1. Humankind is not alone in the solar system and now brothers and sisters from outer space have come to Earth to help those humans who will listen to their promise of a larger universe.
2. The space beings want humankind to become eligible to join an intergalactic spiritual federation.
3. The space beings are to assist the people of Earth to lift their spiritual vibratory rate so they may enter new dimensions. (According to the space beings, Jesus, Krishna, Confucius, and many of the other leaders of the great religions came to Earth to teach humanity these same abilities.)
4. The citizens of Earth stand now in the transitional period before the dawn of a New Age of peace, love, and understanding.
5. If the earthlings should not raise their vibratory rate within a set period of time, severe Earth changes and major cataclysms will take place.

How do the flying-saucer contactees encounter the space beings? A synthesis of such experiences reveals the following.

They first saw a UFO on the ground, hovering low overhead, or heard a slight humming sound above them that drew their attention to a mysterious craft.

Next, a warm ray of "light" emanated from the craft and touched the contactees on the neck, the crown of the head, or the middle of the forehead. They may have lost consciousness at this point and, upon awakening, may have discovered that they could not account for anywhere from a minute or two to an hour or two of their time. Those contactees who later claim direct communication with space beings generally state that they have no recollection of any period of unconsciousness, but they maintain that they "heard" a voice speaking to them from inside their own heads.

Many contactees are told that they were selected because they really are aliens, who were planted on Earth as very small children.

After the initial contact experience, nearly all contactees seem to suffer through several days of restlessness, irritability, sleeplessness, and unusual dreams or nightmares.

After a period of a week to several months, the contactee who has received a message from the space beings feels prepared to go forth and share it with others.

None of the flying-saucer contactees seem to feel any fear of their solar brothers and sisters and most of them look forward to a return visit from the space beings.

Family and friends of the contactees report that they are different and changed persons after their alleged experience with the space beings.

Most UFO contactees agree that the space beings' most prominent characteristic is wisdom, and they seem to take their scientific knowledge for granted. After all, contactees reason, if they have traveled through space from other worlds to Earth, then they must be extremely intelligent.

Hard-nosed Earth scientists, however, remain singularly unimpressed with the specific technical information that has been relayed by the contactees. Those sympathetic to the contactees might argue that the UFO crews deem their science to be incomprehensible to humankind at this point; other theorists suggest that the contactees are not communicating with alien entities at all, but rather, with a higher aspect of their own psyches.

Some researchers have observed that the space beings appear to function as do the angels of more conventional theologies. Both beings are concerned about Earth; they seem to be actively trying to protect it and the people in it. Both the space beings and the angels are powerful entities who appear to have control over the physical limitations of time and spacefamily:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—yet they are benevolent in their actions toward bumbling, ineffectual humankind. It seems that space beings have deliberately placed themselves in the role of messengers of God, or that humans hope that there exist such beings who can extricate humankind from the disasters of its own making.

Although most of the contactees claim an initial physical contact with a space being, the operable mechanics of the experience seem reminiscent of what can be seen in Spiritualism as the medium works with a spirit guide or a control from the "other side." In Spiritualistic or mediumistic channeling, the sensitive individual enters the trance state and relays information through the guide, who contacts various spirits of deceased human personalities. The mechanism in the Flying Saucer Movement is often that of the contactee going into some state of trance and channeling information from space beings. George King, George Van Tassel, Gloria Lee, George Hunt Williamson, and several other contactees have been members of psychic development groups.

It is impossible to estimate how many men and women claim to receive messages from space beings. Groups continue to rise from dynamic contactees, each with their variations of previous revelations and their own occasional individual input. There is also the category of revelators that UFO researchers term the "silent contactees"family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—men and women who have not gathered groups about them, but who have established contact with what they feel to be entities from other worlds and who have directed their lives according to the dictates of those space beings. Many of these men and women continue to work in conventional jobs, confiding their experiences only to close associates and family members.

While the number of UFO contactees remains nebulous at best, estimates presented at a conference on the alien-abduction phenomenon at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in June 1992 suggested that as many as several hundred thousand to more than three million adults in the United States alone have had abduction experiences with UFO beings. While such a figure seems mind-boggling to say the least, some UFO researchers say that the true figure would be much higher.

Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle, formerly on staff at the University of Wyoming in Laramie and now in private practice, has speculated that there may be hundreds of thousands of people who have had a UFO encounter but who were not even aware of it at the time. Sprinkle lists several characteristics common among people who have had such experiences:

1. An episode of missing time. Under hypnosis many people remember driving down the road and then being back in their car. They know that "something" happened between the two points of consciousness, but they can't fill in the missing time.
2. Disturbing dreams. The abductee will dream about flying saucers, about being pursued and captured, and being examined by doctors in white coats.
3. Daytime flashbacks of UFO experiences. While they are doing tasks in their normal daytime activities, abductees will flash back to some kind of UFO image or UFO entity.
4. Strange compulsions. Sprinkle told of one man who for seven years felt compelled to dig a well at a particular spot. Under hypnosis he revealed that a UFO being had told him they would contact him if he dug a well.
5. A sudden interest in UFOs. The abductee may suddenly give evidence of a compulsion to read about UFOs, ancient history, or pyramids and crystals, without knowing why.

In 1976 Carl Higdon, a 41-year-old Wyoming oil-field worker, claimed to have been kidnapped by alien beings while he was hunting elk in a remote wilderness area. Higdon said that he was lifted aboard a spacecraft and taken millions of miles to another planet where he saw other earthlings living with alien beings. It was Higdon's impression that the aliens had been taking people from Earth for many yearsfamily:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—as well as a sizable stock of various animals and fish. Higdon was given a physical examination by the extraterrestrials, told that he was unsuitable for their needs, and returned to Earth.

Sprinkle hypnotized Higdon a number of times and gained remarkable details of the experience. Higdon had gone to the north edge of the Medicine Bow National Forest to hunt wild game. About mid-afternoon, he walked onto a rise and spotted five elk grazing in a clearing a few hundred yards away. He picked out the largest buck, lined it up in his telescopic sights, and pulled the trigger. He could not believe his eyes when the powerful bullet from his magnum rifle left the barrel noiselessly and, in slow motion, floated like a butterfly for about 50 feet, then fell to the ground.

Higdon heard a twig snap, and he turned to face a strange-looking entity more than six feet tall, about 180 pounds, with yellowish skin color. The being possessed a head and face that seemed to extend directly into its shoulders, with no visible chin or neck. The humanoid had no detectable ears, small eyes with no brows, and only a slit of a mouth. Two antenna-like appendages protruded from its skull.

The alien being raised its hand in greeting to Higdon and floated a package of pills in his direction. Higdon remembers that he swallowed one of the pills upon the direction of the entity, and the next thing he knew, he was inside a cube-shaped object with the being, at least one other alien, and the five elk. Higdon was strapped to a seat with a football-like helmet on his head. Then he underwent a bizarre trip through space in a small, transparent craft.

Most of the details of Higdon's fantastic journey were gleaned during the hypnosis sessions with Sprinkle. Higdon told the doctor that he witnessed portions of what appeared to be a futuristic city of tall spires and towers and revolving multicolored lights. After a physical examination, he was returned to the space vehicle. When he looked out of the transparent sides, he observed five other beings who appeared to be humans.

The UFO set down again in Medicine Bow National Forest. Higdon was placed back in his truck, his rifle was returned, and he was relieved of the pills that the being had given him. Dazed by the strange experience, Higdon managed to radio for help. Then he apparently blacked out until he was found several hours later. Higdon spent three days in the Carbon County Memorial Hospital at Rawlins, undergoing extensive tests and rambling and shouting about four-day pills and men in black suits.

Higdon apparently experienced a miraculous healing of a tubercular-type scar on his lung. A problem with kidney stones also disappeared after his trip to outer space. Dr. Sprinkle has observed that such unexplainable recoveries from ailments often occur among people who claim to have been examined by alien beings.

David Webb, an Arlington, Massachusetts, solar physicist, cochair of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), a top UFO research organization, believes that space aliens have abducted one out of every eight people who have reported seeing UFOs. In Webb's research, in many cases the victims undergo some kind of examination, but they usually remember nothing of the onboard experience.

In the course of the numerous hypnotic regressions that he conducted with UFO abductees, Dr. James Harder said that he had found much evidence to support the theory that alien abductors return to find and to reexamine abductees at various intervals, sometimes throughout a person's lifetime and sometimes without his or her being aware of it. Harder observed that it is as if some sort of extraterrestrial group of psychologists is making a study of humans.

Harder and other researchers have discovered that a high percentage of people who have been abducted have undergone multiple experiences with UFO entities. Most abductees who have had more than one experience with UFO aliens usually undergo the first encounter between the ages of five and nine. These abductees remember the alien as friendly and quite human in appearance. Upon further hypnotic regression and careful probing, however, the investigators have learned that the entity did not look human at all.

In most cases, the entity usually tells the children that it will be back to see them throughout the course of their life. It also admonishes the children not to tell their parents about the encounter.

Harder has also discovered that during the adult abductee experience, those men and women undergoing the encounter will often report having a vague memory of their abductor, and they will later say that they feel as though they have seen the entity before. In Harder's opinion, the multiple UFO abduction is not a random occurrence.

