by John A. Keel
A long chain of events would be required for such communication. They would have to be arranged in such a manner that they assume singular importance to the generation involved and would be carefully recorded and preserved for succeeding generations. At the end of the chain the assorted fragments would form a whole that would produce the information in tow. Call it a revelation or an awakening if you will.
UFO events seem to occur century after century in the same geographical locations. A majority of these events took place on Wednesdays and Saturdays and were concentrated around the hours of 6 P.M., 8 P.M., and 10 P.M. These facts in themselves are proof that the phenomenon is guided by an intelligence and that the individual events form part of a larger plan. As we progress step by step along this bizarre cosmic trail, that plan becomes slowly more plain. We have misunderstood much of the material passed on to us, and we are just beginning to comprehend the full meaning of the many manifestations of the energies from the higher frequencies.
The UFO phenomenon is frequently reflective; that is, the observed manifestations seem to be deliberately tailored and adjusted to the individual beliefs and mental attitudes of the witnesses. Both the objects and their occupants appear to be able to adopt a multitude of forms, and the contactees are usually given information that conforms to their own beliefs. UFO researchers who concentrate on one particular aspect or theory find themselves inundated with seemingly reliable reports which tend to substantiate that theory. My own extensive experiences with this reflective factor have led me to carry out weird experiments which confirmed that a large part of the reported data is engineered and deliberately false. The witnesses are not the perpetrators of these hoaxes but are merely the victims.
The apparent purposes of all this false data are multifold. Much of it is meant to create confusion and diversion. Some of it has served to support certain beliefs that were erroneous but which would serve as steppingstones to the higher, more complex truth. Whole generations have come and gone, happily believing in the false data, unaware that they were really mere links in the chain. If we understood it all too soon, we might crumble under the weight of the truth. It was first necessary to build man’s ego; to make him believe that he had some worth in the cosmic whole. So, lies containing veiled truths were spread among us, and events were staged to make those lies seem valid. Many men—brilliant scholars and philosophers—have clearly seen the truth for centuries. Libraries all over the world are filled with books detailing their findings. But their truths were lost in the waves of organized belief.
This earth is covered with windows into that other unseen world. Perhaps if we had the instruments to detect them, we would find that these windows are the focal points for super-high-frequency waves—the “rays” of ancient lore. These rays might come from Orion or the Pleiades as the ancients claimed, or they might be part of the great force that emanates throughout the universe. The UFOs have given us evidence that such rays exist.
Now, slowly, we are being told why.
11
“You Are Endangering the Balance of the Universe!”
An Air Force plane spiraled clumsily out of the sullen Argentine sky and crashed near Quilino in August 1957, setting the stage for one of the hundreds of “ridiculous” contact stories that have been appearing in newspapers throughout the world for the past twenty years. The Argentine Air Force dispatched three men to the site to guard the wreck until proper equipment could be mustered to haul it back to the base. On the evening of August 20, 1957, two of the men went into the town for supplies, while the third man lounged in their tent.
Suddenly, according to his story, he heard an eerie, high-pitched hum. He stepped outside the tent and was astonished to see a huge luminous metal disk hovering directly overhead. In horror, he reached for his pistol but could not seem to draw it from the holster for some unknown reason, he claimed later.
Standing transfixed, tugging helplessly at his gun, the young man heard a soft-spoken voice coming from the humming object. It addressed him gently in his own language and told him not to be afraid. Then it went on to tell him that the disk was an interplanetary spacecraft and that a base for such craft had been installed in the nearby province of Salta (an area where UFO sightings have been reported constantly for the past fifteen years—”UFO Alley”).
“We intend to help you,” the voice is supposed to have declared, “for the misuse of atomic energy threatens to destroy you.” The voice went on to say that very soon the rest of the world would know about flying saucers.
Then the bushes and trees began to rustle, and the craft ascended straight up and disappeared. The young Argentinean was so upset by this experience that he reported it in full to his commanding officer. The latter took him most seriously and passed the story on to one of Argentina’s largest and most respected newspapers, Diario de Cordoba, which carried the full account two days later.
Even though the U.S. Air Force and various civilian groups struggle to discount and discredit contactee stories, they continue to turn up everywhere. Many of them contain such ludicrous details that they are easy to dismiss—until you realize that the same ludicrous details are appearing in Italy, Brazil, Sweden, Africa, the Soviet Union, Australia, and nearly every other country on earth.
Consider the improbable tale told by movie actor Stuart Whitman, star of Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and many other big-budget films. According to Mr. Whitman, he was trapped in his twelfth-floor suite in a fashionable New York hotel during the big blackout of November 1965, when he heard “a sound like a whippoorwill” whistling outside his window. He looked out and saw two luminous disk-shaped objects, one blue, the other orange. At least that’s what he later told Hollywood columnist Vernon Scott. Then he heard a voice, which sounded as if it were coming from a loudspeaker.
“They said they were fearful of earth,” Whitman explained, “because earthlings were messing around with unknown quantities and might disrupt the balance of the universe or their planet…the blackout was just a little demonstration of their power, and they could do a lot more with almost no effort. They said they could stop our whole planet from functioning.”
