty wanted to take her out for a walk. They parked at a spot where there was a good view of the sky and grabbed some binoculars. The object was moving all right, but what it was, was hard to know.

  They got back in the car and continued to drive. Betty kept an eye on the light in the sky, while Barney watched the road. Betty realized that the light couldn’t possibly be a satellite as its path was erratic. Barney dismissed it as a plane, but the fact that the light was following them made that seem less and less likely. In addition, as the light got close, there was no sound of a plane’s engine.

  Things started to get a little weird. The light came to within a couple hundred feet of the car. Betty put the binoculars to her eyes and was shocked to see what appeared to be windows along the sides of the light. The light was no longer a light, but some sort of craft, with complex structures and “shaped like a pancake.” She made Barney stop the car, and he took a look at it himself.

  While Betty stayed with the car, Barney set off across a field with the binoculars to get closer to the aircraft. He saw half a dozen figures inside the craft watching him out the portholes. They were wearing uniforms and braced themselves against the windows as the saucer tipped toward them. Most of the figures turned to what appeared to be a control panel, while one—presumably the leader—continued to watch him.

  Barney panicked and ran back to the car, put it in gear, and headed off down the road. He told Betty to keep an eye on the saucer, but she couldn’t see it anymore. He thought that the craft might be above them. Then, suddenly they heard a beeping sound coming from the vicinity of their trunk. They didn’t know what was causing it. But suddenly things got fuzzy and they both got drowsy.

  After a time—and they weren’t sure how long that
was—they heard the beeping again. As they came out of their mental fog, they found themselves driving along the road. Still a bit groggy, they entered Route 93 and saw a roadside sign that said “Concord 17 miles.” They had gone about 35 miles.

  They talked a little bit as they drove, and Betty asked him if now he believed in flying saucers. This was a question she had asked in the past when a story had appeared in the newspapers. Barney, ever the skeptic, told her not to be ridiculous. When they eventually got home, Betty read the clock in their house, which said it was a little after five in the morning, some two hours after their expected arrival time.

  That’s the first part of the story. The rest is much weirder. However, this we will sketch in less detail. The reason is that the next chapter in the story developed slowly and after interaction with many people. The interested reader should read John Fuller’s The Interrupted Journey or Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden’s Captured: The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience.

  The Hills couldn’t account for the two hour gap in time. Betty talked to her sister, who had earlier reported a UFO encounter. Her sister spoke to a police captain, who suggested that Betty speak with the air force. Barney wanted nothing to do with it, but Betty called Pease Air Force Base and made a report. The next day, they were called back by the reporting officer who wanted to confirm some details. Barney started to warm up to the idea of talking to people about it.

  Betty’s curiosity about UFOs was stronger than before. She went to the library to find whatever she could, including The Flying Saucer Conspiracy by Major Donald Keyhoe. The thesis of the book was that either the UFO phenomenon was a mass hysteria, well worth study, or that it was real, which was more interesting still. Keyhoe found the second thesis more plausible and was convinced that the air force was covering up the many reports that they had received. Keyhoe’s book told many stories, including an abduction one (which will be relevant soon). Betty was interested enough that she wrote Keyhoe asking whether he had other writings she could read. Betty was hooked.

  With that fateful letter, Betty made herself known to the UFO world. Keyhoe. passed along the letter to a UFO researcher at the Hayden Planetarium. The researcher spoke to the Hills and wrote a report, which was submitted to the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), an organization started by Keyhoe to investigate UFOs. Through these connections, the Hill story started becoming familiar to the community of UFO aficionados.

  It should be noted that the Hills were not media hounds. They didn’t talk to reporters. They spoke to governmental agencies and UFO investigators of the disciplined variety. The Hills wanted to know what happened to them. And, across the board, the really pressing question was “where did those two hours go?”

  About ten days or so after the incident, Betty started having vivid dreams that when she and Barney were outside the car, they were escorted into the saucer, where they underwent medical tests, including the insertion of a needle into her navel to test for pregnancy. The examiners were short, between 5’ and 5’4” tall. They were gray with bluish lips and huge noses “like Jimmy Durante.” They were very human in their appearance and dressed in military-style uniforms, with hats like those worn by the U.S. Air Force. She wrote the dreams down in November 1961.

  Quite aside from questions of UFOs, Barney was stressed. His job was on the south side of Boston, with a 120-mile daily commute, round trip. He worked the night shift and was unable to spend much time with his sons from his first marriage. In an effort to better cope with his stresses, Barney went into therapy. In late 1963, Air Force Captain Ben Swett, who the Hills met at a presentation at their church, suggested that they ask the therapist if hypnosis would help. The therapist referred the Hills to Dr. Benjamin Simon. When Simon spoke to Barney, it became obvious that the saucer encounter was causing Barney more problems than he would admit, so Simon decided to hypnotize Hill to perhaps understand what happened in the two hour gap. The hypnosis went on over a period of 11 months.

