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FLYING
SAUCERS
HAVE LANDED
DESMOND
LESLIE
and
GEORGE ADAMSKI
1957
2006
www.angels-heaven.org
www.cosmic-people.com
PRINTING HISTORY
First
Published T. Werner Laurie in 1953
Second Impression September 1953
Third Impression October 1953
Fourth Impression October 1953
Fifth Impression November 1953
Sixth Impression December 1953
Seventh Impression March 1954
Eighth Impression November 1954
This Panther edition was just published in 1957.
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"If Adamski and the six companions who swore an affidavit to his Space Man encounter are not trying to pull off a gigantic hoax, then this is quite possibly the greatest story ever."
That was what the Daily Sketch wrote about" Flying Saucers Have Landed." For, in the second part of this book, Adamski swears that he saw a space ship land in the desert in California and that he made contact with one of its occupants. More, he provides considerable testimony to support his claims.
Desmond Leslie, who contributes the first part of the book, goes even further, asserting that flying saucers have been landing on earth for thousands of years, and gives records of their arrivals
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I would like to dedicate Book One to Shaun and to Christopher-Mark who will know much more about these things than their father by the time they are grown up,
DESMOND LESLIE.
Book Two of this work is dedicated to People, everywhere and in every world.
GEORGE ADAMSKI.
July, 1953.
I wish to thank Michael Juste, Robert Roberts, b.sc., Harold Chibbett, Oswald Frewen and Herbert Jones, who in various ways have provided me with invaluable assistance in the preparation of Book One.
I also wish to thank the Editors of Time and Life for their kind permission to reprint the seven incidents from Life mentioned in Chapter 2; Elliott Rockmore for kindly supplying the Flying Saucer Review, referred to in Chapter 4; Theosophical Publishing House for allowing liberal quotations from the works of Besant, Leadbeater and Sinnett; Lucis Press for the quotations from The Tibetan; Andrew Dakers Ltd for the extract from More Things In Heaven, and the various Saucer Research Groups throughout the world who have furnished material. Also to Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) Ltd, for permission to quote from The Flying Saucers Are Real, by Donald Keyhoe. No acknowledgment would be complete without a most grateful thought cast in the direction of the shade of the late Charles Fort, whose researches have literally saved me years of labour.
DESMOND LESLIE
With grateful thanks I acknowledge the sincere co-operation and untiring efforts of those who have helped me make this book possible. And without the editing and helpful encouragement of C.L.J. this book in its present form and at this time would have been impossible.
GEORGE ADAMSKI
(**)
About eighteen million years ago, say the strange and ancient legends of our little planet, at a time when Mars, Venus and Earth were in close conjunction, along a magnetic path so formed came a huge, shining, radiant vessel of dazzling power and beauty, bringing to earth ‘thrice thirty-five’ human beings, of perfection beyond our highest ideals; gods rather than men; divine kings of archaic memory, under whose benign world-government a shambling, hermaphrodite monster was evolved into thinking, sexual man. 1
1/ See: The Tibetan and A. Bailey, A Treatise on Cosmic Fire; Annie Besant, The Pedigree of Man; H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vols. I and III; A. E. Powell, The Solar System; C. W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant, Man, Where, Whence and Whither.
The arts by which these elder members of the Solar Family propelled their vessels, raised great weights, and ordered their dominion over natural elements (say the legends) were imparted to our early forefathers who, later, built shining vessels of their own, and with colossal intuition explored the upper spaces, and sought out the secrets of the inner depths. They understood and wielded states of matter whose existence modern science barely suspects, and constructed forms outside the crippling limitations of tangible matter.
From then until the present day, earthly constructions, and constructions from a myriad of other worlds, have been seen and recorded in our sky.
When press and radio came, enabling man to fill the whole world with his chatter, hitherto restricted by the effective range of his lungs, a luminous body seen over London or an aerial phenomenon seen in Western America would cause speculation in Australia and wonder in India all on the same day—thanks to the modern improvements.
That is why, on 24 June 1947, when Kenneth Arnold saw a fleet of ten shining circular disks whizzing along at a thousand miles per hour, darting in and out of the peaks around Mount Rainier, State of Washington, the news flashed round the world with the speed of light waves, and started the commotion we call flying saucers.
Arnold certainly started something (revived would be more accurate), and from then on a steady stream of reports came in, mainly from trustworthy, observant citizens who had noticed that an early form of locomotion was once more active in the air. In spite of constant denials and quite unbelievable explanations, the governments of the world have gradually been forced to give their attention to the matter and to create secret departments for investigation. Today, the American Government has dropped its original attitude of disbelief and admitted that it has over eighteen hundred authentic cases on its files. The British Air Ministry is more cautious, but grudgingly admits that it also has a secret department to deal with or to discourage questions.
The American Government, however, on 25 September 1952 dropped the alarming hint that it accepts these phenomena but hints that it is not in the public interest for it to publish all it knows.
Now such a remark is disquieting, not only to those old ladies who nightly peer beneath their beds for burglars, but also to the general public, down whose communal spine a slightly chilling sensation is apt to pass. Thus it is the purpose of this book to find out just what that something could be the authorities do not wish us to know. And the result of this Pandora-like curiosity is to land ourselves with a splash in Stygian waters, well out of our depth, and out of the depth, too, we think, of the authorities, governmental and scientific, who would be loath to consider such possibilities. Nor is it really their business to do so, for when governments start plumbing the river Styx, the results are not always beneficial to the governed.
However, having wet ourselves in its alluring waters we have, undaunted, dropped our little plumbline, and in the course of our survey made some quite unexpected soundings, usually in places where the few existing charts say: ‘No bottom’; and at others, where the depth is confidently given, the line has practically run out of our hands into some unfathomable abyss. The following chapters will present the findings as they came.
A word in passing, and a warning. This book is neither intended for, nor humbly dedicated to, the statistician, nor anyone else who mistakes figures for facts, nor does it aim to please the followers of what is called Popular Science. A proponent of the latter once took considerable pains explaining to G. K. Chesterton that the diamond was exactly the same as a lump of coal. At the end of it all Chesterton replied: ‘Any fool can see it isn’t !’
It is to this sort of fool; to the lonely heretic who likes to walk alone down strange untrodden paths; to him who believes that all things are possible, particularly those things held by other men to be impossible; to him who leaves no stone unturned, and to him who gives a second chance to ‘the stone rejected by the builders’, that this book is dedicated.
To these I offer some very curious stones for the turning; taking no responsibility whatsoever for anything they may find beneath.
BOOK ONE
(1)
What Saucers Are Not
Ever since the cliché ‘Flying Saucer’ was coined, the greatest and most exciting mystery of our age has been automatically reduced to the level of a music hall joke. The comics of Vaudeville and the comedians of State and Science banded together, most successfully, to encourage humanity in its oldest and easiest method of escape—to laugh at what it does not understand.
From then on, anyone who said ‘I have seen a flying saucer’ or, worse, ‘I believe in flying saucers’ was considered a bit of a leg-puller, or some kind of a crank. Despite evidence to the contrary (and there is enough of it to fill many volumes), there is still a widespread notion, hazy and ill-defined as are all popular notions, that flying saucers are some kind of American joke, a newspaper stunt, or the result of something not quite nice. On top of this comes an even hazier reassurance that the mystery has already been cleared up; that the skies have been purged of these ungodly objects and that there is nothing more to worry about.
For this latter notion we can thank those semi-scientists and self-appointed ‘experts’ who have simply failed to study the facts. Too many glib pontifications have been issued to the Faithful by those who should know better. Scores of neatly parcelled explanations have been doled out which barely cover a few of the facts. But to say, as their perpetrators say, that they cover all the cases on record is a flagrant untruth for which a Higher Justice may, or may not forgive them.
Let me say at the outset that I have devoted the last two and a half years solely to the investigation of this phenomenon: that I have studied thousands of cases and read reports both ancient and modern; that I have studied with an unbiased mind things which seemed possible, and things that seemed impossible, and that I feel as qualified to speak as any ‘expert’ who after a few weeks, or even days, of research calmly announces the once-and-for-all solution, and returns thence to his normal activities. www.universe-people.com www.cosmic-people.com
Let me say also that if I write of the flying saucer mystery in a light or easy style it is not because I do not seriously mean what I say. On the contrary, I take flying saucers extremely seriously; but I deplore pedantry and, like the ancient Toltecs, I find the serious things of life a cause for joy and pleasure rather than for pompous gloom.
And lastly, though I would prefer to use the ancient names for the sky disks such as ‘cars celestial’, ‘vimanas’, and ‘fiery chariots’, I shall use the modern abomination ‘flying saucers’ throughout this volume, merely to. avoid confusion.
I would like to devote little time to proving or disproving the reality of these wonderful flying objects. In fact, I would like to get right down to essentials without further ado, but for those who have heard of saucers only by hearsay or read of them in the popular Sunday papers that would prove a little unsatisfactory, so I shall dedicate the first part of this book to an account of what has happened up to the time of writing.
Let me say once again, that although I quote less than two hundred incidents, these have been selected from nearly two thousand cuttings, reports, articles, manuscripts and ancient documents supplied to me by kind helpers from many countries this side of the Iron Curtain. To quote them all would require a volume the size of a city telephone directory. For the past eighteen months barely a single day has gone by without flying saucers being reported somewhere in the world. But I am being modest. On some days there have been as many as ten different sightings in different places. And if a thing is seen daily, week after week, month after month, by ordinary people in free countries, then it follows that the thing in question must surely exist.
* * *
Do you remember the first amazing story ?
It came on 21 June 1947, three days before Arnold’s experience over Mount Rainier. A man named Dahl was out in the Tacoma Harbour Patrol boat near Maury Island. He looked up and saw six large disks about 2,000 feet above him. Five of them were slowly circling one that seemed to be in difficulties. Slowly they sank to within 500 feet of the sea, without a sound or whisper. Then suddenly there was a loud boom from the central disk and out fell a light, and a dark, metal object. Fragments landed in the water near the island, causing a loud hissing noise, whereupon the whole flight rose and shot off to sea.
Three days later Maury Island was visited and layers of slaglike substance were found there. Reports circulated that dark and light coloured metal disks were among the droppings. Air Intelligence was brought in and pronounced ex cathedra, through the vocal organs of a Major Sanders, that the metal was just slag. Neither the Major, nor Dahl, seemed to have noticed that slag, cinders, blue ice, jelly-like stuff and clinker have been recorded as arriving in large quantities on this planet, in utterly unexplained circumstances, for the last three hundred years.
Then came a variation. Experienced airmen began to see them. Two airline pilots, Adams and Anderson, were flying their D.C.3 the 130 miles from Memphis to Little Rock on the night of 31 March 1950 when a huge glowing flying saucer zoomed down at terrific speed to investigate them. On the central cupola there was a bright blue-white flashing light—either a signal or part of the propelling mechanism. And on the lower side, the airline pilots observed a row of eight or ten brilliantly lighted portholes. They thought they were portholes, but admitted that they could have been vents through which some kind of powerful energy was flowing.
‘I’ve been a sceptic all my life’, said Adams in his report,’ but what can you do when you see something like that ? We were both flabbergasted.’
Both pilots were slightly blinded by the glare. ‘It was the strongest blue-white light I’ve ever seen,’ said Adams.
Something just as bright, but quite different in construction, was seen by Eastern Airline pilots, Chiles and Whitted, early in July 1948 on a flight near Montgomery, Alabama. A large ‘aerial submarine’ three times the size of a B.29 came alongside and circled their aircraft. It was torpedo-shaped and glowed all over with a weird dark-blue light. There was a double row of ports or vents along the side from which came an unearthly white light. After inspecting them for some moments, the thing suddenly let out a sheet of flame, fifty feet long, turned up its nose at an abrupt angle, and shot off at about 700-1,000 m.p.h., rocking the sedate D.C.3 with its mighty blast.
Earlier still, nine flying saucers, in loose formation, were seen by Captain E. Smith, of United Airlines, eight minutes flying time away from Boise, Idaho, on 4 July 1947. Smith and his copilot, Ralph Stevens, saw the disks silhouetted against the late-evening sky, and at first thought they were aircraft. Notice, please, that they were ‘silhouetted’. Fireballs, illusions, and refractions of light do not produce dark silhouettes against the evening, or any other, sky. Four more saucers joined the group, giving the two pilots and their stewardess time to observe them thoroughly. ‘They were flat and roundish,’ they said afterwards, ‘and larger than ordinary aircraft.’
A huge round disk flying on its edge came alongside a Chicago-bound plane on the night of 27 April 1950. Captain Adickes, the airline pilot, said it looked like a giant wheel. ‘It was very smooth and streamlined and glowed evenly with a bright red colour as if it were heated stainless Steel. It appeared to fly on edge like a wheel going down a highway.’
It was intelligently controlled—either by repulse mechanism or by thinking beings, for each time Adickes tried to bring his plane nearer, the object turned away from him, keeping perfect distance until it decided it had seen enough of the comic terrestrial contraption lumbering along at a mere 200 m.p.h., and shot off in a sudden burst of speed, zooming down to 1,500 feet, where it passed over a place called South Bend, and disappeared in the distance.
Then came the tragedy.
A red glow in the clouds over Godman Field, Kentucky—a disk the size of the Pentagon, lurking, silently, above a fighter base—a construction dwarfing the Queen Mary supported by dull orange flames that lit up the cloud base and caused Captain Mantell, of the U.S.A.A.F., to be dispatched in his tiny pursuit plane to investigate. When Mantell found it, his voice came over the radio, full of excitement. It was immense, he said, a colossal metallic thing, 500-1,000 feet in diameter, and cruising at 250 m.p.h. He was going to try to overtake it. As soon as it sighted (or sensed) him, the giant began climbing at 400 m.p.h. It accelerated faster than any jet, and Mantell went streaking up in pursuit. The next news of Mantell was that the wreckage of his plane had been found in tiny pieces, scored by peculiar deep lines as if he had got into a shower of some terribly powerful unexplainable something; as though he had flown into the tremendous exhaust stream—or worse—against which no terrestrial metal could survive.
Ex Cathedra spoke Authority. First, Mantell had been ‘chasing the planet Venus’. Will some kind illusionist kindly explain how the planet Venus could appear as a disk 500 feet across, going at 200 m.p.h.; afterwards climbing rapidly and emitting orange flames ? Later, we read of a new official explanation, that Mantell had hit a ‘Skyhook’ meteorological balloon and crashed.
Well, say he had ? Would it tear his plane to pieces ? I am quite willing, for anyone who will pay my expenses, to pilot a fighter plane through a Skyhook balloon any time of the day or night and observe the results, without very much fear of hurting myself. But when has a Skyhook ever cruised along at 250 m.p.h., or risen sharply at 400 m.p.h., with orange flames, etc., etc., into the bargain ?
But officially Mantell had chased the planet Venus, metamorphosed later into a Skyhook balloon, and thus, alas, met his death.
Another theory followed about a mirage or magnification caused by layers of hot air or cold air, or something no one knows anything at all about, but in that case why doesn’t this sometimes magnify the sun, distort the moon, stretch out the stars ? Why always pick on poor old Venus ? This Venus idea makes it very hard to understand a sighting at White Sands Rocket Testing Ground, New Mexico, where a flying saucer was tracked by radar, and found to be cantering along at a mere 18,000 m.p.h. We’ve had radar echoes from the moon, but not yet from Venus, so far as I am aware.
Far from solving the mystery, radar has only added to it. Sometimes, ‘invisible’ flying saucers have produced the type of radar echo that indicates a solid body moving at high speed. At other times, when the flying object itself was visible to the eye, it has produced the kind of indefinite image on the radar screen associated with ionised air or radioactive clouds. And other times, solid-looking saucers have given clear ‘solid body’ echoes and have been tracked at speeds up to 20,000 m.p.h. The American papers have contained many such reports over the last few years, and the U.S.A.A.F. has issued special equipment to various units in an attempt to solve the mystery.
