by Len Kasten
Of course, there are many other stories. But first it is necessary to remove all doubt about the reality of alien contact. Hopefully, this section of the book accomplishes that.
1
George Adamski
Emissary from Earth
As the current era of UFO abductions by little grey men, suspected underground bases, cattle mutilations, and human-alien hybrids continues to leave us apprehensive and confused, it is comforting to return to those golden days of extraterrestrial contact, when it all seemed so exciting and promising—the 1950s. During that time, no contact case was more fabulous and intriguing than that of George Adamski.
PALOMAR GARDENS
From his very earliest years, Adamski was never really of this world. Therefore, it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that he, above all men, should have become so enamored of the heavens. Even though he was already in his forties when one of his students presented him with a six-inch reflecting Newtonian telescope as a gift, it was a fateful moment, because he had been waiting for that gift all of his life, without even being aware of it. He had been a student and teacher of metaphysics for many years, so up to that point he believed that all the answers were to be found within, as philosophers do. But the telescope changed all that. Adamski began to realize that deep down he suspected that the answers to all of life’s riddles could somehow be found in the stars, but he had no idea how this could be so. He began to scan the night skies with an inexplicable, feverish passion, not understanding what was driving him, much in the same way as the character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
In 1944, at the age of fifty-three, Adamski settled in a sort of commune on the southern slope of Mount Palomar, six miles from the summit and eleven miles from the site of the two-hundred-inch Hale Telescope, the world’s largest. There Adamski and a small group of his students opened a small cafê, dubbed Palomar Gardens. Mount Palomar, midway between Los Angeles and San Diego, had been selected in 1934 as the site of the Hale Telescope because of the darkness of the skies at the summit. Although the dome was constructed in 1936, delays due to World War II postponed completion of the telescope until 1948, when the Palomar Observatory was dedicated. By that time, Adamski had also acquired a fifteen-inch telescope that he housed in his own little observatory, protected from the weather so that he could study the skies for hours at a time.
On October 9, 1946, during a fantastic meteor shower, Adamski caught his first glimpse of something that ultimately allowed him to understand what he was searching for. He and all of his friends saw a large, cigar-shaped craft hanging motionless in the sky, relatively close by. Adamski now became very interested in the UFO phenomenon. He had always believed that there was life similar to ours on all the other planets. He had now seen with his own eyes, validated by the eyes of others, the proof that extraterrestrials were able to reach Earth.
Adamski searching the skies for UFOs
Adamski began attempting to photograph the craft through his telescope. He watched the skies and photographed constantly for several years. By 1952, he had taken five hundred photographs, many of which showed craft discernibly different from aircraft. This spurred him on, and now his search became a mission. In his book Flying Saucers Have Landed, written with Desmond Leslie in 1953, Adamski gives this entire story in the chapter titled “The Memorable November Twentieth.” In the book he says, “Since then, winter and summer, day and night, through heat and cold, winds, rains and fog, I have spent every moment possible outdoors watching the skies for space craft and hoping without end that for some reason, some time, one of them would come in close, and even land.”
STRANGE COMPULSIONS
By 1952, Adamski was tuned in to the California-Arizona UFO grapevine. An early type of networking was in place among those who were interested. Reports started coming to him about landings in remote desert areas, and he decided to just play his hunches and drive out to these places to see what he could see. Adamski’s decision to rely on inner guidance indicates that, even at this stage, a form of unconscious telepathic communication may have been established with the extraterrestrials, as was the case with other contactees in that era.
In August, a Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Bailey from Winslow, Arizona, stopped in at the cafê to talk to Adamski about saucers. They also told him about another similarly interested couple, Dr. and Mrs. George H. Williamson from Prescott, Arizona. Fifties flying-saucer cognoscenti will immediately recognize that name. George Hunt Williamson became one of the bright lights of the flying-saucer community, going on to eventually write a book that has since become a cult classic, Other Tongues, Other Flesh. Like Adamski, the Baileys and the Williamsons were also impelled by strange impulses to drive out to remote places in the desert in the hope of encountering a landed craft. So they all decided to join forces and carry out the search together. It was agreed that the next time Adamski received a telepathic message to take a trip out into the desert, he would call them so that they could all go together.
RENDEZVOUS IN THE DESERT
Not too long after, on November 18, 1952, Adamski got the impulse to go, and he phoned Williamson. He said that he was leaving the next day at midnight for Blythe, California, and asked if they wanted to meet him there at about 8 a.m. the following morning. Williamson called the Baileys, and they all agreed. Accompanied by Alice K. Wells, the owner of Palomar Gardens, and Lucy McGinnis, his secretary, Adamski set out in the middle of the night on November 20. They met up with the Baileys and the Williamsons just west of Blythe and drove into town for some breakfast. After a leisurely repast, Adamski had an urge to drive back in a westerly direction, and the others agreed to follow him in the Baileys’ car. Adamski had a strong feeling about a particular road they had passed on the way, near Desert Center, which led to the base of some nearby mountains. This was actually the road to Parker, Arizona, now called Route 177. They drove down 177 for about eleven miles, and then Adamski suggested they stop and look around for a while. At this point, they would have been near the base of Eagle Mountain.