The abductees speaking at the Mutual UFO Network's Washington, D.C., conference in June of 1987 reported frightening and disorienting aspects of their UFO experiences. They said that they often remembered the events only in fragments and flashes until they underwent hypnotic regression. For the abductees speaking on the panel, the interaction with the UFO entities had seemed primarily to be negative. They told of the frustration of being partially paralyzed and taken without their consent to undergo medical examinations.

Whitley Strieber , author of the best-selling book Communion (1987), said that he had attempted to deal with his tension and anxiety over having undergone an abduction experience by writing about his encounter. Strieber told the group assembled for the abductee panel at the Washington, D.C., conference that when he first realized what had happened to him, he was suicidal. Then he began to investigate some UFO literature and discovered that others had had similar experiences. He sought out the services of a hypnotist, thinking that perhaps that would be the last of the ordeal. It wasn't, of course, and he wrote the book hoping that the memories and the feelings would go away. Regretfully, the memories returned.

Strieber went on to say that he had received thousands of letters from other abducteesfamily:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—people who do not welcome publicity, including entertainers, political leaders, and members of the armed forces in high positions. According to Strieber, all of these abductees had reported a basic progression of emotions, moving from uneasy, fragmented recollections to a clear memory accompanied by fear. If the abductees consented to undergo hypnotic regression, they usually became even more terrified. Instead of attempting to glean more and more information about the abductee through hypnotic regression, Strieber suggested that concerned researchers should be trying to help these individuals with their fright and helping them gain more understanding about what had happened to them.

Delving Deeper

Bryan, C. D. B. Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Alien Abductions, UFOs, and the Conference at M.I.T. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

Evans, Hilary. Gods, Spirits, Cosmic Guardians: A Comparative Study of the Encounter Experience. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: Aquarian Press, 1987.

Hopkins, Budd. The Intruders. New York: Random House, 1987.

Lewis, James, ed. The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.

Mack, John E. Abducted. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994.

Randle, Kevin D., Russ Estes, and William P. Cone. The Abduction Engima. New York: Forge Books, 1999.

George Adamski (1891family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">–1965)

George Adamski was the first of the New Age UFO prophets, and just as the prophets of old went out into the desert to receive their revelations directly from God or the angels, Adamski went out into the night near Desert Center,

California, on November 20, 1952, and received his first revelatory encounter with Orthon, a Venusian space brother. Through telepathic transfer, Adamski learned that the space traveler was benign and greatly concerned with the spiritual growth of humankind. Adamski's desert encounter with a Venusian and Robert Wise's motion picture The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), with its warning that Earth had better clean up its act delivered by an alien messenger, were probably the two most contributive factors in birthing the UFO contactee movement in the United States.

After Adamski published Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953), coauthored with Desmond Leslie, he became popular as a lecturer and had little difficulty establishing himself as the best known of all the contactees, who were now springing up around the world. Flying saucer mania was rampant in the early 1950s with a cautious public wanting to know who was piloting the mysterious craft in the sky, where they were from, and what they looked like. Adamski had the answers. Orthon, the Venusian, was smooth-skinned, beardless, with shoulder-length blond hair, stood about five feet six inches tall, and wore what appeared to be some kind of jumpsuitlike apparel. Orthon had come in peace, eager to warn earthlings about radiation from the nuclear tests that were being conducted. There were universal laws and principles established by the Creator of All, and the people of Earth would do well to begin to practice those laws at once. All these messages were transmitted telepathically to Adamski to relay to his fellow earthlings, but later, after he had been taken for a trip into outer space, Adamski was able to communicate verbally with such entities as Firkon, the Martian, and Ramu, from Saturn.

The death of George Adamski on April 12, 1965, by no means terminated the heated controversy that had never stopped swirling around the prolific and articulate contactee. Throughout his career as a contactee, Adams-ki's believers steadfastly declared him to be one of the most saintly of men, completely devoted to the teachings of universal laws. It appears that after his death, certain of his followers found it necessary to provide their disciple of intergalactic peace with a kind of instant resurrection. In the book The Scoriton Mystery (1967) by Eileen Buckle, a contactee named Ernest Bryant claims to have met three spacemen on April 24, 1965, one of whom was a youth named Yamski, whose body already housed the reincarnated spirit of George Adamski.

According to Desmond Leslie, George Adamski had an audience with Pope John XXIII (1881family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">–1963) just a few days before the pope passed away. Leslie said that he met Adamski at the airport in London just after he had flown in from Rome. He drove Adamski straight to his little river cruiser at Staines, where several people interested in UFOs had been spending the weekend.