In England the R.A.F. has had incidents, most of which occurred during large-scale official exercises. The two I shall now quote as examples come from officers personally known to me. Reasons oblige me to withhold their names; one is a scientist, the other the son of a famous London editor and theatre critic.
One (the editor’s son) told me that while on duty in November 1952 he tracked a vast object, flying in cloud, from the river Humber in Yorkshire to the Thames Estuary; it covered the 200 miles in a matter of two and a quarter minutes !
The other (the scientist) was in comand of an East Coast radar post during ‘Exercise Ardent’. At 3.20 a.m. his attention was drawn to a ‘blip’ on the radar screen which suggested a flight of ten closely-packed aircraft leaving the English coast and heading towards Holland. The incredible speed of these objects—or object—made direct measurement of their speed impossible, but calculations, twice checked, showed them to be shifting along at 21,000 m.p.h. !
Worse was in store. When they—or it—reached the Dutch Coast, the screen went blank. The thing had physically disappeared, which even a schoolboy knows to he impossible.
The scientist’s explanation (which is the only explanation to our limited knowledge) is that the thing ‘dematerialised’ or rather translated itself into a higher octave of matter, quite beyond our present comprehension.
Unfortunately, most scientists and other ‘experts’ are not willing to be so broadminded. Saucers offend them because they cannot be conveniently pigeon-holed into What-Is-Known-and-Accepted. From the time of Captain Mantell’s tragic death to the present-day, the ‘experts’ have told us glibly one thing after another—contradiction following contradiction until our heads, like the saucers, are spinning in the air.
They say that flying disks are:
‘Small specks of dust before the eyes which look like large objects far away,’ vouchsafes a Group Captain.
‘Mass Hysteria,’ says an American psychiatrist.
‘Not so much mass hysteria as collective illusion,’ says the Australian Institute of Applied Psychology, in a kindly attempt to soften the blow. Apparently it is less ignoble to be suffering from collective illusion than from mass hysteria.
‘Spots in front of the eyes.’
‘Red blood corpuscles inside the eyes.’
‘Cobwebs flying high.’
‘Meteors.’
‘Distant headlights.’
‘Venus.’
‘The Perseids.’
‘Balloons.’
‘Ionised air.’
‘Un-ionised air.’
‘Cold air and hot air causing refraction at certain levels.’
‘Just hot air.’
‘Nuts !’ says Dr. Menzel of Harvard University, in an exclusive interview for an American magazine; (‘nuts’ ejaculatory rather than vegetable).
‘Sex’ say some progressive psychiatrists, well up in their desire-trauma.
We thought sex would creep into it sooner or later.
And lastly from Russia where, because Stalin failed to invent them,’ they are a case of pure war-mongering psychosis,’ according to Professor Kukarkin, of Moscow.
In fact, flying saucers are everything except flying saucers.
Bewildered, befuddled, and unimpressed, we turn to Washington, D.C. There, surely, in the City of Experts, we shall find an expert who really knows what it is all about ?
Tons of paper meet our eye; a vast and costly monument known as ‘Project Saucer’ which, a few years ago, was launched to find the complete and final answer. ‘Project Saucer’ fizzled out, or was shelved, or sent in disgrace to the dungeons of the Pentagon for not giving the correct answers. ‘Project Twinkle’ followed (was some humorist responsible for this choice name ?) and vast quantities of paper were consumed; many men did many things, so that from time to time the Pentagon could issue a new Dogma to the Faithful.
Some of the Dogmas thus issued were:
30 July 1952: General Samford of the U.S.A.A.F. speaking: ‘Eighty per cent, of all objects sighted could be explained by natural causes, but twenty per cent. remain inexplicable.’
Exactly a month earlier, a Mr. Sid Eubanks had arrived in Enid, Oklahoma, white and shaking; he tells the police how an enormous flying saucer, ‘four hundred feet wide at least’, swept down and almost blew his car off the road with its colossal exhaust, blast, or back-wash.
General Samford adds comfort, for there is nothing to fear. ‘Flying saucers are definitely not a menace to America.’
Mr Eubanks is comforted.
A day before the General’s announcement, the Faithful are told that saucers are definitely not American secret weapons, but more likely ‘spots before the eyes’.
Possibly a spot 400 feet long before Mr. Eubank’s eyes caused him to drive his car into a ditch.
25 September: the Pentagon announces a ‘breath-taking report’, expressing the belief that some flying saucers are interplanetary and may originate in outer space; this report they decided not to publish, lest it cause too much public alarm.
The announcement adds that over 1,800 sightings have been examined.
Eighteen hundred sightings ! 2
2/ At the time of first publication of the cloth-bound edition this figure had risen to ‘over 3,000’.
That’s practically one for every day since Arnold first saw them.
Eighteen hundred or not, the panic and possible alarm was swiftly allayed. On 12 November came the ‘final, complete and official answer’, exquisitely phrased by an official spokesman called Colonel Watson:
‘Bunk !’
‘It’s a lot of damn nonsense... they just don’t exist,’ said the Colonel to the Faithful. He may, in keeping with the general mood of erudition and enlightenment, have added an anathema to heretics: ‘Let all who believe to the contrary be damned for un-American activities’, but I can find no trace of it. Or maybe it was forgotten when, at Christmas six weeks later, the Pentagonists found a heretic in their ranks, as General Samford hinted that landings by flying saucers ‘were possible’.
At this stage, we would like to leave the Pentagonists alone and be troubled by them no more, for it seems we shall obtain little truth, coherence or guidance from that modern Tower of Babel. But the question is ‘Will they leave us alone ?’
It is doubtful.
For a long time various world powers have, despite their contradictions and denials, been doing their utmost to build a flying saucer of their own. If my information is correct they have nearly succeeded in constructing a moderate imitation—that is to say—a near-circular aeroform such as the ‘Avro Saucer’ that will far exceed the performance of most existing aircraft.
Very well ! What of it ? Let them get on with it. Why confuse the issue ?
Only that we may be sure that if, and when, the existence of such an aircraft is announced, it will also be declared as the cause of the mystery all along. We shall be told that all the flying saucers seen to date (with the exception of illusions, balloons, etc., etc.) were experimental prototypes and nothing more.
The pity is that many people will believe it. It will sound so convincing. ‘You, the public, have been seeing flying saucers. We, the Powers, have been making flying saucers !’
What could be simpler ? The two pieces fit together with all the moronic neatness of a form and its carbon duplicate. Unfortunately, neither I nor many saucer researchers will believe it.
So to safeguard the Faithful from all duplicity we shall now, with their indulgence, start going backwards through time... back to when there was no Soviet Russia, no United States of America; back to an age when there actually was no Great Britain; then back farther to when there was no Rome, no Greece, no Ancient Egypt, back and back until we are lost in the earliest mists of time.
And what do we find there ? The hazy outline of a prehistoric flying saucer ? Alas no ! We find, instead, the solid outline of wonderful vehicles, beautifully built, packed with power sources still unknown to us. We find in fact that space vehicles are not a product of the twentieth century imagination, but have existed in human memory and records since our particular human family first began to think and to remember.
So if the flying saucers are the experimental craft of modern governments, then we can only say that they have been experimenting a very long time.
(2)
The Flying Saucer Museum
We shall not go back too far at first. A.D. 1290 is as good a place to begin as any. We have on our right, Ladies and Gentlemen, an old manuscript discovered at Ampleforth Abbey in January 1953, which gives a very clear account of a flying saucer passing over the startled community of Byland Abbey in Yorkshire.
‘oves a Wilfredo susceptos die festo sanctissimorum Simonis atque Judae assaverunt. Cum autem Henricus abbas gratias redditurus erat, frater quidam Joannes introivit, magnam portentem foris esse referebat. Turn vero omnes ecuccurrerunt, et ecce res grandis, circumcircularis argentea, disco quodam hand dissimilis, lente e super eos volans atque maximam terrorem exitans. Quo tempore Henricus abbas exclamavit Wilfredum adulteravisse (qua) de causa impius esse de .. .’
A. X. Chumley, who supplied this information, gives the following translation:
‘Took the sheep from Wilfred and roasted them on the feast of S.S. Simon and Jude. But when Henry the Abbott was about to say grace, John, one of the brethren, came in and said there was a great portent outside. Then they all ran out, and Lo ! a large round silver thing like a disk flew slowly over them and excited the greatest terror. Whereat Henry the Abbot immediately cried that Wilfred was an adulterer, wherefore it was impious to...’ 3
3/ These seven incidents are reprinted with the kind permission of the Editors of Time and Life International, published 5 May 1952, copyright Time Inc., with acknowledgments to H. B. Darrack, jnr., and Robert Ginna.
There is a remarkable similarity in this report to that sent to the Editor of the London Observer on 23 March 1953 by Bruce Angrave, m.s.i.a., who also saw a large round silver thing like a disk pass slowly over Milan Cathedral on 2 November 1952. And there are several hundred other modern reports that use exactly the same phrase for describing the appearance of a flying saucer—’ a large silver round thing.’ And in December of 1952 a photograph of one was taken in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, that certainly fills the description given by the terrified and sex-scandalised monks of Byland in 1290. It is a pity the rest of the manuscript is missing. I long to hear what Brother Wilfred had been up to, and what the Abbot thought would be impious.
What probably happened is that a flying saucer did, in fact, pass over Byland Abbey at the close of the thirteenth century and that the astute Abbot Henry seized the opportunity to admonish Wilfred for his carryings-on, and the community for their lack of piety. Whenever something inexplicable happens, the zealots of each age take it as a sign of celestial umbrage and hasten to warn their erring brethren; just as the Dutch Pastors were swift to declare the recent catastrophe a direct retribution for the sins of their sheep. Whereas, had they suggested it could have been the inevitable result of nuclear necromancy in another part of the Globe they might have come nearer to the truth.
Our next exhibit is an old print showing the startled inhabitants of Devon gazing skywards at a neat V-shaped formation of dark elliptical objects (rather like tadpoles) with fins or streaming exhausts, that passed over Devon in 1704. These things are not meteors, ‘Northern Lights’, nor comets. They are shown as dark solid objects, flying in formation, in broad daylight.
And now, please, step into the seventeenth and eighteenth century galleries of the Flying Saucer Museum where we have an assembly of space-craft of all different shapes, hues and sizes, few of which can be glibly dismissed as meteors, aurora or other natural phenomena.
SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURY GALLERY
1619 Flüelen, Switzerland. Enormous long fiery object seen flying along a lake by Prefect Christopher Schere.
1661 Huge flaming things seen over Worcester, England.
1704 January 8th. Strange lights over England.
November 4th. Switzerland. Luminous cloud, moving at high velocity, disappearing behind the horizon.
1731 December 9th. Florence, Italy. Strange globes of light in the sky.
1750 June. Edinburgh, Scotland. Vast ball of fire, moving slowly.
1752 April 15th. Stavanger, Norway. Strange, bright, octagonal object.
1752 Augermannland. Spheres of fire emanating from a long, bright tubular object.
1755 October 15th. Lisbon, Portugal. Immense bright flying globes seen many times.
1761 November 2nd. Procession of ‘immense globes’ cross Switzerland.
1762 August 9th. Basle, Switzerland. An enormous dark spindle-shaped object, surrounded by a glowing outer ring, seen slowly crossing the sun’s disk, by astronomers, de Rostan at Basle, and Croste at Sole.
1777 June 17th. The French astronomer Charles Messier observes large number of dark round disks in sky.
1779 June 7th. Boulogne, France. Flight of numerous glowing disks pass over the city.
NINETEENTH CENTURY GALLERY
This vast hall, Ladies and Gentlemen, which you now see stretching away as far as the eye can see, is the Nineteenth Century Gallery. Enter, if you will, and see saucers that came in such numbers to observe the Victorian Age and Industrial Revolution. Exhibit One is dated:
1802 February 7th. A dark disk crossing the sun, seen by the Astronomer Fritsch at Magdeburg in central Germany.
October 10th. Another dark disk seen by Herr Fritsch.
1808 October 12th. Pinerolo, Piedmont. Luminous disks pass over the town.
1813 July 31st. Tottenham, Middlesex. Flashing lights in the sky.
1816 Lisbon, Portugal. Strange objects seen in sky after an earthquake.
Autumn. Edinburgh, Scotland. Large luminous crescent-or heel-shaped aircraft crossing the horizon.
1817 Palermo, Italy. Dark flying object that howled.
1818 January 16th. Astronomer Loft of Ipswich, England, observed strange object near the sun, visible for three hours and a half.
1819 Spring. Two dark bodies cross the sun together, observes Astronomer Gruithuisen.
1820 February 12th and April 27th. Unknown bodies in the sky.
September 7th. Embrun, S.E. France. Wonderfully even formations of flying objects cross the town in straight lines, turn ninety degrees, then fly away again, keeping perfect formation.
1821 November 22nd. Luminous disk crosses the Channel.
1822 October 23rd. Astronomer Pastorff observes, two unknown objects pass across the sun’s disk.
1823 May 22nd. Astronomer Webb sees bright shining thing near Venus.
1826 April 1st. Saarbrücken, France. A grey torpedo-shaped object seen rapidly approaching the earth.
July 31st. Unknown object seen by astronomers.
1828 May 26th. Disk crossing the sun, seen through telescope.
1831 September 6th to November 1st. Geneva, Switzerland. Dr. Wartmann and his observatory staff see strange luminous body, night after night. Not seen anywhere else on Earth.
November 29th. Thuringia, Germany. Fiery disk seen ‘the apparent size of the moon’..
1833 Toland, Ohio. Very brilliant object shaped like a hook.
November’ 13th. Niagara Falls, U.S.A. A large square luminous aircraft was seen for over an hour.
November 5th. Chile. Bright disk passes near the sun.
1834 Astronomer Pastorff reports two round objects of different size. He sees them again in 1836 and 1837.
1835 May 11th. Luminous disk seen by Cociatore, a Sicilian astronomer.
1836 January 12th. Cherbourg, France. A large luminous vessel hangs over the city. It rotates on its own axis and seems to have a hole in the centre like a doughnut.
May 15th. Professor Auber sees a number of luminous objects move away from the sun in different directions.
1837 February 16th. Pastorff sees more strange things flying around.
1838 India. A flying disk with a long glowing orange appendage.
1844 October 4th. Astronomer Glaisher reports luminous disk ‘sending out quick flickering waves of light’.
1845 March 29th. London, England. Stationary orange object like a luminous mist, supported by four bright lights, like stars.
May 11th. Signor Capocci, of Capodimonte Observatory, Naples, sees number of shining disks flying west to east, some are star-shaped, others have luminous tails.
June 18th. Three luminous disks rise from the sea and remain visible ten minutes, half a mile from the ship Victoria (36° 40’ N. Latitude, 13° 44’ E. Longitude). They are described as being five times as big as the moon and appear to be connected by some kind of glowing streamers. They are seen simultaneously by many different observers as far apart as nine hundred miles.
July 25th. Florence, Italy. An enormous fiery disk riding overhead, ‘many times larger than the moon’.
December 2nd. Flaming lights seen far out to sea off Ryook Phyoo, China.
1846 October 26th. Lowell, Mass., U.S.A. A luminous flying disk from which fell a lump of most fetid-smelling jelly which was found to weigh four hundred and forty-two pounds, and was four feet in diameter.
1847 March 19th. Holloway, London, England. Blazing spherical craft rises vertically into clouds.
1848 September 19th. Inverness, Scotland. Two large objects, ‘as bright as stars’, sometimes stationary, sometimes moving at high speed.
1849 Gais, Switzerland. Thousand upon thousand of luminous objects seen by Astronomer Inglis crossing a clear sky. Some had what appeared to be wings, or a coronal glow. Autumn. Deal, England. ‘Dark bodies in the sky.’
1850 February 5th. Sandwich, Kent, England. A ‘speck of light slowly approaches on a straight course until it has become one-third the size of the moon; it then remains stationary for three minutes’.