What happened next was exceedingly strange, and yet at the same time somehow very reliable. Adamski says they stopped there at about 11 a.m. They amused themselves by taking pictures with movie and still cameras, eating a picnic lunch, and just sort of walking around, all the time scanning the skies. They stayed there for the better part of an hour. Then, all of a sudden, it happened. There, hovering between the highway and the mountains, was a large, cigar-shaped craft with a shiny, metallic hull. It seems that Adamski’s inner radar was right on target. It took a little while for the sight to penetrate the collective consciousness of our intrepid seven. At first they thought it was an airplane fuselage. Then they got so excited that they couldn’t even work the cameras, and they passed two pairs of binoculars back and forth. Williamson noticed a black insignia on the side, and the top of the craft seemed to be orange in color.
Adamski now experienced an inner certainty that the occupants of the craft were doing this for his benefit and that they were going to let him get some good pictures, but not at that particular spot. He blurted out a cryptic plea. “Someone take me down the road—quick! That ship has come looking for me and I don’t want to keep them waiting! Maybe the saucer is already up there somewhere—afraid to come down here where too many people would see them.”
Lucy McGinnis, Adamski’s secretary, jumped into the car and got behind the wheel. Al Bailey said he wanted to go too and got in next to her. Adamski got into the backseat and directed her to turn around and go back toward Desert Center. As she drove, both men watched the spacecraft following the car, high above them. Adamski decided to have her turn off the highway onto a dirt road to a spot he had picked out near the base of a nearby plateau. The spaceship stopped too, almost directly overhead! There Adamski set up his telescope and camera in the teeth of a strong wind and told the others to go back to the road and to watch him closely so that they would witness whatever happened. At that point, the spaceship departed and disappeared over
the mountains just in time to avoid several government aircraft that were attempting to circle around it. Just then a saucer appeared, hovering in a low rise between two hills. Adamski quickly snapped the seven shots left on the roll of film loaded in his old Hagee-Dresden Graflex-type camera without taking time to focus, “praying . . . that Lady Luck was with me and that the pictures would turn out well.” He then took out his Kodak Brownie and snapped one more, just as some planes roared overhead. Then the saucer flashed brightly and sped off, and Adamski just stood there deflated, in a sort of reverie, Brownie in hand, wondering who was in it and where they came from. At that point, he thought it was all over.
“A HUMAN BEING FROM ANOTHER WORLD!”
Adamski’s melancholy mood was broken when his attention was drawn to a man standing about a quarter of a mile away, at the entrance to a ravine, who appeared to be motioning for Adamski to come over to him. Adamski thought his eyes were playing tricks on him because he was certain the man had not been there a minute ago, and he could not figure out how he had gotten to where he was. He concluded that he might be a prospector or someone who conceivably lived in that desolate place. Adamski started walking over, first checking to make sure his companions were watching, and was immediately set at ease when he regarded the man. He was young, perhaps twenty-eight years old, and slight of build, with long blond hair blowing in the wind, and he wore a one-piece jumpsuit, brown in color, sort of shiny and held in at the wrists and ankles with bands, with a large belt about eight inches wide. He smiled as he waited for Adamski to approach, and Adamski felt very friendly toward this stranger, without knowing why. Then suddenly, as the man took four steps toward him, Adamski realized what he was. He says, “Now, for the first time I fully realised that I was in the presence of a man from space—A HUMAN BEING FROM ANOTHER WORLD!”
Adamski became speechless, and his mind seemed frozen. When he recovered, he started to mentally register all the details of the man’s appearance. His face was delicately formed with a high forehead and slightly slanted eyes. His skin was the color of what Adamski called “a medium-colored suntan,” and he appeared to have not a trace of facial hair. He radiated a power and wisdom that Adamski found humbling and, at the same time, inspiring. He said of that initial impression, “I felt like a little child in the presence of one with great wisdom and much love, and I became very humble within myself, for from him was radiating a feeling of infinite understanding and kindness, with supreme humility.” The man extended his hand, which Adamski understood to be an offer to shake hands. However, when he responded as if to grip hands, the man rejected this with a smile and showed him that he wished to just touch palms, lightly but firmly. (See color insert p. 1.)
A TELEPATHIC CONVERSATION
When Adamski started questioning the spaceman about his origins, the man indicated that he didn’t understand. Adamski, who had taught courses on paranormal phenomena for over thirty years, quickly decided that he had to use telepathy to communicate. Using this technique (i.e., forming a picture in his mind of the subject of the communication, accompanied by appropriate gestures), he was able to converse with the man from space, who proved to be quite adept at telepathic conversation. The man claimed to be from Venus.*1 In reply to the question, “Why are you coming to Earth?” he gave Adamski to understand that he and his kind were concerned about nuclear radiation, which reached outer space and affected space travel, but also threatened to destroy Earth. To get this across, he touched a little weed nearby and then gestured widely, voicing the word “boom,” to indicate that everything would be destroyed.