Sometime during the next few days, Adamski showed Leslie a memento that he said no one would ever take from him, and he produced an exquisite gold medal with Pope John's effigy on it. Later Leslie checked and found it was a medal that had not yet been released to anyone.

When Adamski was asked how he had received it, he answered that Pope John had given it to him the day before. Adamski went on to say how he had arrived at the Vatican according to the space people's instructions and had been taken straight in, given a cassock, and led to the pope's bedside. It was here that Adamski had handed Pope John a sealed package from the space brothers. It was said that Pope John's face had beamed when he received the package, and he said, "This is what I have been waiting for!" The pope then presented Adamski with a special medal, and the papal audience ended.

Leslie said that he later checked with Lou Zinsstag, who had allegedly taken Adamski to the Vatican. Zinsstag reported that when they had approached the Vatican and neared the private entrance, a man with "purple at his throat" (apparently a monsignor or a bishop) appeared.

Adamski had cried out, "That's my man!", greeted the papal official, and was led in for an audience with the pope. Zinsstag said that when he reappeared about 20 minutes later, Adamski appeared to be in the same state of excitement and rapture as witnesses had described him being in after his desert contact with the space brothers in 1952.

When Leslie later asked an abbot what he knew about the medal, the clergyman was amazed and said that such a medal would only have been given to someone in the most exceptional circumstances, and that no one, so far as he knew, had yet received this particular medal.

Leslie admitted that he had initially disbelieved that Adamski had received such an audience with the pope, but this confirmation from the abbot with regard to the medal had overcome his former disbelief. When Leslie asked Adamski what the space brothers' package had contained, the contactee said that he did not know. He related that the package had been given to him by the space brothers before he left for Europe and that he had been given instructions to present it to the pope. He was also told that all arrangements had been made inside the Vatican for such an audience to take place. This suggested to Leslie that the space brothers have a "fifth column" in St. Peter's seat as well as everywhere else.

Later, Adamski told Leslie that he thought the package had contained instructions and advice for the Second Ecumenical Council. It is possible that the package also contained a message to St. Peter's successors that chided them about certain lax measures and encouraged them to get on with the serious work required on Earth.

Delving Deeper

Adamski, George. Behind the Flying Saucer Mystery (Flying Saucer Farewell). New York: Paperback Library, 1967.

Adamski, George, and Desmond Leslie. Flying Saucers Have Landed. New York: The British Book Centre, 1953.

Edwards, Frank. Flying Saucersfamily:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—Here and Now! New York: Lyle Stuart, 1967.

Story, Ronald D. The Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters. New York: New American Library, 2001.

Zinsstag, Lou, and Timothy Good. George Adamskifamily:Lucida Sans Unicode;">— The Untold Story. Beckenham, Kent, England: Ceti Publications, 1983.

Daniel W. Fry (1908family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">–1992)

Daniel Fry's initial contact with beings that he claimed were space people took place on July 4, 1950, near the White Sands Proving Grounds (now Missile Range) near Las Cruces, New Mexico. Fry described himself as "an internationally known scientist, researcher, and electronic engineer" and as one who was "recognized by many as the best-informed scientist in the world on the subject of space and space travel." While he may have been the most technically sophisticated of the early UFO contactees, skeptical researcher Philip J. Klass (1919family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">– ) claimed in UFOs Explained (1974) that Fry's doctoral degree from "St. Andrews College of London, England" was issued by a small religious organization that awarded doctorates to whomever submitted a 10,000-word thesis and paid a fee. While the validity of his Ph.D. may be in doubt, Fry was employed as an

engineer with Aerojet General at the time that he claimed to have met the space people.

According to Fry, he missed the bus that would have taken him into town to observe the traditional July Fourth fireworks, so he decided to take a walk in the desert. What he had at first believed to be a strangely behaving star landed about 70 feet away from him and revealed itself to be a flying saucer. A friendly, but invisible, space traveler named A-lan (Alan) invited Fry on board and, while explaining some of the technical aspects of the spacecraft, whisked him to New York City and back to White Sands in 30 minutes. Fry estimated the speed of the UFO to be at least 8,000 miles per hour.

Although Fry later changed the date of his initial contact to 1949, he claimed to have been contacted by Alan three more times between 1950 and 1954. The space people, according to information received by Fry, were descendents of the lost continent of Lemuria, which had destroyed itself in an atomic war with Atlantis about 30,000 years ago. Because Lemurians had achieved space flight, a few survivors managed to escape in four vehicles before the final destruction occurred. One ship was lost on the flight to Mars, but three of the Lemurian craft landed safely and began to fashion a new society on that planet. Eventually, the descendents of Lemuria, the immigrant Martians, had truly become space people, traveling independent of any planet in self-sustaining ships, moving through space wherever they chose.