June 6th. Côte d’Azur, France. A red globe crosses the sky, leaving a hail of sparks; it drops a dark object.
1851 September 4th. England. As if interested by the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, a vast host of luminous disks stream from the East and from the North. The procession lasts from 9.30 a.m. till 3.30 p.m., and are observed through the telescope of the Rev. W. Read.
1852 September 11th. Fair Oak, Staffs, England. Between 4.15 a.m. and 4.45 a.m. several early-morning risers see a strange luminous disk, surrounded by a haze of corona, near the planet Venus. Venus is at the point of closest approach to Earth at the time.
1853 May 22nd. Three luminous objects near Mercury. One large and round, one cigar-shaped, and one small disk; reported by a Mr. R. P. Gregg.
June 15th. A Lieutenant Gazette reports seeing a ‘flying machine’ fifty years before the Wright Brothers’ first successful flight.
July 9th. Société Météorlogique de France report ‘a great number of red points in the sky—like small suns’.
October 26th. Ragusa, Sicily. A large luminous disk seen moving from East to West at 2 a.m.; visible two minutes.
1855 June 11th. Large dark aerial body seen without telescope by Astronomers Ritter and Schmidt.
August 11th. Petworth, Sussex. A glowing red disk ‘like a red moon’ rises slowly, crosses the sky, and disappears in the distance. It has spokes like a wheel; ‘stationary rays’ projecting from it. Visible for ninety minutes. Venus again near to Earth.
1856 April 6th. Colmar, France. Dr. Dussort saw a black flying ‘torpedo’. Round one end and pointed at the other. As it passed overhead it gave off a low melodious whistling sound.
1857 October 8th. Illinois, U.S.A. Just before an earthquake a brilliant flashing light passes slowly across the sky to be followed by a loud explosion.
1859 September 1st. Astronomer Richard Carrington sees two moving luminous bodies— ’not meteors’ , he says. His observatory was at Redhill, Surrey.
1860 Spring. Large flights of small black disks seen by astronomers Herrick, Buys-Barllot and de Cuppis.
July 20th. Lights in the sky that’ appeared, then went out’, following the fall of the Dhurmsalla meteors.
1863 April 27th. Zurich Observatory. Dr. Wolf sees large number of shining disks coming from the East. Some have tails, others are star-shaped.
1864 March 20th. S. England. ‘Unknown object of vast size.’
October 10th. M. Leverrier reports witnessed flight of a long luminous cigar-shaped body, tapered at both ends.
1866 November 6th. A red glowing disk seen for three minutes before it disappeared below the skyline; seen by the British Consul at Cartagena, Colombia.
1868 A shaft of light seen to leave Venus on 15 March. Something similar seen by Webb on 6 April.
June 8th. Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford. Observers see a luminous object that moves in the sky, halts, changes course to westwards, then to south, then makes off to the north after four minutes’ observation. Venus near to Earth. Blazing red spot seen on Venus.
1870 March 22nd. Captain Banner and the crew of the Lady of the Lake at Latitude 50° 47’ N., Longitude 27° 52’ W., see an amazing object flying along under the clouds. It is circular. The rear hemisphere or trailing edge is surrounded by a fuzz or luminous band, divided into four equal sectors. From the centre extends a long curved tail. The object appeared flying against the wind, and was visible until the dusk or clouds obscured it. Captain Banner made a drawing.
1871 August 1st. A tremendous red disk hovers over Marseilles, France, at 10.43 p.m., stationary until 10.52 p.m. Then it moves North for seven minutes, halts again, then moves East, disappearing at 11.3 p.m. Venus again near inferior conjunction.
August 29th. France. Astronomer Trouvelet reports formations of highly complex objects; some triangular, some round, others many-sided. Some of them hover, then move off One appears to go wrong, to fall, to crash. As it falls it oscillates from side to side like a disk falling through water, or like a flying disc that has suddenly lost its motive power.
1873 June 17th. Fantastic glowing projectile shoots out from the planet Mars and explodes on reaching Earth. Seen in Austria, Hungary and Silesia simultaneously. Astronomer Galle, who observed it by telescope, said it was seen ‘to emerge and separate itself from the disk of the planet Mars’. Dr. Sage at Rybnik, Poland, said that an object of some kind did in fact issue from Mars and explode in our upper atmosphere. He was observing the planet ‘attentively at the time’.
August 30th. Bright, star-like vessel rises over Brussels, gains height continually for ten minutes, before disappear ing.
1874 April 24th. Professor Schafarick, of Prague, sees a dazz-lingly bright object rapidly leave the moon, and speed away into space.
We are now about midway through our Victorian Gallery. The Great Exhibition has been closed some twenty years and the Crystal Palace re-erected on Sydenham Hill. Germany has invaded France and set its clumping boot inside Paris. Steaml transport is at its zenith. Crawling railways are covering Europ like busy spiders. Speeds of eighty miles an hour have been reached on the London-Scotland run. Speeches are made against the monstrousness of this scandalous velocity; the human body is not made to withstand such speeds. Fifty years earlier it was said it would disintegrate from the pressure of air if it exceeded twenty miles an hour. Meanwhile in Heaven, a huge projectile, super-rocket, flying disk or electric thunderbolt makes the journey from Mars to Earth in a matter of seconds. A blazing thing leaves the Planet Venus at time of close conjunction, and something tremendous, white and glowing leaves the Moon and speeds off into space.
1874 April 10th. A travelling luminous object explodes over Kuttenberg, Bohemia, lighting up the sky with a glare equal to the sun.
July 6th. Oaxaca, Mexico. An immense ‘trumpet-shaped object, estimated by observers to be four hundred and twenty-five feet long, hangs in the sky for six minutes, swaying gently.
L’Annee Scientifique reports a vast number of flying bodies passing and crossing the moon. There was much ado in Heaven in 1874.
1876 April 10th. Rosenau, Hungary. Another violent explosion and glare in the sky.
1877 September 7th. Bloomington, Indiana. Flashing lights move through the sky, flashing at three- to four-second intervals.
March 23rd. Vence, France. Fiery spheres of dazzling brightness emerge from a peculiar-looking cloud and move slowly northwards for an hour. Inhabitants recall similar event ten years previously.
October 5th. Towyn, Wales. Eight peculiar luminous bodies fly around Wales in perfect formation for several nights in succession. They appear to be inspecting or charting the coastline. Inevitably they end their activities by speeding out to sea.
1878 August. Professors Swift and Watson report two luminous spheres moving between Mercury and the sun.
1879 April 13th. Astronomer Harrison and associate see large luminous body, the size of a comet, but ‘too rapid for a comet’—visible for six hours.
May 15th. Persian Gulf. Admiralty report by H.M.S. Vulture of two colossal rotating luminous wheels which sink slowly down from just above the surface till they disappear in the depths.
1880 August 20th. Brilliant white-gold cigar with pointed ends observed by M. Trecul, of the French Academy. A smaller object is later seen to leave the parent craft, creating a trail of sparks in its wake.
July 30th. St. Petersburg, Russia. Large circular luminous vessel followed by two smaller ones moving nimbly along a ravine. Visible for three minutes, disappearing silently.
1882 July 3rd. Lebanon, Connecticut. Two luminous triangles on Moon’s upper limb. Three minutes later, two dark triangles appear on lower limb; approach each other; meet; disappear.
November 11th. Greenwich Observatory, England. ‘A tremendous green disk, estimated at forty to two hundred miles height, with remarkable dark markings down the centre.’ ‘Mottled appearance’, ‘definite in form, like a torpedo’, ‘magnificent luminous mass shaped like a torpedo’, ‘dark nucleus’, ‘definite structure’, ‘appeared to be a definite body’, ‘too fast for a cloud, but nothing could be more unlike the rush of a meteor’, say various observers. Seen also in Holland and Belgium.
1883 August 12th. Observatory of Zacatecas, Mexico. Astronomer Bonilla sees 143 circular objects with projecting streamers, or rays, crossing the sun obliquely to its poles. The next day he looks again and the procession is continuing. He manages to obtain a photograph of one as it streams past.
August 29th. 10.35 p.m. Captain Noble sees a blazing object ‘like a new and glorious comet’ with a beam like a searchlight shining out from the nucleus.
August 29th. 12.40 p.m. Liverpool. It is seen again looking like a large planet with a ray of light shining from it.
September 12th and 13th. It is seen by Professor Swift at Rochester, New York, U.S.A.
September 21st. It appears over Yeovil, England.
November 2nd. Similar object over Porto Rico moving to Ohio, U.S.A.
April 15th and 25th. Formations crossing the Sun, seen at Marseilles, France.
November 5th. Chile. Glowing disk the size of a full moon passes slowly over Chile, visible half an hour.
November 12th. Reports of comet-like object with two tails or beams of light projecting forward and astern. Visible three nights running. No known comet.
1884 February 7th. Brussels Observatory. Extremely bright point of light on planet Venus. Nine days later it moves out from the planet.
July 3rd. A bright globe the size of the moon with structural features seen moving slowly over Norwood, N.Y., U.S.A. It is surrounded by a coronal ring and had two dark lines crossing the nucleus.
July 26th. The same, or a similar, vessel remains stationary over Cologne, Germany, then rises vertically till it disappears.
1885 February 24th. Latitude 37° N., Longitude 170° E. Captain of the ship Innerwich sees huge fiery mass appear immediately overhead, ‘completely blinding spectators’. It falls into the sea alongside the ship with a ‘deafening noise’, casting up huge waterspouts and practically capsizing the ship.
August 22nd. Saigon, Cochin, China. Bright red disk moving slowly at even speed for eight minutes, disappearing behind cloud.
1886 September 30th. Yloilo. A huge glowing disk the size of a full moon floats serenely northwards, closely followed by a formation of smaller ones.
November 3rd. Hamar, Norway. Bright, round, cloud-like object passes across sky emitting streaks of fire and flashes of light. It’ retained throughout its original form’.
1887 August 19th. Marseilles, France. Round vessel one-tenth sun’s diameter near sun’s limb observed independently by astronomers Codde and Payan, during solar eclipse. Observers in other places did not see it, indicating object was nearer to Earth than the sun.
March 9th. Two flying round bodies appear over the Dutch ship J.P.A. One was luminous, the other dark. One ‘fell into the sea with a roar and a tremendous splash’.
November 12th. Huge fiery sphere disk rises from the sea near Cape Race, moves against the wind, close to the British ship Siberian, then moves away again. Visible five minutes. Captain says he has seen a similar occurrence at the same spot some time before.
1888 November 3rd. Something passes over Reading and Berkshire causing sheep to panic and break loose over a 200-square mile area. Highspeed sound waves have a similar effect on animals.
1889 Twickenham, England. Cigar-shaped object descends slowly in a storm and explodes. No traces.
1890 October 27th. Grahamstown, South Africa. ‘Body of cometary brightness’ moves through a hundred degrees in forty-five minutes, observed by Astronomer Eddie.
1891 September 10th. Similar object seen by Professor Copeland, again by Dryer at Armagh Observatory, Northern Ireland.
October. China Sea. More revolving shafts of light, or wheels, seen on the sea.
1892 April 4th. Large black disk slowly crosses the moon, seen by Dutch Astronomer Muller.
1893 March 7th. Val de la Haye, France. Luminous streamlined construction, shaped like an elongated pear, seen by Astronomer Raymond Coulon.
May 25th. H.M.S. Caroline, between Shanghai and Japan, sees formation of flying disks flying slowly northwards. They pass between the ship and a mountain 6,000 feet high. Observation through telescope shows them to be reddish coloured and emitting brown smoke trails. Seen for two hours.
May 26th. Seen again by the same ship. At one time the disks pass low behind a small island. H.M.S. Leander also sees them and alters course to investigate. Visible for over seven hours.
1894 January 25th. Llanthomas, Wales. A disk passes overhead, lighting up the countryside with a glare like daylight. Loud explosion follows. Seen and heard in Hereford, Worcester and Shropshire.
August 26th. North Wales. Admiral Ommanney reports a large glowing flying disk from which projected an orange exhaust flame the shape of an ‘elongated flatfish’.
1895 May 6th. Venus again. Dazzling bright spot on planet’s disk.
August 13th. Professor Barnard sees that spot has moved out from Venus and is travelling away in space.
August 24th. Venus close to Earth. Luminous disk seen over Donegal, Ireland.
August 31st. Dr. Murray writes from Oxford of a bright disk, brighter and considerably larger than Venus, rising over some treetops and flying eastwards.
September 3rd. The same object is seen at Scarborough, Yorks. It moves evenly and leisurely.
1896 June 27th. Long black torpedo seen to cross moon’s disk in four seconds.
July 13th. Luminous body moving towards Saturn ‘at a good rate’ after passing several other stars. Reported by an amateur astronomer in England.
July 31st. Smith Observatory reports dark circular disk crosses moon in four seconds.
December 11th. Luminous disk travels over Worcester, lighting up the area so one could have ‘picked up a pin’, reports Dr. Charles Davidson.
1897 February 10th. Something explodes in the air over Madrid, Spain. Debris falls, windows smashed, walls cracked. For five hours a glowing cloud of debris hangs over the city where the thing exploded. Panic in the streets.
April. ‘Airship‘ over Kansas City. Huge searchlight shining downwards. Seen over Chicago on 11th. Seen at Benton, Texas, on 16th, with green and red tail-lights. From other Texas towns it is reported as cigar-shaped, with enormous projections, brilliantly illuminated by the beams of two powerful searchlights. Venus again near to Earth.
1897 April 20th. ‘Airship’ is over Sistersville , Virginia, flashing bright red, green and white lights. Described as a ‘huge conical ship, 180 feet long, with fins on either side’. No balloons known to be airborne at any of these times or places.
July 29th. Strange object photographed at Ohio.
September 12th. Aerial explosion over Yarnell, Arizona.
1898 June 3rd. England. Two luminous disks united or flying close together. Visible six minutes.
1899 March 2nd. Luminous disk over El Paso, Texas.
March 8th. It is seen at Prescott, Arizona, travelling with the moon all day. Seen, earlier on, very near the moon.
October 28th. Luzarches, France. Luminous disk the size of the moon rises over the horizon. Watched for fifteen minutes before it diminishes to a bright speck.
November 15th. Enormous star or disk over the Dordogne France, changing colour, red, white, red, then blue; moves majestically, and sails away.
And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, brings us to the end of the nineteenth century gallery. Before entering the ‘Edwardian Hall’ you may sit down and rest your feet while the guide says a few words. Forgive him if he points out that all these objects seen tally in every respect with the things we make so much fuss about today and call flying saucers. Which brings us to the conclusion that saucers are not a new phenomenon. All that is new is our improved method of transmitting news; we get quicker, better reports, and more of them.
EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY GALLERY
1901 April 4th. Persian Gulf. Revolving luminous wheels seen near the surface by the ship Kilwa.
1902 May 10th. South Devon. Large number of highly-coloured objects like ‘small suns’, reported by a Colonel Markwick.
1904 February 24th. The s.s Supply sighted three luminous disks four times the sun’s area. They flew in accurate formation, first below some clouds, estimated at 5,000 feet. Later they rose into the cloud-layer and disappeared.
1905 September 2nd. Llangollen, North Wales. Intensely dark object flying at an estimated height of two miles.
March 29th. Cardiff, Wales. A vertical tube of light appears in the sky ‘like an iron bar heated to an orange-coloured glow’, say witnesses.
April 1st. Cherbourg, France. Glowing disk, with corona, seen over the town several nights in succession.
February 1st. Daily Mail reports brilliant disk over Wales, which hung motionless for a time and later moved off.
1906 June 2nd. Gulf of Oman. Revolving spokes of light seen on water near a ship, reports a Mr. Carnegie, of Blackheath, Kent.
1907 March 14th. Malacca Strait. ‘Shafts which seemed to move round a centre like the spokes of a wheel—about three hundred yards long’, reports the P. & O. s.s. Orient.