The conversation then turned to the spacecraft. The man from Venus pointed to a saucer hovering just above the ground, over a nearby hill. Adamski hadn’t even seen it, but he realized immediately that it was the one he thought had gone away. He laughed heartily at Adamski’s surprise, and Adamski joined in, and then asked him if he had come all the way from Venus in the saucer. He shook his head and told Adamski that he had come in a much larger ship. Adamski formed the picture of many saucers being carried in the cigar-shaped craft and put it side by side with an aircraft carrier. The spaceman nodded his head at the comparison.
Adamski then inquired about the means of propulsion. Here the man from Venus used the now-famous, simple but graphic illustration of how the craft operated. He picked up a small rock and dropped it once, and then picked it up again and showed it in motion. Adamski then asked if it was magnetic, using the word three times while miming attraction and repulsion. The man nodded and repeated the word “magnetic.” But evidently Adamski didn’t get the whole message here. When the Venusian dropped the rock the first time, he was trying to indicate the concept of gravity or gravitation. Then when he picked it up again and showed it in motion, he was saying, in effect, “antigravity.” Adamski never understood this. But now, five decades later, with antigravity research well advanced and probably already secretly developed, it is very clear.
Adamski then asked him about the small discs that had been reported by many observers. The Venusian made small circles with his fingers and held them over his eyes to indicate that they were the eyes of the larger craft, that is, remotely controlled observer craft presumably using a form of telecasting. It should be remembered here that in 1952, television broadcasting required huge cameras and whole rooms of equipment. When Adamski reported this meeting in 1953 (in his book), he had no way of knowing that, one day, we would be able to mount tiny battery-operated TV cameras almost anywhere. At that point, a picture of one of these craft exploding appeared in Adamski’s mind. He was being told that they had to destroy them when they malfunctioned by sending out a self-destruct signal, but always at a safe distance from Earth.
Adamski then asked why they did not land in populated places, and the man said that humans would respond with fear. This brought up the question in Adamski’s mind of whether any of his compatriots had been killed by men of Earth. The Venusian nodded yes, accompanied by several gestures that Adamski couldn’t decipher. He said that eventually they would land publicly, but not anytime soon. It then occurred to Adamski to inquire about cases where humans were taken up in the spacecraft. The Venusian admitted that it had happened and revealed to Adamski that someone he had in mind had been one of them, but he asked him to keep this information secret.
As Adamski sensed that the conversation was drawing to a close, he tried to select out the most important question from the long list in his mind, and he chose the one that had been bothering him for years: “How many other planets are inhabited by human-like beings?” The Venusian made a wide sweep with his arms to indicate “all of them.” “Do they die, as earthlings do?” Adamski inquired. The response to this was very interesting. The spaceman pointed to his body and nodded affirmatively. Then he pointed to his head to indicate the soul or spirit and indicated no. He himself had once lived on Earth, he said. Thus, he endorsed the concept of reincarnation. Adamski had many more questions, but it was clear that the session was now over.
THREE SMALL STEPS FOR MANKIND
At that point, the Venusian started speaking rapidly in his own tongue, which Adamski said had a musical quality, and he pointed to his feet. He then stepped aside and showed Adamski his footprints, which were clearly etched into the desert soil and displayed strange markings made by impressions on the bottoms of the shoes. He carefully made three sets of footprints, indicating that Adamski should later study the markings, which turned out to be remarkably rich with symbolic meaning.*2 He then invited Adamski to accompany him as he walked toward the saucer. Adamski described the ship as having a translucent quality, almost as though it was made of glass, but it wasn’t. It was metallic, but somehow allowed light to pass through. It hovered a few feet off the desert floor as they approached. The spaceman politely declined Adamski’s request to take a ride on the craft, communicating clearly that he had to leave. He then stepped up onto the flange of the craft and entered through a door that opened.
As the ship started movin
g away, Adamski could hear a conversation in that musical language, coming from within. He noticed three rings around the flange of the craft, two of which were moving clockwise, and the one between them moving counterclockwise. As he watched the ship glide silently away over the desert and nearby mountain, Adamski felt a great sadness. He says in his book, “There was an emptiness such as can be compared only with the feelings experienced when a very dear one departs . . . And to this very day I feel the same emptiness . . . whenever I think of this visitor from another world . . . Yet there was . . . an inexpressible joy for the privilege I had been given.”
Pilot Report RE: Nov 20th, 1952*3
Dear sir:
In response to your letter of July 18th, 1956, we are enclosing a summary of project Blue Book Special Report # 14, which was released in October of 1955. the full report statically covers all reports up to the date, including a report by an Air Force Pilot on November 20th, 1952, from the general vicinity of Desert Center, California. Special report #14 is available for you to examine at Los Angeles, California.