Fry established Understanding Incorporated in 1955 as a means of better spreading the teachings of Alan, who had told him that he had been chosen to act as the liaison between Earth and the planetary members of the Galactic Confederation. The space people warned that humans must learn to live in peace, or they were likely to destroy themselves with nuclear power, thereby replicating the disaster that had occurred in prehistoric times to Lemuria and Atlantis. Alan urged Earth people to build a firmer spiritual relationship with one another and with the Infinite Intelligence that pervades and controls the universe. Fry remained active as a lecturer in the Flying Saucer Movement until his death in 1992 and directed one of the largest of the UFO groups, comprising more than 60 units.

Delving Deeper

Fry, Daniel W. To Men of Earth. Elsinore, Calif.: El Cariso, 1973.

family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—. The White Sands Incident. Madison, Wis.: Horus House, 1992.

Gibbons, Gavin. They Rode in Space Ships. New York: Citadel Press, 1957.

Klass, Philip J. UFOs Explained. New York: Random House, 1974.

Sachs, Margaret. The UFO Encyclopedia. New York: Perigee Books, 1980.

Story, Ronald D., ed. The Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters. New York: New American Library, 2001.

Betty (1920family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">– ) and Barney Hill (1922family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">–1969)

The case of Betty and Barney Hill has become the prototype for the "interrupted journey," the classic case of humans abducted and examined by aliens from another world. Their story was covered extensively by John G. Fuller in the book Interrupted Journey (1966), and there was even a made-for-television movie (1975) with James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons playing Barney and Betty.

On September 19, 1961, Betty, a social worker, and Barney, a mail carrier, then in their 40s, were returning to their home in New Hampshire from a short Canadian vacation when they noticed a bright object in the night sky. Barney stopped the car and used a pair of binoculars to get a better look at it. As he studied the object, its own illumination showed a well-defined disklike shape, moving in an irregular pattern across the moonlit sky.

Fascinated, Barney walked into a nearby field where from that perspective he could perceive what appeared to be windowsfamily:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—and, in the windows, beingsfamily:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—looking back at him. The feeling that he was being watched frightened Barney, and he ran back to the car, got in, and began to race down the road. Then, as if obeying some internal directive, he drove down a side roadfamily:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—where the Hills found five humanoid aliens standing in their path. Suddenly unable to control their movements, Betty and Barney were taken from their car and, in a trancelike condition, led to the UFO by the humanoids.

The sensational details of the Hills' story were recalled later while under hypnosis, for the couple had a complete loss of memory concerning the nearly two hours that they were abducted by the UFOnauts. According to information later retrieved under hypnosis, Betty and Barney were returned unharmed to their car with the mental command that they would forget all about their abduction experience. The UFO then rose into the air and disappeared from sight, leaving the Hills to continue their journey home, oblivious to the whole event.

Perhaps the remarkable encounter would never have been brought to light except for two factors: they began to experience strange and disconcerting dreams that they could not understand, and they could not explain the unaccountable two missing hours in their journey home from Canada.

Betty decided to seek the help of a psychiatrist friend, who suggested that the memory of those lost hours would return in time, perhaps in only a few months. But the details of that unexplained "interruption" remained in a troubled limbo of fragmented memories until the Hills began weekly hypnosis sessions with Dr. Benjamin Simon, a Boston psychiatrist.

Under Simon's guidance, the couple revealed an astonishing pastiche of bizarre physical and mental examinations at the hands of an extraordinary group of extraterrestrial medical technicians. The individual accounts of Betty and Barney agreed in most respects, although neither was made aware of what the other had disclosed until later. In essence, both told of being treated by aliens from space in much the same manner as human scientists might examine laboratory animals. Although the couple had been given hypnotic suggestions by the aliens that they would forget their experience, their induced amnesia was apparently penetrated when they were rehypnotized by Simon.

Much has been made of the Hills alien medical examinations, and their much-publicized experience may have provided the prototype for thousands of other individuals who have claimed alien abductions with their requisite physical and sexual exams. However, the single aspect that may be most essential in giving the Hills' story credibility is the star map that Betty said she was shown by the extraterrestrials while on board the UFO.