July 2nd. Burlington, Vermont. A huge dark torpedo hovers over the city. From holes down its side issue tongues of fire and shooting sparks. It is first seen stationary over College and Church Streets, following a loud report. Then the flames brighten and it moves off. A small luminous disk is seen to detach itself from the parent craft and disappear.
1908 May 1st. Vittel, France. A luminous disk as large as the moon appears. It has a coronal band round it. After some time a black band appears obliquely across the disk.
1909 March 11th. Peterborough, England. Noisy object carrying lights moves over the town. Police report.
May 18th. Caerphilly, Wales. A Cardiff man named Lithbridge says he was walking through the mountains when he came across a large cylindrical construction parked beside a lonely road. Inside it he saw two peculiar looking men dressed in some kind of fur coats. On seeing him they gabbled excitedly in a foreign language. The next minute the machine rose in the air and flew away. It had no wings and made little noise. A depression was found in the grass at the place he indicated—the first report in this century of one of these things seen on the ground.
June 10th. Straits of Malacca. Another luminous revolving wheel seen on the water.
September 8th. Luminous object crosses New England with noise of machinery.
October 31st. Searchlight stabs down from the sky over Bridgewater, New England, then flashes up again.
December 20th. Luminous object seen over Boston, Mass.
December 23rd. It is seen over Worcester, Mass.; ‘sweeping the heavens with a searchlight of tremendous power’. Two hours later it returns, and is seen by thousands in the streets. It hovers, heads South, then moves off East to the sea.
December 24th. It comes back to Boston. Many reports.
December 24th. Limerick, Ireland. Luminous disk seen over north-east horizon, moving slowly southwards, turning about and moving off in the opposite direction. Visible thirty-two minutes.
December 31st. Huntingdon, W. Virginia. Three huge luminous disks of equal size appear in the early-morning sky.
1910 August 12th. South China Sea. Dutch steamer Valentijn: ‘Horizontal glowing wheel turning rapidly just above the water’.
January 13th. Chattanooga, Tennessee. ‘For the third day running a mysterious white aircraft passed over Chattanooga, about noon today. It came from the north, and was travelling south-east... on Wednesday it came south, and on Thursday it returned north’. The longest dirigible flight then recorded was from St. Cyr to the Eiffel Tower—a few miles.
1912 January 27th. A Dr. Harris observes a dark bird-shaped object, poised over the moon, estimates it to be 250 miles long, at least.
March 6th. Warmley, near Bristol, England. A ‘splendidly illuminated’ object travels towards Gloucester. ‘Tremendous !’, ‘Like a triple-headed fireball’, say breath-taken spectators.
April 8th. Tisbury, Wilts. England. Clouds moving rapidly. Two stationary dark shadows on the clouds. Clouds scamper on, but the two dark patches remain still for half an hour.
1913 January 4th. Dover, England. Unknown ‘airship’ with lights.
January 11th. Cardiff, Wales. Huge airship leaving dense smoke trail seen by Chief Constable of Glamorganshire.
January 24th. Totterdown, near Bristol. Sweeping brilliant lights pouring down from the sky, illuminating distant hills.
January 31st. Aerial tube with sweeping lights over many parts of South Wales.
January 28th. Lighted airship seen over Liverpool.
February 5th. Dowlais Valley, South Wales.
1914 August 13th, nine days after the outbreak of the Great War, horrible bunching, dumb-bell-like things seen over Elstree, Herts.
October 10th. A black torpedo crosses the sun. Reported as ‘extraordinarily clear cut’. Surrounded by corona or halo ‘like a ship throwing up white-foamed waves’.
1915 July 31st. Ballinasloe, Ireland. Large luminous body moving north-west, remaining stationary for forty-five minutes, moving off and disappearing five hours after it first appeared. Venus again near to Earth.
July 19th. Huntingdon, W. Virginia. Luminous cigar-shaped object or formation.
1917 August 20th. Luminous disk seen crossing the moon.
1923 North Carolina. Reports of brilliant spheres or disks appearing from time to time during the three years, moving in leisurely formation, or singly, in the neighbourhood of the Brown Mountains. Much talk. Official investigation draws blank.
1929 August 29th. 400 miles off Virginia Coast. Luminous body travelling at 100 miles per hour, seen by the steamship Coldwater. No Atlantic flights at that time. ‘Enough, enough !’
* * * *
‘Our feet are weary. The museum guide is hoarse. How much farther do you want us to walk ? How many more saucers are you going to give us ? Must we continue right up to the present day; till our eyes grow dim from looking at the sky ?’
To which I answer:
‘If you are by now convinced to your own satisfaction (not to mine) that flying saucers have been visiting our planet for the past three centuries and that few of them can be explained as weather balloons, secret weapons, illusions, meteors, ionised air and the rest, then by all means turn to Chapter Six and read on from there.
But if you believe, like Dr. Donald Menzel, of Harvard Observatory, that all these things can be readily explained within our own atmosphere, then I shall drive you ruthlessly on to the bitter end.
However, we shall not bother with Dr. Menzel for the moment, but shall concern ourselves with some other scientists who, unlike Menzel, have not written a book to prove that flying saucers are the result of human ignorance in misinterpreting ordinary phenomena.
‘Incident 1. At 9.10 p.m. on 25 August 1951 Dr. W. I. Robinson, Professor of Geology at the Texas Technological College, stood in the back yard of his home in Lubbock, Texas, and chatted with two colleagues. The other men were Dr. A. G. Oberg, a Professor of Chemical Engineering, and Professor W. L. Ducker, Head of the Department of Petroleum Engineering. The night was clear and dark. Suddenly all three men saw a number of lights race noiselessly across the sky, from horizon to horizon, in a few seconds. They gave the impression of about thirty luminous beads, arranged in a crescent shape. A few moments later another similar formation flashed across the night. This time the scientists were able to judge that the lights moved through thirty degrees of arc in a second. A check the next day with the Air Force showed that no planes had been over the area at the time. This was but the beginning: Professor Ducker observed twelve flights of the luminous objects between August and November of last year. Some of his colleagues observed as many as ten. Hundreds of non-scientific observers in a wide vicinity around Lubbock have seen as many as three flights of the mysterious crescents in one night. On the night of 30 August an attempt to photograph the lights was made by eighteen-year-old Carl Hart, Jr. He used a Kodak 35mm. camera, at f.3.5 1/10 of a second. Working rapidly, Hart managed to get five exposures of the flights. One of the pictures exhibited by Hart as a result of this effort shows eighteen to twenty luminous objects, more intense than the planet Venus, arranged in one or a pair of crescents. In several photographs, off to one side of the main flight, a larger luminosity is visible—like a mother craft hovering near its aerial brood.’
‘Evaluation. The observations have been too numerous and too similar to be doubted. In addition, the Air Force, after the closest examination, has found nothing fraudulent about Hart’s pictures. The lights are much too bright to be reflections, and, therefore, must be bodies containing sources of light. Since Professors Ducker, Oberg and Robinson could not measure the size and distance of the formations, they could form no precise estimate of their speed. However, they calculated that if the lights were flying at an altitude of 5,000 feet they must then have been travelling about 1,800 m.p.h. The Professors, along with other scientists, agree that in order to explain the silence of the objects it must be assumed that they were at least 50,000 feet in the air; in which case they were going not 1,800, but 18,000 m.p.h.’ Similar lines of light were seen in the skies of ancient Persia, usually before some national catastrophe, so that they became omens of disaster.
‘Incident 2. On 10 July 1947 at 4.47 p.m. one of the United States’ top astronomers was driving from Clovis to Clines Corner, New Mexico. His wife and his teen-aged daughters were also in the car. (For professional reasons he had asked Life to withhold identity). It was a bright sunny day, but the whole western half of the sky was a "confused cloud sea". All at once, as the car headed towards these clouds, "all four of us almost simultaneously became aware of a curious bright object almost motionless " among the clouds. Instantly, from long habit in dealing with celestial phenomena, he began to make calculations with what crude materials he had at hand. He held a pencil at arm’s length, measured the size of the object against the windshield of the car, measured the distance between his eyes and the windshield, etc., etc. His wife and two daughters did the same, each making independent calculations.
‘"The object", says the scientist," showed a sharp and firm regular outline, namely one of a smooth elliptical character much harder and sharper than the edges of the cloudlets…The hue of the luminous object was somewhat less white than the light of Jupiter in a dark sky, not aluminium or, silver-coloured... The object clearly exhibited a sort of wobbling motion... This wobbling motion served to set off the object as a rigid, if not solid, body." After thirty seconds in plain view, the ellipsoid moved slowly behind a cloud (273° azimuth, elevation 1°), " and we thought we had lost it." But approximately five seconds later it reappeared (275° azimuth, elevation 2°).
‘"This remarkably sudden ascent thoroughly convinced me that we were dealing with an absolutely novel airborne device." After reappearing, the object moved slowly from south to north across the clouds. "As seen projected against these dark clouds, the object gave the strongest impression of self-luminosity." About two-and-a-half minutes after it came into view, the thing disappeared finally behind a cloudbank.’
‘Evaluation. The astronomer vouches for the approximate accuracy of his observations and computations. He determined that the object was not less than twenty nor more than thirty miles from his viewing point; that it was ellipsoidal and rigid; that it was 160 feet long and sixty-five feet thick, if seen at minimum distance, or 245 feet long and 100 feet thick if at a maximum; and that its horizontal speed ranged between 120 and 180 m.p.h., and its vertical rise between 600 and 900 m.p.h. He also observed that the object moved with a wobble, no sound, and left no exhaust or vapour trail. His wife and daughters supported his observations.
The object’s appearance and behaviour answer to that of no known optical or celestial phenomenon. No known or projected aircraft, rocket or guided missile can make such a rapid vertical ascent without leaving an exhaust or vapour trail.’
‘Incident 3. On 24 April 1949 at 10.20 a.m. a group of five technicians under the general supervision of J. Gordon Vaeth, an aeronautical engineer employed by the Office of Naval Research, were preparing to launch a skyhook balloon near Arrey, New Mexico. A small balloon was sent up first to check the weather. Charles B. Moore, Jr., an aerologist of General Mills Inc. (pioneers in cosmic ray research), was tracing the weather balloon through a theodolite—a twenty-five power telescopic instrument which gives degrees of azimuth and elevation (horizontal and vertical position) for any object it is sighted on. At 10.30 a.m. Moore leaned back from the theodolite to glance at the balloon with his naked eye. Suddenly he saw a whitish elliptical object, apparently much higher than the balloon, and moving in the opposite direction. At once he picked the object up in his theodolite at 45° of elevation and 210° of azimuth, and tracked it east at the phenomenal rate of 4° of azimuth-change per second as it dropped swiftly to an elevation of 25°. The object appeared to be an ellipsoid roughly two-and-a-half times as long as it was wide. Suddenly it swung abruptly upward and rushed out of sight in a few seconds. Moore had tracked it for about sixty seconds altogether. The other members of his crew confirmed this report. No sound was heard, no vapour trail was seen. The object, according to rough estimations by Moore and his colleagues, was about fifty-six miles above the earth, 100 feet long and was travelling at seven miles per second.’
‘Evaluation. No known optical or atmospheric phenomenon fits the facts. No natural object travelling at seven miles per second has ever been seen to make a sudden upward turn. There is no known or projected source of silent, vapour-less power for such a machine. No human being could have borne the tremendous " G " load brought to bear on the craft during its abrupt vertical veer.’
‘Incident 4. On 29 May 1951 at 3.48 p.m. three technical writers for the aerophysics department of North American Aviation’s plant at Downey, outside Los Angeles, were chatting on the factory grounds. They were Victor Black, Werner Eichler and Ed. J. Sullivan. All at once they stared at the sky. Sullivan describes what they saw:
‘“Approximately thirty glowing, meteor-like objects sprayed out of the east at a point about 45° above the horizon, executed a right-angle turn and swept across the sky in an undulating vertical formation... that resembled a tuning fork on edge. It took each of them about twenty-five seconds to cross 90° of the horizon before performing another right-angle turn westward toward downtown Los Angeles.... We estimated their diameter at thirty feet and their speed to be 1,700 m.p.h. Each appeared as an intense electric blue light, round and without length. They moved with the motion of flat stones skipping across a smooth pond ".’
‘Evaluation. No known natural or optical phenomenon makes the peculiar light, in bright day, attributed to these objects by Sullivan and his colleagues; nor can any natural object, hurtling at such speed, execute a right-angle turn. As in the Moore theodolite sighting, the execution of such a turn would have crushed any human crew under the impact of "G" forces. Finally, of course, no known machine travels at 1,700 m.p.h. without making a sound or leaving an exhaust or vapour trail.’
‘Incident 5. On 20 January 1951 at 8.30 p.m. Captain Lawrence W. Vinther, of Mid-Continent Airlines, was ordered by the control tower at the Sioux City airport to investigate a " very bright light" above the field. He took off in his D.C.3 with his co-pilot, James F. Bachmeier, and followed the light. All at once the light dived at the D.C.3 almost head on; it passed silently and at great speed about 200 feet above its nose. Both pilots wrenched their heads back to see where it had gone, only to discover that the thing had somehow reversed direction in a split second, and was now flying parallel to the airliner, about 200 feet away, heading in the same direction. It was a clear moonlight night and both men got a good look at the object. It was as big as, or bigger than, a B.29, had a cigar-shaped fuselage and a glider-type wing, set well forward, without sweepback and without engine nacelles or jet pods. There was no exhaust glow. The white light appeared to be recessed in the bottom of the plane. After a few seconds the object lost altitude, passed under the D.C.3 and disappeared. A civilian employee of Air Intelligence was a passenger on the flight, saw the object and confirms the description by the pilots.’
‘Evaluation. The conditions for observation were excellent. One fact alone—the astonishing reversal of direction performed by the object—suffices to classify it as a device far beyond the known capacities of aeronautical science. Although its shape is different, the soundlessness of the object and the absence of observable means of propulsion relate it to the saucer class of phenomena.’
‘Incident No. 6. On 29 January 1952 just before midnight a B.29 was on solo mission over Wonsan, North Korea. It was flying at a speed somewhat less than 200 m.p.h., at an altitude of somewhat above 20,000 feet. Simultaneously the tail gunner and the fire-control man in the waist saw a bright round orange object in the sky near the plane. Both said it was about three feet in diameter, flew with a revolving motion on a course parallel to theirs and wore a halo of bluish flame. It also appeared to pulsate. The object followed the B.29 for about five minutes, then pulled ahead and shot away at a sharp angle. On the same night a similar globe was seen by the tail gunner and waist man of another B.29, eighty miles away over Sunchon, but flying at about the same height. The globe followed the plane for about a minute, then disappeared.’
‘Evaluation. Theoreticians in the Air Force believe the fireballs were not natural phenomena but propelled objects. They bear some similarity to the balls of so-called " fireball fighters " or " foo fighters " which flew wing on Allied aircraft over Germany and Japan during 1944-45 and which have never been satisfactorily explained. In the Korean incidents the fireballs seem—on the evidence of their sharp acceleration, their blue light and the abrupt, angular swerve—to resemble the saucers described earlier.’
‘Incident No. 7. On the night of 2 November 1951 a ball of kelly-green fire, larger than the moon and blazing several times more brightly, flashed eastward across the skies of Arizona. It raced, straight as a bullet, parallel to the ground, and then exploded in a frightful paroxysm of light—without making a sound. At least 165 people saw the incredible thing; hundreds more witnessed the similar flight of countless other fireballs that since December 1945 have bathed the hills of the southwest in their lunar glare. In the last year they have been seen as far afield as Pennsylvania, Maryland and Puerto Rico. Reports came so thick and fast during 1948 that in 1949 the Air Force established " Project Twinkle " to investigate them. " Project Twinkle" established a triple photo-theodolite post at Vaughn, North Mexico, to obtain scientific data on the fireballs. Day and night, week in, week out, for three months, a crew kept vigil. Ironically, while fireballs continued flashing everywhere else in the south-west, they saw nothing until the project was transferred to the Holloman Air Force base at Alamgordo, North Mexico. There, during another three-month siege, they saw a few but were unable to make satisfactory computations because of the fireballs’ great speed. Search parties have had no better luck. They have combed in vain the countryside beneath the point of disappearance; not a trace of tell-tale substance has been found on the ground.’