No one else in the crowded streets of darkened New York reported seeing these objects, and no one apparently heard that loudspeaker. But Whitman sticks to his story. Why is anybody’s guess. He certainly doesn’t need publicity. At least not that kind of publicity.
Senhor Helio Aguiar didn’t seem to be looking for publicity, either, when he spun his strange story to Brazilian journalist Joao Martins in 1959. A thirty-two-year-old statistician employed by a bank in Bahia, Brazil, Aguiar not only claimed to have received a message from a UFO, but he took a series of startling pictures to back up his story.
While riding a motorcycle near a place called Piata on April 24, 1959, Senhor Aguiar says he observed a silvery disk with a number of windows visible on the dome on top. The underside of this object bore three markings or symbols, which were actually faintly visible in the originals of his pictures but, unfortunately, do not reproduce well. Aguiar stopped his motorcycle, unlimbered his camera and took three quick shots as the object performed leisurely movements overhead. Then, according to Gordon Creighton’s translation of the photographer’s original testimony, “He began to feel a pressure in his brain, and a state of progressive confusion overtook him. He felt vaguely as though he were being ordered by somebody to write something down. It was as though he were being hypnotized. As he was winding the film on before proceeding to take a fourth picture, he lost all sense of what was happening.”
Like the prophet Daniel, and Joseph Smith of the Mormons, Senhor Aguiar passed out. The next thing he knew, he was slumped over his motorcycle, and the UFO was gone. But clutched in his hand was a piece of paper bearing a message in his own handwriting: “Put an absolute stop to all atomic tests for warlike purposes,” the message warned. “The balance of the universe is threatened. We shall remain vigilant and ready to intervene.”[10]
&nbs
p; “The balance of the universe…” It’s a very odd coincidence how this same phrase turns up over and over again in the stories of these “kooks and crackpots.”
Two years before Serihor Agniar’s alleged communication from the UFOs, a quiet gentleman in England claimed that he had been taken for a ride. His name is James Cook of Runcorn, Cheshire, and he stated that he saw a strange luminous object in the sky at 2:15 A.M. on September 7, 1957. While he watched in fascination, the object changed colors from blue to white, then blue again, and finally to a dark red. It hurtled out of the sky and settled to the ground only a few feet from him. Then, he claimed, a voice addressed him, inviting him aboard. A ladder descended from the craft, and a voice instructed him, “Jump onto the ladder. Do not step onto it. The ground is damp.”
He obeyed, leaped onto the bottom rung of the ladder, and climbed into an empty chamber illuminated by a dazzling light from some unseen source. The voice told him to take off his clothes and put on the plastic-like coveralls that were in the chamber. Again, he did as he was told. After he had changed his clothes, he was asked to leave the craft and enter another one that had landed nearby. There, he said, he found twenty people, all of them much taller than he was, and they took him for a ride
into outer space. They told him that they were from a planet called Zomdic, which was in another solar system and was unknown to our scientists. Their craft could not operate in damp weather, they allegedly explained to him, apparently because they were surrounded by some kind of electrified field.
They also told him, he said, that the saucers were used only in the vicinity of the earth and could not operate in outer space.
“The inhabitants of your planet will upset the balance if they persist in using force instead of harmony,” Mr. Cook asserts that he was told. “Warn them of the danger.”
“Nobody will listen to me,” he says he protested.
“Or anyone else either,” one of the giant “spacemen” snapped.
Mr. Cook was deposited several hours later in the very spot where he had first been picked up. He related his story to the authorities and then quietly returned to his garden in the English countryside. Like the majority of all known contactees, he did not write any books or go on any lecture tours. Zomdic was never heard from again, either.
Miss Thelma Roberts of Britain’s Flying Saucer Review interviewed Mr. Cook, and he showed her a burn on the back of his left hand and told her he had received it when he had left the saucer and had failed to remove his hand from the ladder’s railing before his feet touched the wet ground.
Another contactee who has refused to make any fuss over his purported experience with “the people from outer space” is a young Italian engineer named Luciano Galli, who runs a small company on the outskirts of Rome. His story is far more unbelievable than Mr. Cook’s, but whether you believe it or not, it contains all of the classic elements that appear in many similar yarns. These elements include terrestrials—people just like you and me—who are in some way connected with the UFO phenomenon. Or maybe they really are our ultraterrestrials in disguise.
Signore Galli left his home after lunch on July 7, 1957, and was headed back to his plant when a black Fiat pulled up and a tall, dark-skinned man with piercing jet-black eyes spoke to him.
“Do you remember me?” the man asked. Galli had seen the man before on the streets of Rome and, for some reason, had felt like speaking to him, but he had disappeared into the crowds.
“I remember you,” Galli replied.
“Would you like to come with us?” the man asked.
“Where to?”
“Have confidence.” The man smiled. “Nothing will happen to you.”