Under hypnosis in 1964, three years after their alleged alien abduction, Betty, with little or no understanding of astronomy, drew her impressions of the map with a remarkable expertise that concurred with other, professionally drawn, star maps. As an important bonus, Betty's map showed the location of two stars called Zeta I and Zeta II Reticuli, allegedly the home base of the space travelers who abducted them. Interestingly, the existence of the two stars was not confirmed by astronomers until 1969family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—eight years after the Hills' abduction experience and five years after Betty remembered seeing the star map aboard an alien spaceship. As an added bit of data to support Betty Hill's claim that her recollection of the map was an actual memory of having been shown an artifact created by an extraterrestrial intelligence, the two fifth-magnitude stars, Zeta I and Zeta II Reticuli, are invisible to observers north of the latitude of Mexico City.

Delving Deeper

Bryant Alice, and Linda Seebach. Healing Shattered Reality: Understanding Contactee Trauma. Tigard, Ore.: Wild Flower Press, 1991.

Fuller, John G. The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours 'Aboard a Flying Saucer.' New York: Dial Press, 1966.

Jacobs, David M. Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of UFO Abductions. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Klass, Philip J. UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1988.

Randle, Kevin D., Russ Estes, and William P. Cone. The Abduction Enigma. New York: Forge, 1999.

Sachs, Margaret. The UFO Encyclopedia. New York: Perigee Books, 1980.

Story, Ronald D., ed. The Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters. New York: New American Library, 2001.

The Men in Black (MIB)

Ever since organized flying saucer research began in the early 1950s, a number of UFO investigators have claimed that they have suffered personal harassment, unusual accidents, and even mysterious deaths due to the visitations of three mysterious men in black. In some cases, according to UFO researchers, sinister voices whispered threats over the telephone and warned them to terminate specific investigations. By the mid-1960s, percipients of alleged UFO activity continued to protest that they had been visited by ominous strangers who made it clear that their orders to remain silent about what they had seen would be violently enforced.

Official disclaimers by the U.S. Air Force, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and

the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have served only to intensify the mystery of the bizarre incidents that have instilled fear among those who witnessed flying saucer phenomena and have prompted accusations of government cover-ups by members of civilian research groups for over 50 years.

The legend of the three Men in Black, the MIB, began in September 1953 when Albert K. Bender, who had organized the International Flying Saucer Bureau, received certain data that he felt provided the missing pieces concerning the origin of flying saucers. Bender wrote down his theory and sent it off to a friend he felt he could trust. When the three men appeared at Bender's door, one of them held that letter in his hand.

The three Men in Black told Bender that among the many researchers he had been the one to stumble upon the correct answer to the flying-saucer enigma. Then they filled him in on the details. Bender became ill. He was unable to eat for three days.

Bender went on to say that when people found out the truth about flying saucers there would be dramatic changes in all things. Science, especially, would suffer a major blow. Political structures would topple. Mass confusion would reign.

In 1962, Bender decided that he would at last tell his story to the world in Flying Saucers and the Three Men. This perplexing volume served only to confuse serious researchers, as it told of Bender's astral projection to a secret underground saucer base in Antarctica that was manned by male, female, and bisexual creatures. Many questions remained to plague UFO investigators. Were Bender's experiences really of a psychic nature? Was his book deliberately contrived to hide the true nature of his silencing? Had the whole experience been clothed in an extended metaphor that might yield certain dues to the perceptive researcher?

In the opinion of many UFO investigators, the Men in Black are representatives of an organization on the planet Earth, but they are not from any known bureau in the U.S. government. According to some researchers, both these men and the UFOs come from some civilization that has flourished in a remote area of Earth, such as the Amazon, the North Gobi Desert, or the Himalaya Mountains.

Within a few months after Bender had been silenced, Edgar R. Jarrold, organizer of the Australian Flying Saucer Bureau, and Harold H. Fulton, head of Civilian Saucer Investigation of New Zealand, received visits from mysterious strangers and subsequently disbanded their organizations.

John H. Stuart, a New Zealander, picked up a piece of metal that had fallen from a UFO during a close sighting in February 1955. The next night he received a visit from a man dressed in black who announced that he had more right than Stuart did to the piece of grey-white metal. The man in black told Stuart a lot about flying saucers and left him feeling frightened.

"I have a feeling that some day there will come a slow knocking at my own door," Gray Barker (1925family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">– ) wrote in They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers (1956). "They will be at your door, too, unless we all get wise and find out who the three men really are."

UFO and paranormal investigator John A. Keel's (1930family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">– ) pursuit of the flying saucer silencers in the late 1960s led him to uncover some extreme cases of personal abuse in which certain contactees or investigators had been kidnapped by three men in a black car. Keel noted that it was nearly always three men who subjected the victims to some sort of brainwashing technique that left them in a state of nausea, mental confusion, or even amnesia lasting for several days. The investigation of many of these cases never get beyond local police departments, Keel found. Neither the FBI nor any other central government agency was engaged in collecting information on such stories of mistreatment by the mysterious three Men in Black.