‘Evaluation. The popular south-west belief that a strange meteor shower was underway has been blasted by Dr. Lincoln La Paz, mathematician, astronomer and director of the Institute of Meteorites at the University of New Mexico. He points out that normal fireballs do not appear green; they fall in the trajectory forced on them by gravity, are generally as noisy as a freight train and leave meteorites where they hit. The green New Mexican species does none of these things. Neither do the green fireballs appear to be electrostatic phenomena—they move too regularly and too fast.
‘If the fireballs are the product of a United States weapons project, as some south-westerns believe, it is a very secret one indeed: the Atomic Energy Commission and every other government agency connected with weapons development has denied to Life any responsibility for the fireballs. Could they be self-destroying Russian reconnaissance devices ? Not likely. While the United States believes the Russians have an intercontinental guided missile, there is no intelligence that indicates they have developed silent power plants or objects capable of moving nearly as fast as meteors (twelve miles a second). Yet—for whatever it may be worth—the only reports of green fireballs prior to 1945 came from the Baltic area.
‘The extreme greenness of the fireballs has impressed most witnesses. When asked to indicate the approximate colour on a spectrum chart, most of them have touched the band at 5,200 angstroms—close to the green of burning copper. Copper is almost never found in meteorites; the friction of the air oxidises it shortly after he meteor enters the upper atmosphere. However, a curious fact has been recorded by aerologists. Concentrations of copper particles are now present in the air of Arizona and New Mexico, particularly in "fireball areas ". These were not encountered in air samples made before 1948.’ 4
4/ These seven incidents are reprinted with the kind permission of the Editors of Time and Life International, published 5 May 1952, copyright Time Inc., with acknowledgments to H. B. Darrack, jnr., and Robert Ginna.
In 1934 I was at school in the south of England and, one November evening after ‘lights out’, our dormitory was suddenly lit by a brilliant green glare. With yells of delight we rushed to the windows, in time to see an immense green fireball move slowly across the sky and disappear behind the Sussex Downs. It was so bright that all the school grounds were lit up in this unearthly green glow. The walls of a white cottage half a mile away reflected the light almost as brightly as a green neon sign. Our speculations, however, were interrupted by the appearance of an angry master, who had come to investigate the commotion.
Phenomena as reported in these recent incidents are not new. In 1619 Christopher Scherer, Prefect of a Swiss Canton, wrote to his friend, Fr. Kircher: 5
5/ De Mirville, Des Esprits, Tome II.
‘Having remained on the balcony to contemplate the perfect purity of the firmament, I saw a fiery shining dragon rise from one of the caves on Mount Pilatus and direct himself rapidly towards Flüelen to the other end of the lake. Enormous in size, his tail was longer and his neck stretched out.... In flying he emitted on his way numerous sparks.... I thought at first I was seeing a meteor, but soon, looking more attentively, I was convinced by his flight... that I saw a veritable dragon.’
Did fiery flying dragons really exist in Switzerland during the seventeenth century, or did the Prefect, while contemplating ‘the purity of the firmament’, see something similar to the objects disturbing our skies today ? What is the strange attraction of our planet ? Is it a kind of ‘cosmic beauty spot, freak or curiosity—a Solar Niagara Falls— that lures tourists and sightseers from all over the Universe, not in ones and twos but in hundreds of thousands ? Streams of mysterious objects flowed through space for six days on end. Processions clogged the highways round our globe that would make the holiday main roads seem empty by comparison. The nineteenth century was a record season for stellar tourists. Millions of extra-terrestrial beings apparently peered, probed, gaped at and recorded our planet as they cruised by on their mammoth outings.
In September 1851 a clergyman and amateur astronomer named Read reported that he saw through his telescope a host of luminous bodies passing by very high up. Some moved swiftly; others slowly. Most of them moved from east to west, while others moved off towards the south. The whole fantastic cascade went on for six hours, flight after flight, thousand upon thousand (he calculated several hundred per minute); as if the entire air fleet of another system was on manoeuvres in the stratosphere we like to think of as our own.
C. B. Chalmers, f.r.a.s., commenting, said he had seen a similar procession but that the bodies he had seen appeared to be oval in shape. This was probably due to the angle at which they had been observed. From directly below, a disk would appear circular. From an acute angle they would resemble ellipses.
On 27 April 1863 Henry Waldner saw a similar procession which he reported to Dr. Wolf, of the Zurich Observatory, who told him that a similar performance had been witnessed by Signor Capocci, of the Capodimonte Observatory, Naples, on 11 May 1845.
1849, 8 August, 3 p.m., Gais, Switzerland. A Mr. Inglis sees thousands of luminous disks stream by for twenty-five minutes continuously. His servant, who had better eyesight, said he saw a corona or luminous fuzziness around them. Then in India, 17 to 18 October, the sun was being observed by Lieutenant Herschel at Bangalore. Into his field of vision came a stream of small dark objects, silhouetted against the sun. When they had moved past the orb they appeared as luminous dots, or disks. Herschel tried different focussings with his telescope that suggested the objects to be very high up. He thought he saw a corona or fuzziness around them but he could not be sure. One paused obligingly for him to inspect it thoroughly. He noticed some kind of exhaust or wispy appendage. Then it shot off with a sudden burst of speed. There was nothing very strange about this marathon stream except that it went on and on for two whole days !
Across to Mexico—the Observatory of Zacatecas, Mexico, 12 August, 1883. M. Bonilla is taking telescopic photos of the sun when the show commences. A large stream of glowing bodies begin to cross the sun’s disk diagonally, taking between three to four seconds to complete the transit. M. Bonilla watched them for an hour before clouds hid the sun. He looked again the next day, 13 August, and to his amazement the procession was still in progress. When seen against the sun the objects appeared as small dark ovals with five ray-like projections. One paused and hovered for a few seconds, enabling Bonilla to obtain a photo which is possibly the first photo of a flying saucer ever taken.
I eventually traced a copy of this photo to an attic in Paris and made a special journey to see it. Unfortunately it was old and faded, and attempts to reproduce it were unsuccessful.
Bonilla telegraphed the Observatory in Mexico City to have a look. They replied that they could see them but that to them they appeared a little way from the sun owing to parallax. Doubtless this enabled them to calculate the height by triangulation, but Bonilla says ambiguously that they were ‘relatively near to the Earth’, which he qualifies with ‘less than the distance to the moon’. I suppose for astronomers, 240,000 odd miles is relatively near.
Signor Ricco, of Palermo Observatory, saw straight lines of similar objects slowly cross the sun on 30 November 1880 at 8.30 a.m. From the data and calculations given it is evident that these things were flying very high.
One of the best processions took place on 21 September 1910. For three hours without pause, flights of round shiny things streamed across New York City. Traffic was held up and people thronged the streets to gaze at them. Possibly about a million people saw them on that occasion.
But why, we ask, out of all that host did not one more enterprising than the rest come down and land ?
We can only conclude that our planet has a bad name in the stellar year books and travel brochures: like those signs on the roads running through jungles, which caution tourists not to tarry nor leave the safety of their cars.
‘Warning-Do not land on Earth ‘
‘The Natives are Dangerous !’
Stop Press
Since the above was written, Boris de Rachewiltz has found this ancient Egyptian saucer among the papers of the late Professor Alberto Tulli, former Director of the Egyptian section of the Vatican Museum. It is a fragment from the Royal Annals of Thuthmosis III (circa 1504-1450 B.C.) and when translated reads as follows:
‘In the year 22 third month of winter, sixth hour of the day... the scribes of the House of Life found it was a circle of fire that was coming in the sky (Though) it had no head, the breadth of its mouth (had) a foul odour. Its body one rod ,about 150 feet) long and one rod large. It had no voice.... Now, after some days had passed over these things, Lo ! they were more numerous than anything. They were shining in the sky more than the sun to the limits of... heaven... Powerful was the position of the fire circles. The army of the king looked on and His Majesty was in the midst of it. It was after supper. Thereupon, they (the fire circles) went up higher directed towards the South.’
Many cases of an unusual odour, possibly due to ionisation or to actual waste products of the saucers will be found in the later chapter, ‘Waste Products’, Chapter 15. Notice also that the circles ‘had no voice’, i.e. were silent.
Acknowledgment for the above is made to Tiffany Thayer, Editor of Doubt and to Boris Rachewiltz for his translation.
(3)
The Phenomena of Dr. Menzel
In his recent book, "Fying Saucers", Dr. Donald Menzel, of Harvard University, has tried to convince us that flying saucers are simple, everyday, natural phenomena. Among other things, he explains how car headlights reflected upwards to a layer of cold air could cause the appearance of a moving disk in the sky. Possibly they could and do.
But then what about the days when there were no headlights; when the brightest artificial illumination on earth was an oil lamp ? What about the Byland Abbey saucer, for example, that occurred in broad daylight, presumably from the reflection of the abbey candles, burning in their glory on the Feast of Saints Simon and Jude ?
Meteors, he suggests, could be another cause of saucers.
Perhaps some of the sightings were meteors. Most meteors are observable for a brief second. They travel from about seven to forty miles a second, and are usually consumed by the friction of our atmosphere before they reach the ground. Meteors do not suddenly change direction; do not hover, do not amble along at velocities between a hundred to a thousand miles per hour.
Dr. Menzel explains the ‘Lubbock Lights’ and other formations quite simply. In his laboratory before the enraptured gaze of his Harvard students he pierced a vee-shaped formation of holes in a cardboard screen. When he shone a light through this on to water, a reflection was obtained that looked like the ‘Lubbock Lights’. Does not this rather suppose that in various parts of the earth, large cardboard screens have been set up at strategic points, and that powerful lights (borrowed no doubt from a neighbourly and obliging searchlight battery) have been directed through rows of holes cut therein on to a convenient local sheet of water, and that as a result we have our formations of flying saucers ?
It is rather puzzling that no one has yet discovered the cardboard screens. To produce an effect covering the whole sky that would mystify Professors Robinson, Oberg and Ducker, the cardboard screens must have been very large and the source of light extremely powerful. Surely they would have been noticed ?
Dr. Menzel and I agree, however, that some of the saucers sighted could have been high-flying balloons; but only those that moved in accordance with the prevailing winds at those altitudes. And in the days of the flying saucer Museum there were very few balloons at large; certainly none that could reach the upper stratosphere. Those who still insist that all flying saucers are skyhook balloons, and vice-versa, simply have not bothered to study the facts. To his credit, Dr. Menzel is not numbered among them.
And now the Doctor pulls out his trump card. In a mass of astrophysical jargon that sounds so convincing to the uninitiated, merely because it happens to be ‘scientific’, a patter which appears to mean much but in reality means little, he tells us how ionised air, at certain altitudes, could cause luminous disks or spheres to appear and to move silently around. With the aid of a bell jar and a vacuum pump and other scientific odds-and-ends a nice working example was produced in the laboratory.
I will not argue with him. Neither he nor I nave ever been up there to study the matter first hand at the moment an ‘ionised saucer’ was in the process of formation. It is more than likely that a number of so-called flying saucers have been caused in this, or in a similar way. But if Dr. Menzel is going to suggest that all luminous saucers that are not the refracted lights of cars or of stars are caused by ionised air, then I can only say that he is being scientifically dishonest. How does he explain the flying saucers that have dropped solid matter ? How does he explain the objects referred to in this book that passed low enough to be heard ? Not once but on many occasions the disks were described as making a noise ‘like a huge organ’, ‘like a hive of bees’, ‘like a vacuum cleaner’. Does ionised air make a humming noise ? 7
6/ Putnams, 1953.
7/ See Note 3, page 110.
And if the ‘ionised saucer’ can only occur at considerable altitudes, how, then, could it have caused the many saucers that have been observed at tree-top height ?
But let us be generous.
Supposing, for a moment, that all the objects Menzel discusses were due to some kind of natural phenomena causing a temporary luminous object to come into being, how in the name of Harvard Sophomore Physics can he explain the dark black flying objects seen by his colleagues in astronomy since 1762, when on 9 August in that year Professor de Rostan at Basle and Professor Croste at Sole independently observed an ‘enormous dark spindle-shaped object’ slowly cross the sun’s disk ? It must have been a very solid object to have made a silhouette against the sun.
I wonder if Dr. Menzel has read of Dr. Fritsch, a Magdeburg astronomer who on 7 February 1802 saw a large dark disk cross the sun; or of the howling dark thing that flew over Palermo in 1817; or of the two dark bodies that crossed the sun in a pair in Spring of 1819 as reported by Astronomer Gruthison, or of the dark grey torpedo that swished to earth from the skies of Saarbrucken on 1 April 1826; or of the great black flying thing, seen by the naked eyes of astronomers Ritter and Schmidt on 11 June 1855; or of the black sky-torpedo ‘pointed at one end, rounded at the other’ which surprised Professor Dussort as it flew over Colmar with a low whistling sound on 6 April 1856; or of the 143 dark circular objects (one of them photographed) Bonilla saw through the telescope of Zacatecas Observatory, Mexico, on 12 August 1883; or of the slow-gliding black disk seen by a Dutch Astronomer named Muller on 4 April 1892 ?
I wonder if Dr. Menzel knows that the Smith Observatory reported that a dark circular object traversed the moon’s disk in four seconds on 1 July 1896; or that on 2 September 1905 an ‘intensely dark object’ flew over Wales at an estimated height of 10,000 feet; or of the great black torpedo that hovered over Burlington, Vermont, on 14 March 1907 with jets of orange flame issuing from holes down its side; to mention but a few; and, if so, how he can explain them ? I wonder how he can explain all those saucers that have ‘howled’, ‘hummed’, ‘buzzed’, ‘sounded like a great organ’, ‘like a bee-hive’, ‘a vacuum cleaner’, to quote from the witnessed reports; for I know of no natural phenomena that produce those sounds, or anything like them.
Menzel suggests, with the aid of a photograph, that these dark cigars are mirages. He shows a photograph in which the tops of distant mountains appear to be detached and to take the form of irregular cigar-shaped objects that look extremely like the tops of mountains ‘detached ‘by a mirage. How one of these could appear as a solid torpedo-shaped construction silhouetted against the sun, he does not explain. Even were the distorted mirage ‘solid’ enough to appear black against the sun, would not the sun be distorted, too ?
Nor does he give any convincing arguments against those experienced airline pilots who have seen saucers with glowing jets and portholes flying alongside their planes. Nor can he make us believe that lenticular clouds and the rest can satisfy those pilots and crews who have looked down upon formations of luminous flying saucers which, as soon as they rose above the pilots’ horizon, took on the appearances of dark, solid bodies, silhouetted against the sky.
No, it is all too easy to trot out a few facts wrapped up in a bit of highly scientific sounding mumbo-jumbo, to convince a great many simple, unquestioning souls to whom the very word ‘scientific’ is sufficient label to raise the whole matter to the realms of Hallowed Dogma where further dispute is out of the question.
Neither Dr. Menzel, nor the balloons, the illusions, the cobwebs, the locusts, the ionised air, the spots before the eyes, the flocks of high-flying cobwebs, high-flying geese, high-flying haystacks, practical jokers, secret weapons, refractions of the atmosphere, reflected light, cold air, warm air, and just plain simple hot air, account with any degree of satisfaction for more than a fraction of the 3,000 odd saucers seen since 1947, nor for the countless myriads seen, and barely recorded, from the time man first began to notice things and remember till the present day.