  Simon hypnotized both Barney and Betty separately to avoid contaminating their recollections. Barney went first. Under hypnosis, he remembered an encounter much like Betty’s dreams. This was two years after the incident, and Barney had no doubt spoken to Betty at length about them, although there were differences in their accounts. Barney remembered the Aliens (for by this time it became clear that Aliens were behind all of this) were short and gray, but without a nose. They spoke to him in English but without moving their mouths. Barney called it “thought transference,” as he was unfamiliar with the term telepathy. Betty and Barney were examined in different rooms in the saucer. During the examination, the Aliens studied the Hills’ physiology, spending a large amount of time on the pelvic region, including putting a cup of some kind over his genitals to extract a sperm sample and inserting some sort of tube in his anus. Eventually, he was returned to Betty and they both returned to their car, in the manner of sleepwalkers.

  Betty recalled similar details to Barney’s during her session. Under hypnosis, both of the Hills’ accounts were closer to each other’s than they were to Betty’s dreams as written down previously. After the examination, Betty asked the Alien where they came from, and he produced a star map. Simon was able to implant a posthypnotic suggestion for her to draw the map, and she did so. Simon also had Barney draw a picture of an Alien while under hypnosis. The hypnosis sessions ended in the summer of 1964, although the Hills and Simon kept in occasional contact through 1965.

  Simon’s conclusion was that the recollections were simply a repeat of Betty’s dreams. He did not believe that they had been abducted by aliens. He wrote up the account in the journal Psychiatric Opinion and the Hills went about their normal lives, feeling much better now that they felt that they could account for the missing time. The Hills would still talk about their experience with friends and family and the occasional UFO researcher, but they didn’t seek out the media. To this point, the Hill episode was only a curiosity discussed by UFO enthusiasts. This was about to change.

  Reporter John Lutrell of the newspaper The Boston Traveler had heard of the Hills and obtained a 1963 audio recording of them talking about their experience. He did a little digging and found that they had spoken to Simon and asked for information. Simon and the Hills refused to cooperate, so Lutrell reported with what he had available. On October 25, 1965, he published the paper UFO Chiller: Did THEY Seize Couple,” the first of a three-part series. UPI picked up the story on the following day, and the Hills became international celebrities.

  The Hills were aghast at the report and decided to tell their story. Writer John Fuller worked with them in 1966. The result was the highly successful The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours aboard a Flying Saucer. The book contained some sketches Betty had made of the star map and others that Barney had drawn showing what their captors looked like. Later critics compared the Hill’s account of the appearance of the Aliens with those in an episode of the television show Outer Limits, broadcast just a few days before the relevant hypnotic session (figure 2.3).

  FIGURE 2.3. Barney Hill’s drawing of the alien he believed he saw (left) is the progenitor of the public’s modern concept of Aliens. The middle figure appeared in “The Bellero Shield,” an episode of the television show Outer Limits, and is thought by some to be the inspiration for Barney’s drawing. The figure on the right is from the 2011 movie Paul and shows a modern depiction of a typical Alien. Copyright John G. Fuller (left), United Artists Television (middle), Universal Pictures (right).

  In 1968, amateur astronomer Marjorie Fish read The Interrupted Journey and was interested in the star map. Over a period of 5 years, she made a three-dimensional model of stars near Earth, using beads and string. She even visited Betty Hill in the summer of 1969 (Barney having died earlier that year) to get as much information as possible. When the model was complete, she walked around the model with Betty’s map in her hand. She finally found an angle that seemed to match. She concluded that the Aliens had come fr
om Zeta Reticuli, specifically Zeta Reticuli 1, as it is a binary star system.

  This hypothesis reached the editor of Astronomy Magazine and, for the first time, this magazine published a UFO story in December 1974. It compared contemporary astronomical knowledge, including all sunlike stars within a sphere centered on the Solar System with a 55 light-year radius, to Fish’s map. The article concluded that the reconstruction was pretty good. Companion articles discussed the metallicity of the stars in the Hill map as identified by Fish. Zeta Reticuli 1 and 2 are deficient in metals (60% that of the sun, using the astronomer’s definition of metals as “everything that isn’t hydrogen and helium”). This doesn’t rule out these stars as a host for a technologically advanced species, but it does make it harder. After all, you need metal to make flying saucers and other elements to make the Aliens themselves. In addition, over the course of the following year, there was active discussion in the letters to the editor column, including contributions by Carl Sagan and his research associate Steve Soter.

  Another way the public heard the Hills’ story was the 1975 made for TV movie called The UFO Incident. The dramatization was an approximately faithful depiction of The Interrupted Journey. Whether or not the Hills encountered Aliens that night, their story is the archetype for Alien abduction stories: the amnesia, the examination, the fascination with the human pelvic region, the small gray humanoids, the big black eyes. In short, Betty and Barney Hill told us what Aliens look like.

  Ancient Aliens

  Carl Sagan is not a name that one normally associates with terrible science, but it is possible that he had an unintentional hand in launching a surge of books that advanced the theory that not only has the Earth been visited by Aliens but that these visits began thousands of years ago. In a 1966 book Intelligent Life in the Universe, astrophysicists Carl Sagan and Iosif Schklovsky included a chapter devoted to urging the archaeological community to be open to the idea that the Earth had been visited by ancient astronauts in the past. They didn’t claim that it had happened, but simply that it was a possibility to be considered. Other authors weren’t as cautious in their claims.