Responding to accusations from civilian researchers who demanded an investigation and who suggested that the air force was somehow behind such silencings, Colonel George P. Freeman, Pentagon spokesman for Project Blue Book, was quoted as saying that the three Men in Black were not connected with the air force in any way. Nor would any other United States security group claim them. It has never been within the line of duty of any government agency to threaten private citizens or to enter their home without a search warrant. No government agent is empowered to demand surrender of private property by any law-abiding citizen. Freeman went on to say that by posing as air force officers and government agents, the silencers were committing a federal offense.

Broadcaster Frank Edwards (1908family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">–1967), who became well known for his best-selling Flying Saucersfamily:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—Serious Business (1966), made much of what he believed to be an official plot that had been set to silence him. Before becoming interested in UFOs, Edwards had been conducting a highly successful radio show sponsored by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). He was warned to abandon the subject of flying saucers, and when Edwards persisted, he was given his walking papers.

In spite of thousands of letters protesting the firing of Edwards and the silencing of his UFO reports, his ex-sponsor stood firm. When reporters asked George Meany, president of the AFL, why Edwards had been dropped, Meany answered that it was because he had talked too much about flying saucers. Edwards claimed that he later learned that his constant mention of UFOs had been irritating to the Defense Department and that the department had brought pressure to bear on the AFL.

Edwards was only temporarily silenced, and he soon had in syndication a radio show that dealt almost exclusively with flying saucers and other strange phenomena. But his sudden death on June 24, 1967, the 20-year anniversary of Kenneth Arnold's sighting of the flying saucers near Mt. Rainier, Washington, sparked immediate concern among UFO researchers that Edwards had been silenced for good. And it certainly added to the paranoia that he had died on the day before he was scheduled to address the Congress of Scientific Ufologists assembled at the Hotel Commodore in New York City.

Stories of the Men in Black have continued unabated since their origin in the early 1950s. In 1997, the motion picture Men in Black starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith became a smash box office hit by portraying the sinister "three men" as two men who worked for a secret government agency that patrolled the action of aliens living secretly on Earth. The concept that originated in fear and distrust of the government or of some nefarious secret organization of aliens or agents was played for laughs, and the motion picture used state-of-the-art special effects to create astonishing outer space creatures. A sequel to the successful film was released in 2002, and the legend of the frightening Men in Black knocking at the doors of those who had witnessed UFO activity to threaten and to silence them continued to be seen as a vehicle for comedy.

If the UFO silencers are a hoax, no one has yet answered who is perpetrating it and why. Whoever comprises this persistent silence group either knows, or gives the impression of knowing, a great deal more about the universe than the current scientific community does.

Many researchers of UFO phenomena continue to believe that the Men in Black are agents from another world who labor to spread confusion and fear among Earth's serious UFO investigators and those witnesses of UFO activity. Others maintain that in spite of official denials, the Men in Black are agents from a top-secret U.S. government agency, which knows the answer to the flying saucer enigma and has been commissioned to keep the truth from the American public. Still others claim that they are agents from another terrestrial political system that endeavors to guard its secret of advanced technology just a bit longer.

Delving Deeper

Barker, Gray. They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. New York: University Books, 1956.

Beckley, Timothy Green. The UFO Silencers. New Brunswick, N.J.: Inner Light Publications, 1990.

Bender, Albert K. Flying Saucers and the Three Men. Clarksburg, W.Va.: Saucerian Press, 1962.

Keel, John A. The Mothman Prophecies. New York: New American Library, 1976; New York: Tor Books, 2002.

family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—. UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1970.

Sachs, Margaret. The UFO Encyclopedia. New York: Perigee Books, 1980.

Story, Ronald D., ed. The Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters. New York: New American Library, 2001.

Whitley Strieber (1945family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">– )

When he published Communion in 1987, Whitley Strieber transformed himself from a well-established horror writer into the world's most famous UFO contactee/abductee. The author of such popular novels as The Wolfen (1978) and The Hunger (1981), both of which were made into successful motion pictures, Strieber startled readers and researchers alike when he wrote a first-person account of his encounters with the "visitors" and detailed his abduction experiences.

According to Strieber, on December 26, 1985, he underwent the first of a series of close encounter experiences with alien beings that he would go on to describe in his books Communion, Transformation (1988), and Confirmation (1998). As millions of readers followed his accounts of extraordinary occurrences, Strieber went on to tell of being abducted in his childhood, undergoing physical examinations at the hands of the "visitors," and suggesting mind control and government involvement in the UFO mystery.