But whether one agrees with or dissents from Dr. Menzel, his book has achieved a good purpose. He has thoroughly explored the question of saucers-caused-by-natural-phenomena, and has added something to our knowledge of the blind alleys in which genuine flying saucers may not be found. He has proved that some of the sightings could have resulted from the causes he elaborates, and that these causes should always be taken into account when evaluating each new report. He has also proved, wittingly or unwittingly, that a great many flying saucers have been sighted that do not fit into any of these categories and whose origin must be sought elsewhere. It is with these that we shall now concern ourselves, for the answer to the flying saucers is not one but many. And the best that each new book on the subject can hope for is to present new probabilities, and proofs where possible, to the eye of the discerning enthusiast.
(4)
The Flying Saucer Review
I said earlier that never a day goes by without a saucer, or several saucers, being seen and reported. Let me, then, present as final testimony a typical month; in this case April 1952; and some of the flying saucers that brought interest to its thirty days.
For the compiling of this report the credit goes entirely to Mr. Elliot Rockmore, of New York, who edits The Flying Saucer Review. Instead of paying for copies, readers may contribute the saucer cuttings and information of which it is composed, thereby building up an invaluable library of reference for present and future research workers. Mr. Rockmore uses the address of P.O.B. 148, Wall Street Station, New York 3, New York, to which anyone who wishes to help may send him clippings.
Instead of beginning, as I promised, at 1 April, I shall commence at 30 March. Why ? Merely because there was a saucer of unusual interest sighted that day at:
3.0 p.m. Greenfield, Massachusetts. 42.5° Latitude, 72.5° Longitude.
A noise like a wind was heard overhead. Then a bright, silvery object, apparent size, smaller than the moon, descended at great speed, and stopped in the air at an approximate altitude of 1,500 feet. It appeared to be a large rotating ring, apparent diameter thirty feet, with the sky visible through the centre. After several seconds, it turned on edge, and appeared to be composed of two separate four-foot wide rings, five feet apart. It then raced on edge across the sky to the south-west, turned over into a flat position, moved toward a nearby mountain, while following the earth’s contours. On arrival at the mountain, it banked, hovered for a second, then rose at tremendous speed skyward and disappeared.
source:
Boston Traveller, 5 May. 8
8/ An identical object or ‘flying doughnut’ hovered over Cherbourg, rance, on 12 January 1836.
1 April. 7.30 a.m. Gulf of Mexico:
200 miles south of Lake Charles City, La. An object resembling an airplane fell into the sea; observed by ship’s look-out on the s.s.
Esso Bermuda. A search by two coastguard cutters and PBY plane for several hours found ‘no wreckage anywhere’ and a check of all military and civilian airports showed that no aircraft was missing.
source:
New
Orleans States, 1 April;
Lake Charles American, 2 April.
1 April. 1.00 to 1.45 p.m. Stocton, Kansas. 39.5° Latitude, 49.25° Longitude.
A very bright, metallic globe or disk, at very great height, which either hovered stationary, or moved very slowly in the south-west sky, as clouds occasionally obscured it. Observed by a group of persons, described as fairly reputable by the local newspaper, who believed it was not being played an April fool joke.
source:
Salinas Journal, 5 April;
Rooks County Record, 3 April.
2 April. 8.40 p.m. Austin, Texas. 30.5° Latitude, 97.75° Longitude.
One reddish, luminous, spherical object, at great height, crossed sky from south to north with a speed greater than a jet plane.
Houston, Texas. 30° Latitude, 95° Longitude.
Fiery, spherical object with a long trail, noiselessly crossed sky in a horizontal path, from south to north, within fifteen seconds.
Fort Worth, Texas. 33° Latitude, 97° Longitude.
A fiery, spherical object crossed sky in a flat path, within fifteen seconds. Observed by an amateur astronomer who said it was not a meteor, and by two Convair aviation engineers who said that it could not have been an airplane because of its silence.
Wichita Falls, Texas. 34° Latitude, 98.5° Longitude.
A fiery object, trailed by a bluish light, noiselessly crossed sky.
Dallas, Texas, 33° Latitude, 96.75° Longitude.
One fiery, yellowish-orange, spherical object crossed the sky from southwest, to directly overhead, to north-east.
Longview, Texas. 32.5° Latitude, 94.75° Longitude.
Same object observed.
Durant, Oklahoma, 34° Latitude, 96.5° Longitude.
A fiery red, spherical object trailing sparks crossed the sky.
Near Kiowa, Oklahoma. 34° Latitude, 96° Longitude.
One bright scarlet object that appeared to be two separate pieces, or spheres, close together, crossed the sky at a speed slightly faster than a kite.
source:
Macalester
News Capitol, 2, 10, 11 April;
Austin Statesman, 3 April;
Houston Post, 3 April;
Fort Worth Star Telegram, 3, 4 April;
Wichita Falls News, 3 April.
3. April. Morning. Benson, Arizona. 37° Latitude, 110° Longitude.
Very clear, cloudless blue sky. A very bright, silvery, wingless oval or egg-shaped object, apparent size five times greater than a B29 bomber, hovered motionless for an hour. Upon examination from an open cockpit of an airplane at 14,000 feet, it appeared to be 40,000 feet higher, and did not resemble a balloon, nor any aerial object in the pilot’s twenty-five years’ aviation experience.
Observed by a Marana Air Base owner, one cadet, one flight instructor, and two civilian flight commanders, three of whom were veterans of several years of overseas flying in World War II.
source:
Bisabee Daily
Review, 4 April;
Nogales Herald, 4 April;
Phoenix Gazette, 4 April;
San Diego Union, 4 April.
4 April. 10.30 p.m. Near Hammond, British Columbia. 49° Latitude, 123° Longitude.
Clear sky, excellent visibility. A shimmering, green light, resembling an airplane light, appeared in southern sky, and noiselessly headed northwards towards observer. It slowly turned orange-amber in colour and, when nearly overhead, its tail appeared to be _ sparkling. It then turned sharply west, stopped short suddenly, and went directly back along the same path, and became reddish, and oval in shape. When it reached the original area of first observation in southern sky, it headed for the horizon, turning first amber, then green, and finally a silver white.
source:
Vancouver
Sun, 1 May.
5 April. About Noontime. Dallas, Texas. 33° Latitude, 96.75° Longitude.
A fluttering object at high altitude, crossed part of sky with great speed in less than six seconds. Observed by a Navy Lieutenant Commander.
source:
Dallas
Morning News, 6, 7 April;
El Paso Times, 7 April.
7 April. 4.40 a.m. Racine, Wisconsin. 42.75° Latitude, 87.75° Longitude.
One fiery, spherical, phosphorescent green object, trailed by a short streamer of red and yellow flames, crossed the sky with great speed, and disappeared over the south-west horizon.
source:
Racine
Journal Times, 7, 8 April.
7 April. Evening. Portland, Oregon. 45.5° Latitude, 122.75° Longitude.
(a) Unknown object appeared to rise into sky. It did not resemble any type of aircraft.
(b) A bright green, meteor-like object crossed sky, and apparently exploded into white sparks, in south-western sky.
(c) Three bright lights in formation (each much brighter than a star), each carrying a green light, at approximate altitude of 10,000 feet, slowly crossed sky travelling south-west.
source:
Oregonian,
8, 9 April.
9 April. 2.35 p.m. Pensacola, Florida. 30.5° Latitude, 87.25° Longitude.
An object, resembling an airplane trailed by smoke, crossed sky, then another object appeared falling from sky. A short time later a heavy explosion was heard. A tremendous explosion in the sky shook the entire city, breaking several windows, ceiling plaster in some houses, shook store goods off shelves, and nearly knocked down some workers on the city piers. A hot seven-inch cone-shaped piece of metal was found near an oak tree by three children ten minutes afterwards, and they thought it might have fallen from the sky. However, examination of the tree and nearby area found no scorched or damaged wood or other fragments, and examination by the Navy laboratories found it was a sulphur compound to seal joints. It was theorized that it might have fallen from a truck carrying it on a nearby street. The Navy stated that no jet planes were in flight at the time, and no aircraft were known to be in danger, or missing, and that the Eglin A.F. proving grounds forty miles away were not testing explosives at the time.
source:
Pensacola News, 10, 11, 12 April;
Pensacola Journal, 11 April.
9 April. 3.5 p.m. Pintado, New Mexico. 35° Latitude, 105° Longitude.
An aluminium-coloured object resembling a bow-tie, approximate altitude 5,000 feet, appeared to somersault as it crossed the sky at a speed greater than a jet plane, travelling westward.
source:
Albuquerque Journal, 10 April;
New Mexican, 10 April.
11 April. Afternoon. Temiskaming, Ontario. 47.5° Latitude, 80° Longitude.
Six disk-like objects followed by vapour trails, noiselessly drove up and down in the sky. They did not resemble conventional airplanes.
source:
North Bay Nuggett, 19 April.
11 April. 8.3 p.m. Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 40° Latitude, 76.25° Longitude.
Saucer-like object seen in the sky.
source:
Richmond News Leader, 12 March.
11 April, 8.0 p.m. Near Hammond, British Columbia. 49° Latitude, 123° Longitude.
A bright light similar to those seen previously in this area was observed again.
source:
Vancouver Sun, 1 May.
11 April. 11.30 to 11.45 p.m. Near Ithaca, New York. 42.5° Latitude, 76.5° Longitude.
One bright, self-luminous, flickering, reddish, orange object apparent size of an eraser at armlength, slowly rose from southern horizon to the centre of the sky in fifteen seconds. It moved steadily to the south, then the southwest, becoming a deep red. Observed by a college instructor, and college students.
source:
Ithaca Journal, 12 April.
12 April. 8.30 p.m. North Bay, Ontario. 46.5° Latitude, 79.5° Longitude.
One bright amber disk-like object came from the south-west, crossed over airfield, stopped in mid-air, and then reversed direction and rose into the sky with terrific speed at a thirty degrees angle. Observed by a flight sergeant, and by an airman with thirteen years in the Air Force.
source:
Montreal Gazette, 16 April;
Ottawa Journal, 16 April.
12 April. 9.30 p.m. Winchester, Virginia. 39.25° Latitude, 79.25° Longitude.
One hazy orange, spherical object, apparent size eight inches, with sparks coming from its rough circular edge, and followed by a one-foot hazy orange trail, observed in southern sky. It appeared to revolve at great speed, as it apparently crossed the sky at tree-top level, in a horizontal path (not falling).
source:
Phoenix Republic; Winchester Evening
Star, 14 April.
13 April. Central Norway.
Disk-like object flew in the sky for thirty minutes. Observed by three persons.
source:
New York Sunday News, 8 June;
New York Journal American, 8 June.
13 April. 9.30 to 10.0 p.m. Cleveland, Ohio. 41.75° Latitude, 81.75° Longitude.
One disk-like object, brilliant on top, shaded or indefinitely shaped on the bottom, with a bluish-violet flare in the rear, seen at a 3,000-foot altitude. It faded slowly as though moving to the south-west, but did not manoeuvre, just vibrated slightly. Observed by an airline radio operator, and fellow airline workers in the operations room.
source:
Cleveland Press, 18 April
14 April. Anchorage, Alaska. 61.5° Latitude, 150° Longitude.
One huge disk-like object slowly crossed over the sky in thirty minutes. Observed by a dozen persons, including one with binoculars.
source:
Fairbanks News Miner, 17 April.
15 April. 11.40 p.m. Phoenix, Arizona. 33.5° Latitude, 112° Longitude.
A fiery green, spherical object, apparent size of sun, crossed the south-western sky.
source:
Arizona Republic, 17 April.
15 April. Detroit, Michigan. 42.5° Latitude, 83° Longitude.
Bright objects giving off a reddish glow, appeared to ‘float’ over city.
16 April. Morning. Haliburton, Ontario, Canada. 45° Latitude, 78.5° Longitude.
Clear sky. Two silvery streak-like objects, one directly behind the other, performed complex manoeuvres for five minutes. Observer was sure one was being towed by the other, or that the second one followed precisely behind the first one.
source:
Toronto Daily Star, 17 April.
16 April. 3.30 p.m. North Bay, Ontario, Canada. 46.25° Latitude, 79.25° Longitude.
A light flashed in the sky, and an object left a thin, white vapour trail. Observer said there was a jet plane in the sky, but that this object was definitely not a jet.
source:
North Bay Nugget, 18 April.
16 April. 7.0 p.m. Nome, Alaska. 64.5° Latitude, 166° Longitude.
Three vapour trails crossed the sky, and were or were not seen on radar, according to different newspaper versions.
No identification was made in April, but in a 14 July news-’ paper release they were described as Russian aircraft.
source:
Life
Magazine, 28 April;
New York Times, 18 April;
Nome Nuggett, 21 April.
16 April. 7.14 to 7.30 p.m. Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. 43.25° Latitude, 80° Longitude.
One huge, revolving, brownish ringlike object with a clear or dark centre (resembling a bicycle tyre on its side) stayed in the sky for four minutes. It changed colour to a bright, bluish-white ring, and moved toward Niagara Falls. Another report stated that it was a cigar-shaped object of the same colour as the sky, with brownish edges, making it appear to be without a centre.
source:
Hamilton Spectator, 17 April;
Toronto Star, 16 April.
16 April. 7.48 to 7.50 p.m. Baldwin, Long Island, New York. 43.75° Latitude, 73.5° Longitude.
One small, bright white light, followed by a larger reddish light at lower altitude, noiselessly crossed the sky horizontally from north to south in two minutes. Observed and timed by four children.
source:
Newsday, 17
April.
16 April. 10.0 p.m. San Jose, California. 37.25° Latitude, 122° Longitude.
Two glowing globular objects appeared hovering together in the sky. Under examination by a 45-power telescope, they were two reddish glowing globes with a dark belt around each, moving up and down in the sky without horizontal movement. They appeared between Mars and Polaris, but were not stars, since they covered the stars when they moved near them. Two photographs were taken, and one showed an irregular twin track in the sky, that might have been caused by two luminous objects moving close together. Observed by five people, including an amateur astronomer.
source:
San Jose Mercury News, 24 April.
17 April. Morning. Williamsport, Pennsylvania. 41.25° Latitude, 11° Longitude.
An object resembling a ‘big block of silver’ crossed through the sky, followed reports of vapour trails on the previous day.
source:
Williamsport Sun, 17 April.
17 April. Morning, Scarboro, Ontario, Canada. 43.75° Latitude, 79.25° Longitude.
A fiery spherical object, trailing black smoke, raced down from the sky over a lake. A short time later a puff of smoke drifted over the lake. A one-and-a-half hour search by two Toronto lifesaver boats found no debris, and no aircraft were known missing. Observed by several local residents, including one former was veteran who ‘recognised’ it as resembling a burning airplane. It was later theorised to have been a jet plane trail of one that had taken off before it was seen.
source:
Toronto Daily Star, 18 April;
Toronto Telegram, 17 April.
17 April. Morning. Coban, Guatemala. 50.5° Latitude, 90.5° Longitude.
One small, luminous object leaving a vapour trail, crossed the sky.
source:
New York Journal American, 17
April.
17 April. 11.0 a.m. North Bay, Ontario, Canada. 46.25° Latitude, 79.25° Longitude.
One white circular object at great height, left a vapour trail as it noiselessly crossed the sky from west to east with great speed.
source:
North Bay Nuggett, 17 April.
17 April. Noontime. Nellis Air Base, Near Las Vegas, Nev. 36.25° Latitude, 115° Longitude.
Eighteen circular, dull-white objects in irregular formation, approximate altitude 40,000 feet, apparent speed 1,200 miles per hour, crossed northern sky in thirty seconds, headed eastward. One object on the right of the formation appeared to zig-zag as it flew with them. Air base officials stated no balloons had been released that day, and no planes were known to be in flight. Observed by an Air Force T/Sgt.
source:
Muncie Evening Press, 18 April;
Philadelphia Bulletin.