Galli impulsively got into the car. Another man, smaller and with delicate features, was driving. They proceeded to the Croara Ridge outside of Rome where, Galli says, a saucer-shaped machine was waiting for them. A cylinder dropped down from the center of the underside of the craft, and a door opened in it. The tall, dark man led Galli into it, and they rose into the interior, where two bright lights suddenly flashed.
“Don’t be afraid,” the stranger laughed. “We have just taken your picture.”
There was a window-like lens about a yard in diameter in the bottom of the craft, Galli said, and through it he could see the earth fall away as they shot upward. Within minutes they were in space, where they approached a gigantic cigar-shaped object, which Galli estimated to be at least 600 meters (almost 2,000 feet) long. A very bright light surrounded one end of it, and there were a series of ports through which a number of saucers could be seen entering and leaving.
“This is one of our spaceships,” the stranger explained. They flew into one of the open ports, and when Galli left the saucer, he found himself in a huge chamber. “There were,” he said, “no less than four or five hundred people there… standing and walking around.”
He was given a tour of the ship and was shown a large library, lounges, control rooms, and the commander’s quarters. Less than four hours later he was back on the ridge outside of Rome. He kept the story to himself and did not really talk about it until a reporter who had heard rumors tracked him down in 1962.
“I don’t care what anybody says,” Galli declared. “The story is true. You can believe it if you wish.”
There were scores of contactee reports during the twelve months of 1957, maybe even hundreds that are now lost to us. One of the most notable of these involved a prominent Brazilian lawyer, Professor Joao de Freitas Guimaraes, a sober middle-aged military advocate in Sao Sebastiao. He said that he went joy riding in a flying saucer on a cool evening in July 1957. For a long time afterward he kept his experience to himself, sharing it with only a few friends such as Sao Paulo judge Dr. Alberto Franco.
On a dull, overcast evening, Guimaraes recalled, he was walking alone along a beach off the coast of Bela Island, Brazil, when he saw a jet of water rise up, and then a pot-bellied machine surfaced and moved toward shore. To his astonishment, two men, both more than 5 feet 10 inches tall, with long, fair hair, wearing tight-fitting green coveralls, clambered out, he said. They approached him directly and silently indicated that they would like him to step aboard. He spoke to them in French, English, Italian, and Portuguese, but they didn’t seem to understand any of these languages. Because they didn’t seem hostile, and because he was overcome with curiosity, he accepted their unspoken invitation, climbed up a long ladder mounted outside the craft, and with the help of the two men, stepped into the object.
The ladder was retracted and the door eased shut. The professor remained in a small compartment next to a window. He could not say later how many compartments there were in the craft. As the machine lifted into the air, he was surprised to see water splashing against the portholes. “Is it raining?” he asked. He claims that he received a silent reply—he felt it was some kind of telepathy, although he admitted knowing nothing about such matters. Somehow his hosts told him that the water was caused by the rotation of the craft.
For the next forty minutes or so (he said his watch stopped during the flight) the now identified (to him) flying object flitted about in the starlit upper atmosphere. During the trip he noted that he felt pain and cold in his genitals. He tried to ask the men where they were from, but they did not answer. One of them showed him a chart, something like a zodiac, he said, and he had the feeling that they were trying to explain when they would return, and that they wanted him to meet them again. Finally they delivered him back to the spot where they had picked him up, and six months later he told the story to a friend, Dr. Lincoln Feliciano, who contacted a Brazilian journalist. Professor Guimaraes quickly became a celebrity of sorts in Brazil and was, he confessed, amazed by the grave respect his story was accorded.
In John Fuller’s account of the bizarre UFO contact of Barney and Betty Hill, Interrupted Journey, Barney Hill recalled under hypnosis that he was placed on a table aboard a flying saucer and that he felt something cold being lowered over his genitals. The Hil
ls’ watches also stopped during their alleged experience.
The most famous contactee of 1956-57 was a New Jersey sign painter named Howard Menger. He was “discovered” by Long John Nebel, a New York radio personality who conducted an all-night talk show over station WOR, before moving to NBC. Long John had just begun his career in radio, and he was looking for an angle. He found it in flying saucers and built a huge following with his offbeat interviews with contactees, mystics, and assorted weirdos. Somehow he has managed to remain detached and claims to this day that he doesn’t buy most of what his guests tell him. In any case, Menger’s initial appearances on Long John’s show started a stampede to the little town of High Bridge, New Jersey, Menger’s home. According to Howard Menger, the flying saucers were frequently landing on his property, and the ufonauts often dropped in for coffee.
Menger, a gentle, soft-spoken man with a sincere manner, claimed that he had first been contacted by long-haired blond men in automobiles back in his army days in World War II. And in June 1946, a glowing UFO had landed near his parents home in High Bridge, and two men and a beautiful girl had stepped out. The men were dressed in “blue-gray ski-type uniforms,” were blond, fair-skinned, and of medium height. The woman, he said, wore a similar outfit of a soft pastel color which almost seemed to glow. She told him she was 500 years old. Basically, she advised him to learn to use his mental powers and to prepare for the important days ahead. She also is supposed to have told him to keep his mouth shut about all of this until 1957.