Reflecting upon his encounters in his "journal" on his website (Whitley Strieber's Unknown Country, 12/15/2001), he wrote that he had struggled through his ordeal with "genuine knowledge and good questions" and had seen "an absolute terror" change within a few years to a "sublime journey" on which he was still embarked. The visitors, Strieber observed from this perspective, were "a very complicated presence among us" and that not all of them were to be "trusted or accepted."

Strieber has stated that he believes the evidence of the UFO, if properly examined by science, may provide humankind with "wonderful new discoveries and information." But, he adds in his position statement in The Extraterrestrial Encyclopedia (2001), to accept such evidence also means that it is necessary to face the facts that "there may really be aliens herefamily:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—aliens who are creating an extraordinary theater in the sky while at the same time entering the personal lives of many people in extremely bizarre ways."

Delving Deeper

Story, Ronald D., ed. The Encyclopedia of Extraterres trial Encounters. New York: New American Library, 2001.

Strieber, Whitley. Communion. New York: Beach Tree/William Morrow, 1987.

family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—. Confirmation. New York: Beech Tree Books/William Morrow, 1998.

family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—. Transformation. New York: Avon, 1988.

"Whitley's Journal." Whitley Strieber's Unknown Country, December 15, 2001. [Online] http://www.unknowncountry.com/journal/.

George Van Tassel (1910family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">–1978)

George Van Tassel established a reputation as an accomplished flight test engineer for both Lockheed International and Douglas Aircraft in the 1930s, and spent World War II (1939family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">–45) flying for business magnate/aviator Howard Hughes (1905family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">–1976.) In 1947, Van Tassel moved with his wife and three daughters to the land around Giant Rock, California, and reopened the airfield near what had been declared by many as the largest boulder in the world.

After the family had lived near Giant Rock for a time, Van Tassel became intrigued by stories of UFO contactees, and he theorized that the huge boulder's piezo-electric composition could intensify meditation and the power of the human mind to establish communication with alien intelligences. When he began holding weekly meditations under the rock, others who felt drawn to the rock and the desert soon joined him. In 1951, Van Tassel went into trance and said later that he had been taken out of his body to meet with a group of discarnate beings who inhabited a spaceship orbiting Earth.

In August of 1952, Van Tassel stated that aliens from Venus had landed near Giant Rock and invited him to enter their spacecraft. When word spread of his dramatic encounter, the first Space Convention was held at Giant Rock in the spring of 1953. In the years to come, thousands would attend these conventions, drawn to the rock, the desert, Van Tassel, and the promise of experiencing personal alien contact. In 1959, over 11,000 followers of the charismatic contactee came from all over the world to hear him channel messages from the space brothers and to take advantage of the opportunity to share stories of their own alien encounters with the media.

Van Tassel introduced the world to Ashtar, commandant of station Schare. "Schare" was one of several space stations in "Blaau," the fourth sector of "Bela," in which our solar system is moving. "Shan" was the name that Ashtar gave for Earth, and he said that the universe was ruled by the Council of Seven Lights, which had divided the cosmos into seven sectors and systems. Ashtar proclaimed that the space intelligence's main purpose was to save humankind from itself. Once that great obstacle had been met, then the minor problem of how to deal with nuclear fission would right itself through the harmony that would then be extant on Earth.

Ashtar and his fellow space intelligences also gave Van Tassel instructions for the construction of the "Integratron," a four-story-high, 16-sided dome of wood and concrete, which was supposed to rejuvenate human cells by utilizing the natural energy found in the dry desert atmosphere of Giant Rock. Thousands of believers came to pass through the Integratron and to receive antiaging electrostatic charges.

Van Tassel founded the Ministry of Universal Wisdom in 1953, basing its precepts on revelations from the space brothers. The ministry taught the universal law that operates on humankind in seven states: gender (male and female); the Creator as Cause; polarity of negative and positive; vibration; rhythm; relativity; and mentality.

Van Tassel maintained his headquarters at Giant Rock, California, for many years, making it a gathering place for both the curious and the true believers. He was the author of I Rode a Flying Saucer (1952) and The Council of Seven Lights (1958).

Delving Deeper

Gibbons, Gavin. They Rode in Space Ships. New York: Citadel Press, 1957.

Sachs, Margaret. The UFO Encyclopedia. New York: Perigee Books, 1980.

Story, Ronald D., ed. The Encyclopedia of Extraterres trial Encounters. New York: New American Library, 2001.

Van Tassel, George. The Council of Seven Lights. Los Angeles: De Vorss, 1958.

family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—family:Lucida Sans Unicode;">—. I Rode a Flying Saucer. Los Angeles: New Age Publishing, 1952.