17 April. 2.30 p.m. Muncie, Indiana. 40.5° Latitude, 85.25° Longitude.
Cloudless sky. A small cloud was mushrooming upward in eastern sky. A short time later, a large silvery cylinder (resembling a guided missile) suddenly shot skyward, and was followed by an explosion. Since the explosion appeared to be in the vicinity of the nearby Dayton Air Force base, the observer thought it might be a jet plane explosion, but no aircraft were missing or damaged.
source:
Muncie Star, 18, 19, 21, 24
April.
17 April. 10.0 p.m. North Bay, Ontario, 46.25° Latitude, 79.25° Longitude.
A glowing multi-coloured spherical object swooped and climbed at high speed for some time. Observed by two groups of persons in two different areas, who gave the report with some details.
source:
North Bay Nuggett, 18 April.
18 April. 4.0 a.m. Corner Brook , Newfoundland.
One yellowish, spherical object circled town twice, and then sped off towards the north-west.
source:
Quebec Chronicle Telegraph, 19
April.
18 April. 7.0 a.m. Montreal, Quebec. 46.75° Latitude, 71.25° Longitude.
A very shiny, mirror-like object crossed the sky in a straight line, becoming smaller and smaller until disappearing after twenty seconds.
source:
Montreal Gazette, 19 April.
18 April. Daytime. Near Hawkesbury, Ontario, Canada. 45.5° Latitude, 74.5° Longitude.
Two objects resembling jet planes barely visible at great height, left vapour trails as they crossed the sky. A loud explosion was heard, and after this only a vapour trail was visible. R.C.A.F. officials in nearby airports stated no airplanes were known to be missing.
source:
Toronto
Daily Star, 18 April.
18 April. Afternoon. Brooks Range (Mountains), Alaska. 67° Latitude.
Several vapour trails sighted in the sky. Air Force called them unexplained and gave no further information.
source:
Fairbanks
News Miner, 19 April.
18 April. Southern Jutland, Denmark. 55° Latitude.
Several saucer-like objects seen.
source:
New York
News from Copenhagen. Aftenbladet.
19 April. 11.30 a.m. Near Hammond, British Columbia. 49° Latitude, 123° Longitude.
Clear, cloudless sky. One bluish, spherical object appeared to shimmer as it hovered in the sky.
source:
Vancouver
Sun, 1 May.
19 April. Night. San Diego, California. 37.25° Latitude, 122° Longitude.
A series of heavy explosions were heard and felt throughout city. Search by police found neither wreckage or damage, and they theorized it was caused by supersonic shock of jet planes passing through the sound barrier.
source:
San Diego
Union, 20 April.
19 April. 10.30 p.m. Toronto, Ontario. 43.5° Latitude. 79.5° Longitude.
Fifty to sixty self-luminous, pale orange objects in V formation, at great height, noiselessly crossed thirty degrees of the sky (1/6) at great speed, within six seconds.
source:
Toronto
Globe and Mail, 20 April.
20 April. 10.0 a.m. London, Ontario, Canada. 43° Latitude, 81.25° Longitude.
A dark cylindrical object leaving a vapour trail, approximate altitude 40,000 feet, crossed the sky with tremendous speed, from north to south. Two P51 Mustang fighters attempted to intercept it, but were unable to reach its height or catch up with it. The squadron leader stated it could not have been an airplane, and estimated its speed between 1,000 and 2,000 m.p.h. It was later theorised to have been a Canberra jet bomber carrying officials to Omaha, Nebraska, although the maximum speed of a Canberra is 600-650 m.p.h. under the best conditions. Observed by thousands of persons.
10.12 a.m. Detroit, Michigan. 42.5° Latitude, 83° Longitude.
Some vapour trail observed in the sky twelve minutes later.
source:
Toronto
Globe and Mail, 21 April;
Toronto Daily Star, 21 April.
20 April. Wingham, Ontario, Canada. 44° Latitude, 81.25° Longitude.
Object with a ball of fire in its tail observed in the sky.
source:
Toronto Star, 21 April.
20 April. 6.40 to 7.0 p.m. Los Angeles, California. 34° Latitude. 118.25° Longitude.
Strange object seen in northwestern sky. Under examination through binoculars, it was a glowing wing-like object resembling a sharply-pointed star, and when seen sideways, had a sharply-pointed rudder. It dived, climbed, hovered, and manoeuvred noiselessly for twenty minutes before disappearing over the horizon. Observed by an aviation tool designer and Air Force veteran, and two others.
21 April. 10.0 a.m. Hammond, British Columbia. 49° Latitude, 123° Longitude.
Fiery, spherical object crossed the sky from south to north.
source:
Vancouver Sun, I May.
21 April. Night. Molson, Manitoba. 50° Latitude, 96.25° Longitude.
A bright, sparkling, disk-like object, changed colour rapidly in the sky.
source:
Toronto
Daily Star,
23 April. 8.26 p.m. Tuxedo, Manitoba, Canada.
One small, self-luminous, circular object changed colour from yellow to orange as it crossed the sky at great speed.
10.5 p.m. Winnipeg, Manitoba, Ontario. 50° Latitude, 97.25° Longitude.
One self-luminous, green light, at low altitude, slowly became red, then yellow, at it crossed the sky.
10.15 p.m. Winnipeg.
One bright, star-like object, apparently at great height, slowly crossed the sky headed northward, then suddenly stopped, and reversed its movement almost exactly along its former path.
source:
Winnipeg
Free Press, 23 April;
Toronto Daily Star, 23 April.
23 April. 5.0 p.m. Forth Worth, Texas, 32.75° Latitude, 91.5° Longitude.
Approximately fifty pinkish or brownish glowing objects with wings crossed the sky in formation. Observed by a newspaper reporter.
source:
Son
Antonio Evening News, 24 April.
23 April. 10.10 p.m. Bradford, Pennsylvania. 42.5° Latitude, 79.75° Longitude.
A bright red object or flash of light with a trail of flame crossed the sky.
source:
Bradford
Era, 25 April.
23 April. 8.2 p.m. Austin, Texas. 30.5° Latitude, 97.75° Longitude.
Three formations of about fifty pinkish objects, with a bright spot on front, and a sparkling effect at the back, crossed the sky at a speed apparently greater than a flight of birds. Observed by a college student and ten others, including a communications engineer who stated that the sun was about a thousand miles below the horizon at the time of observation; so, if objects were reflecting the sunlight, they must have been 40,000 feet high and travelling 5,000 m.p.h. A sergeant stated that they appeared to be seagulls at 100-foot altitude, that reflected the city’s neon lights.
source:
Oklahoma
City
Times, 25 April.
23 April. 10.0 p.m. Reno, Nevada, 39.5° Latitude, 119.75° Longitude.
One fiery green, spherical object followed by a les brilliant small green tail, appeared to be headed directly for earth in the south.
source:
Reno Evening Gazette, 24 April.
24 April. 8.20 p.m. Austin, Texas. 30.5° Latitude, 91.75° Longitude.
One orange, glowing, circular object sped across the sky travelling due west.
source:
Austin
American, 25 April.
24 April. 9.0 p.m. Austin, Texas. 30.5° Latitude, 97.75° Longitude.
One silvery object crossed the sky with great speed, headed south-westward.
source:
Austin
American, 25 April.
24 April Night. Austin. 30.5° Latitude, 97.75° Longitude.
One reddish object at great height crossed the sky at a speed greater than an airplane, from south to north. Observed by a former submarine look-out, and an aircraft spotter.
source:
Austin
American, 25 April.
24 April. Night. Austin. 30.5° Latitude, 97.75° Longitude.
Several reddish, glowing objects in formation, travelling at great speed, crossed the sky from south to north. A second group of bluish objects, also in formation, travelling at great speed, also crossed the sky from south to north. Observed by six persons.
source:
Austin
American, 25 April;
Austin Statesman, 25 April.
24 April. 7.30 p.m. Near Vancouver, British Columbia. 49° Latitude, 123° Longitude.
A V formation of orange objects with a bluish glow at the rear, and with a second V formation behind and inside the first one, came from the south at a ‘terrific’ speed, then shot upward, and disappeared.
source:
Vancouver Sun, 1 May;
Toronto Daily Star, 1 May.
24 April. 9.30 p.m. Near Spokane, Washington. 47.5° Latitude, 117.5° Longitude.
A bright, rocket-like object, emitting or followed by brilliant red, green and yellow flames, lit up the sky as it raced towards Spokane, and disappeared. Observed by an air policeman and three other airmen.
source:
Spokane
Chronicle, 25 April.
24 April. Night. Regina, Saskatchewan. 50.5° Latitude, 104.5° Longitude.
One disk-like object, with a tail like a kite, observed in the sky. It hovered for a few seconds, then shot out spurts of fire, and moved across the sky, headed southwesterly.
source:
Toronto
Daily Star, 26 April.
24 April. Ottawa, Ontario. 45.5° Latitude, 75.75° Longitude.
One trowel-shaped object with a dark tail travelling at great speed, crossed the north-eastern sky.
source:
Toronto
Daily Star, 25 April.
25 April. Moorhead, Minnesota. 47° Latitude, 96.75° Longitude.
Five orange and red disk-like objects in a V formation crossed the sky, moving north-westward. Observed by nine children.
source:
New York
World Telegram and Sun, 25 April.
26 April. Daytime. Near Lake Wilcox, Ontario.
One bright, hazy circular object hovered in the sky, then suddenly raced across the sky from south to north at great speed within six seconds. It turned on its side while in flight, and appeared flat.
source:
Toronto
Daily Star, 26 April.
26 April. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 43° Latitude, 88° Longitude.
Five disk-like objects seen.
source:
Frank
Edwards Radio Programme at 10.0 p.m. W.O.R., 29 April.
26 April. Night. Moorhead, Minnesota. 47° Latitude, 96.75° Longitude.
Five glowing, circular objects in V formation crossed the sky, moving north-westerly. Observed by a policeman and five other adults.
source:
Minneapolis Tribune, 29 April.
26 April. 11.30 p.m. Brockton, Massachusetts. 42° Latitude, 71° Longitude.
An explosion was heard, then a bright light resembling a flare fell toward the earth in the south. Observed by seven persons.
source:
Massachusetts Newspaper.
27 April. 9.30 p.m. Near Manchester, Michigan. 42.25° Latitude, 84° Longitude.
One bright, phosphorescent green disklike object with a tail, at very great altitude, apparent speed twice a jet plane, crossed the sky in level flight, then dived over the horizon. Observed by a business agent, with engineer training, and his wife.
source:
Ann Arbor News, 28 April.
27 April. 10.0 p.m. Ann Arbor, Michigan. 42.25° Latitude, 83.75° Longitude.
One brilliant blue-green object trailed by greenish sparks falling from it, crossed the sky with great speed, from north to south.
source:
Ann Arbor News, 29 April.
27 April. Night. North Auckland, New Zealand. 38° Latitude, 177° Longitude.
Saucer-like object observed.
source:
Sydney Sun
and Guardian (Australia), 4 May.
28 April. 4.20 a.m. Vancouver, British Columbia. 49° Latitude, 123° Longitude.
One amber-coloured sphere appeared to bounce or rise and fall in the sky, then moved toward the east. It came back over the same course, and disappeared. It returned a third time, appearing slightly lighter, and moved away toward the south-west.
source:
Vancouver Sun, 2 May.
28 April. 6.5 p.m. Over Lake Tanwax, Pierce County, Wash. 47° Latitude, 122° Longitude.
A loud humming noise was heard
in the sky. Then about ten dark, disk-like objects crossed part of the sky from
west to east, then suddenly turned and headed northwards, disappearing within
three seconds. source:
Seattle Port Intelligence, 30 April.
28 April. 11.0 to 11.5 p.m. San Jose, California. 37.25° Latitude, 122° Longitude.
One luminous object hovered in the sky for five minutes.
source:
San Jose
Mercury News, 30 April.
29 April. Morning. Vancouver, British Columbia. 49° Latitude, 123° Longitude.
Same amber-coloured sphere seen.
source:
Vancouver
Sun, 1 May.
29 April. Morning. Singapore, Malay States. 2° Latitude, 104° Longitude.
A silver, cigar-shaped object resembling a rocket, and spouting white smoke at intervals, crossed the sky and disappeared after its largest puff of smoke. No jet aircraft in flight at the time, and no weather balloons were in flight. Morning. Johore Bohore Bahru, Malay States (20 miles north). Some cigar-shaped object seen.
source:
Toronto
Daily Star, 30 April;
Oklahoman, 30 April.
29 April. 8.0 p.m. Ann Arbor, Michigan. 42.25° Latitude, 88.75° Longitude.
Two reddish-silver trails were observed in the sky. Theorised to be vapour trails left by P84 jet planes on a routine flight, that had been coloured red by the setting sun.
8.0 p.m. Ypsilanti, Michigan. 42.25° Latitude, 83.5° Longitude.
Same reddish trails observed
8.0 p.m. Toledo, Ohio. 42.25° Latitude, 83.5° Longitude.
Same reddish trails observed.
source:
Ann Arbor
News, 30 April;
Ypsilanti Daily Press, 30 April.
29 April. 9.55 p.m. Near Albuquerque. 35° Latitude, 106.5° Longitude.
One bright green, spherical object turned a bright orange as it crossed the northern sky in several seconds, heading north-westerly.
source:
Albuquerque Journal, 30 April.
30 April. 2.0 a.m. Rouyn, Quebec. 46° Latitude, 79° Longitude.
A reddish object, crescent-shaped on one side, pear-shaped on the other, observed in the sky. Disappeared in two minutes.
source:
Rouyn
Norand Press, 1 May.
30 April. Morning. Hudson River, Near North Bergen, New Jersey. 45° Latitude, 74° Longitude.
Object resembling an airplane appeared to fall into the river. Search by police helicopter could not find any wreckage, and search was abandoned in the afternoon.
source:
New York
Times, 1 May.
30 April. 8.32 a.m. Tijeras Canyon, near Albuquerque, N.M. 35° Latitude, 106.5° Longitude.
One small, silvery, disk-like object hovered two minutes in the sky, in a horizontal position underneath a cloud. It slowly tilted up in a vertical direction, and then slowly moved northward, and apparently disappeared into a cloud. It was not luminous, but reflected sunlight when it tilted. It was observed by the associate professor of journalism of New Mexico University, who stated it appeared to be in the same area at approximately the same time as a similar object he had seen in the summer of 1948.
source:
Albuquerque Tribune, 30 April.
30 April. 10.20 p.m. Vancouver, British Columbia. 49° Latitude, 123° Longitude.
One bluish, circular object, apparently twice the size of a bright star, changed to a cone-like object, as it disappeared in the south-west.
source:
Vancouver Sun, 2 May, 1952.
1 May. 9.15 p.m. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 43.5° Latitude, 79.5° Longitude.
Three bluish-green objects observed in the sky.
source:
Canadian
Radio Station CKRN, not printed in papers.
1 May. 9.22 p.m. Ottawa, Canada. 45.5° Latitude, 75.75° Longitude.
One huge, disk-like object, surrounded with a silvery-blue or pale green halo, and followed by a silvery or white light, noiselessly curved across the sky at a tremendous speed, from south-east to north-west in less than sixty seconds. Observed by two persons in two different areas in the city, who called a newspaper and gave separate but very similar accounts.
9.22 p.m. Near Alfred, Ontario, Canada. 45.5° Latitude, 75° Longitude.
Some brilliant, pale green, nearly square-shaped object fell toward earth for twenty seconds, then very sharply curved upwards as it crossed the sky from south-east to northwest, at approximately 1,000 m.p.h. Observed by a graduate psychologist of Ottawa University, who stated that he observed it from a side view, and that (a) its turning circle was too small for a jet plane, (b) that it could not have been a car searchlight, since the entire countryside was dark, and (c) it was definitely not a hallucination, but an actual happening.
source:
Ottawa
Journal, 2, 10 May 1952.
1 May. 9.40 p.m. Portland, Maine. 43.75° Latitude, 70.25° Longitude.
An object resembling an extremely bright star, revolved in the south-east sky, as it showed a white light, then a green light, and then a red light at intervals. Under examination through binoculars, it was also moving horizontally, and finally disappeared behind a house. Examination of the sky located five more similar revolving ‘pinwheel’ objects that also appeared to revolve, but these did not move horizontally. Observed by a family of three. Head of family was a retired weather forecaster.
source:
Portland
Evening Express, 2 May.
So now perhaps the reader will understand why we cannot ive every case of flying saucers on the books since June 1947. ‘here simply is not room.
(5)
Flying Saucers and Politics
I would have dispensed with the statistic almost entirely had not the Pentagonists shown how, by taking a handful of facts and figures, and by distorting them ad lib., you may make them prove spots, balloons, meteors, cobwebs, hallucinations, or anything you like.
That is my only excuse and my only reason for loading Part One with so many sightings of flying saucers. For in order to dispel the official smoke-screen (so easily produced with the aid of a swollen bureaucracy) there was no course open to me other than to marshal as many of the facts as possible; tabulate them; put them in some kind of chronological order, and present them for a discerning and open-minded public to judge for themselves.
I hope by now that it will be no longer necessary to drag out further long lists of sightings (both ancient and modern), for it must surely be obvious to anyone except to the Harvard Observatory that flying saucers are real, and that not very many of them can be explained away by that useful little phrase ‘natural phenomena’.
But, again, a certain doubt lingers in the mind.
Suppose for a moment that you were elected head of a Western state, holding office by a not-too-large majority, you would think twice before making a proclamation of such startling nature. You might have been present when a space ship landed, conversed and consulted with men from other worlds, but you would hold your peace. Imagine if the English Prime Minister or the American President were to tell us of his government’s encounter with space-men. Even if it were true and supported by many witnesses, his party would not remain in office a week. The voters would be thrilled; fascinated; some might even be delighted; but they would be shocked. They want to be governed by trustworthy, unsensational rulers. They expect their governments to be fundamentally respectable, like a bank.
So if you were head of the state and you knew all about flying saucers, why should you risk your seat to make such a statement, until you were absolutely forced to do so ?
There is plenty the government does not tell the people— sometimes they tell less than is strictly ethical.
And if you were head of a slave state, and you learned one terrible day that there were greater gods in heaven than the ugly faces on your party posters, you would do anything to prevent the people finding out. For a big fish in a little pond can remain a big fish only as long as the little fishes know nothing of giant porpoise and ocean whale. The inopportune arrival of a mighty fish from the great waters beyond would reduce you to your proper size. No longer frightened by your correct proportions, the slaves would laugh—at first. Later they might do something rather more unpleasant. So by all means stick to the story that saucers are ‘a product of western war-psychosis’.
And what of the scientists ?
They are many, and I have spoken to some of them, who believe we have slender grounds for supposing that human life on the little planet called Earth is the highest form of life in the Universe. A true scientist is also a philosopher, and a philosopher believes that life is no unique and isolated freak, but that it pervades the entire Cosmos.
It is not the philosopher-scientist but the technician-scientist, the little man who cannot believe in God because he cannot take His temperature nor peruse His spectroscopic analysis, to whom the idea of any being greater than himself is repugnant. For if a man from another world knows enough to be able to travel through space, then he must know more science than us. He might even know a different type of science. He might even disprove our accepted theories, overturn our pet conceptions, dethrone our personal idols. He would be as welcome to the little technician-scientist, as Einstein would have been to the pre-Copernicans in the Middle Ages. Therefore, he must not exist. It would be insufferable if a space-man kindly pointed out to the students of astro-physics that they’d got their light years all wrong, their measurements confused, and that the conditions on other planets were quite different from what they had so proudly proclaimed, owing to the fallibility and inaccuracy of their instruments. So, for heaven’s sake, there must be no space-men except in comic strips; and flying saucers must be brushed off as any old thing you choose.
Politicians have a valid excuse. It is their duty as guardians of the people to make no disturbing statements until forced to do so.
But the little technician-scientist, half educated in a smattering of chemistry and physics, has no such excuses to redeem him. He should drop all pretensions to the title of ‘scientist’ which implies ‘one who knows’ and ‘one who thinks’. For he does neither.
(6)
Flying Saucers and Sound
Perhaps the most puzzling feature of the flying saucers is that most of them (with some noisy exceptions, to be discussed later) streak through our skies in complete and utter silence.
A good example of how this strikes people was given by Mr. Saul Pett, a newspaper man with twelve years’ reporting experience, who on 18 July 1952 saw a lovely luminous orb, the apparent size of a penny, glide through the night sky some miles to the south-east of his River Edge, New Jersey, home. He said: ‘Planes make a noise. This object was silent as death. It was moving too fast and too evenly to be a balloon. But I wasn’t frightened at all, because the thing looked so peaceful and so serene. There wasn’t any appearance of menace. 9
9/ Evening Star, Washington, B.C., 22 July 1952.
That is just how many other witnesses have described their feelings. They have been overwhelmed by the beauty, the serenity and the silence.
But how—pray how—can these objects move through the air at speeds varying from a gentle amble up to twenty-three times that of sound without causing some kind of commotion—a commotion which, by all the rules, should discomfort every eardrum within miles ? That is the distressing, perplexing thing about these saucers. They potter along from the speed of an old car, to rates many times greater than that of the Earth’s rotation without a murmur.
Everyone who has heard jet aircraft in flight will know from painful experience that they shatter the placid air into a thousand screaming knife-edged fragments. The jet is a noisy thing; a crude, a boisterous thing; a thing of sheer brute force; nothing more; brute force concentrated to the limit of physical endurance. And brute force, by its very brutality, is limited to the speed at which it can push things through the physical atmosphere.
But saucers have been seen to travel silently beyond this limit —with what conclusion ? That the forces involved are not brutal; are not material in the physical sense; that they know no barriers, just as the radio wave knows no barriers but can penetrate air and solid wall with little loss of power.
To suggest that matter exists in higher states than the gaseous was high heresy until radio waves were discovered. And, today, to suggest that matter exists in states even less tangible than the known radiations, is to risk a round drubbing from the Pulpit of Physics which, like its medieval counterpart, knows best what is good for men to believe, and is swift on the scene with a bell, book and candle against any threat to What’s What.
‘There are no unknown powers," the kind technician-physicist assures us from behind his stockade of test-tubes and instruments. To which one asks, humbly, how then did the Egyptians, the Persians, the Chaldeans, the Aryans and other ancient races attain to such high knowledge, and sustain their great civilisations, not for centuries, but for thousands of years, if the whole premise on which they built was ignorant superstition ? How did they achieve such feats of building and science—some of which cannot be duplicated today—if the subtle forces they knew and controlled and described in their copious records never existed ?
‘There are no subtle forces,’ says the well-educated expert.
Then, please tell us by what magic art works your radio set, your television receiver; what solid, tangible, obvious known material force makes it possible for a comedian entertaining the studio staff in one place to bore simultaneously a family watching in another ? By what magic does this marvel come about ?
‘By electricity—radio waves,’ comes the reply, not quite in such simple words—but in phrases resounding in high technical vocabulary, backed up with elaborate diagrams said to show why it all works. Far from showing the cause, these merely demonstrate a few incidental effects. But— ‘It works by electricity.’
In the name of All Hallowed Humbug, will someone tell us just what is electricity ? Is it something you can go into a shop and order by the half pound; or is it just one of the demonstrable effects of a further force behind what we call electricity ? The ancient scientists (so scorned by the moderns who never troubled to study them) found it to be the latter; and this power behind electricity they named fohat, which they represented by the Fiery Serpent, the Eternal Dragon; and its sub-divisions, by the Serpent of Seven Heads.
Which conveys (with meditation) more to the intuitive than talk about vibrating atoms, quivers in the ether, tiny particles of something intangible bouncing about like billiard balls. ‘What ?’ —’ What is electricity ?’
Let he who says he knows be dubbed ‘liar’ and stood in the pillory as a lesson to all spreaders of fantasy.
Is electricity anything of itself, or merely one of the effects, like magnetism, of causes still beyond our ken ? The builders of the first ‘luminous bodies’ to fly through space claimed they knew and could control the Fiery Dragon, and the ‘savages’ who built the great serpent mounds of Ohio were wiser in their generation than the white-coated mass of modern research workers, who think they will ultimately pierce the veil with their physical senses. For let us face the sober truth—with all our remarkable progress, we are no nearer to answering what it is than we were when we first discovered that certain metals and chemicals in a jar induced a weak electric current. We have performed many wonders; we have measured and catalogued countless variations and improvements on the original electric jar; we have found a thousand ways by which this force can be utilised and controlled, but we came no nearer to the answer till Madame Curie discovered radium and opened the gate to a second aspect of the Seven Headed Serpent, the Mystic Fire of the Alchemist, of which the current that lights our homes, and the force of the atom bomb, are two of the manifest results.
Physical Science is a science of ‘hows’ and ‘whats’ — how this makes that happen; what does what to which. Arcane science is little interested in detail and incidental trivia, but seeks ever to penetrate upwards towards the ultimate, absolute why. When this is grasped—however imperfectly—the details will take care of themselves. Find the outline before filling in the frills. The secrets of the Cosmos can be gained only by reaching for its heart, not by examining small fragments of its outermost skin under powerful microscopes which, allegorically speaking, is all that happens in our laboratories.
Physicists think (those who really think) that ultimately a time must come when they shall have measured in all fullness the depths and the heights and the breadth of the observable worlds. 10 A library the size of the world they may need to contain it, but slowly and inevitably they will come up against the remorseless solid of a wall; a ring called ‘Pass-not’ beyond which thought, if confined to its present limitations, cannot continue. In vain will they search the wall’s unyielding surface for signs of the answer, but they shall not find it written there.
10/ The attitude of thinking that we know everything is not quite so prevalent today as it was at the beginning of this century, when even people like Rutherford calmly remarked that ‘nearly all the major discoveries of Science have now been made’. Many an idol has, fallen since then.
Suicide in the laboratories ? Falls from high places ? Professional chairs standing empty ? 1 think not. Nothing has ever toppled the ‘Expert’ from his throne, nor shaken orthodoxy in its pulpit. They can prove successively that black is white, and white is green, but their flocks shall never desert them. Successive towers of Babel arise, each pointing to heaven in totally opposite directions, until the joke has gone far enough. Then comes a Divine Chortle—Olympian laughter rolls down from above, toppling the structures back to dust. How long shall it go on, how often must it be repeated, till God makes a god out of man despite himself ? But there is hope.
Each year fresh evidence is thrust beneath the myopic spectacles of the savants. Each year the gate to knowledge of the states beyond matter is forced wider until, unwillingly, the white-coated hordes will be pushed through it, with much lamentation, as their discarded theories settle gracefully in the wastepaper basket. In the meanwhile let them concentrate on producing bigger, better hydrogen bombs and reach the supreme limit of sheer brute force, as opposed to subtle power.
Now in order to sustain the physicist on this throne of infallibility it is necessary to preserve certain illusions. Of these perhaps the most deliberate, is to rear young minds to believe, without hesitation or suspicion, that we have the privilege to be members of the most enlightened and progressive humanity that has ever adorned this long-suffering planet. So it comes as a rather painful shock to any who rashly peruse the more ancient literature of races that perished tens of thousand years ago, to find a strong suggestion that there existed previously, not one but several humanities greater, wiser, more moral, and more advanced in certain aspects of natural science, than ourselves. Their buildings, like their thoughts, have defied time. Their books -such as have survived translation—cause one to pause and wonder A glance at the Laws of Manu is enough to make our civilisation seem like a mechanical jungle The Chaldean books of astronomy make Hoyle and Jeans seem old-fashioned. And in the rolling Stanzas of Dzyan 11 (translated into Sanskrit and old Chinese from a still earlier tongue) one catches, as far as the modern ear trained to cacophany can catch anything so profound, an echo of the Music of the Spheres, reducing one’s intellectual pride to ground level as it senses the presence of giants—giants in spirit and in mind. We call ours ‘the Age of Light’. According to the ‘Vishnu Puranus ‘of’ prehistoric’ India, ours is ‘Kali Yug’, or the ‘Age of Darkness’; and some bitingly adept prophecies are made concerning it, each of which has come bitterly true.
11/ A recently discovered ancient Kabbahstic manuscript, translated by Professor Scholem in Jerusalem has turned out to be an early hebraic version of the ‘Dzyan’.
Now what, in the name of this Age of Darkness and Superstition, has all this got to do with flying saucers ? And how is a delve into archaic languages going to solve and shed light on the problem of their subtle power ?
I think it has a lot to do with it.
When you stand out of doors do you hear radio waves whizzing in with the speed of light ?
I do not think anyone has ever heard them. And yet, by turning a knob in my room I can happily pick up programmes and speeches from different parts of the world and, even more blissfully, turn them off again. I have never seen nor heard anything in between the studio and my radio receiver. Yet there must be something connecting the two or my receiver would be unable to receive. I admire the skill with which the maker has assembled this miraculous instrument, and admire him for not going mad as the awful omnipresent ‘why’ stirred uglily in his mind.
But possibly it did not stir. He knew what would happen if he connected which tubes to what wires. And it all happened, just as the book said. So he went home happily to bed, and slept undisturbed by these wonderful anxieties. Would that I could share his innocent peace of mind ! Unfortunately I cannot. Radio to me is a complete mystery. I have asked experts how it works and they have told me what sort of mechanical processes go on inside the box, but none of them have told me ‘why’. I can only try to tell myself. And myself keeps telling me, repeatedly murmuring the words ‘subtle forces’. www.universe-people.com www.cosmic-people.com
So naturally I felt a humble filial affection for the authors of the archaic documents, when J came across similar ideas more explicitly and conclusively stated.
In 1951 some remarkable photos appeared in the weekly magazine Illustrated showing tables, chairs and furniture flying in the air and careering around a fully lighted room, to the apparent hazard of the occupants who were dodging out of the way as quickly as possible, lest they got hurt by a levitating chaise-longue. There was no doubt as to the pictures being genuine; many such phenomena are on record. The fact that I have never personally witnessed such a performance is no grounds for denying it. Likewise it would be foolish to reject all evidence of objects (living as well as dead) that have from time to time apparently defied the laws of gravity and sailed up into the air.
Especially gravity; about which we know little, except that what goes up must usually come down. Newton put this more explicitly, but threw no light on the nature of this terrestrial magnetic force, any more than today’s Newtons can throw light on magnetism in general. As we know so remarkably little about magnetic currents, either induced or planetary, it is safe to assume that there are—not necessarily exceptions—but conditions under which the rules are broken, so far as our limited knowledge understands those rules. 12
12/ We still cannot explain to a schoolboy who rubs glass with silk how it is that the glass becomes positively charged and the silk negatively. We think we have transferred negative electricity (whatever that may be) to the silk; but we could equally well have transferred positive electricity to the glass. Whatever happens, the fundamental question as to why this should occur remains completely unanswered.
The explanations given with other experiments when heavy furniture moves into the air without tangible support, is that -’spirit hands’ are at work. Call them ‘spirit hands’ if you like, but would it not be safer to say that a second force opposite to the earth’s magnetic pull has temporarily been brought into action ?
And what brings these other forces into action ?
By all that one can see it appears to be activated by that little known force called the Human Will.
Experiments with sensitive apparatus have proved what the Sanskrit and Sensar writers always knew, that the human brain emits electric currents, that thought is, or causes, an electric impulse. However, the ancient writers go further. They seem to think that this brain current is very, very powerful. If not the actual current emitted by the brain, the current it can induce in Surrounding objects is powerful enough to raise huge rocks in the air. The button that starts a great machine is weak enough in its thrust (one finger-power to be precise) but look what it can do. The mighty bridges that open, the liners that cross the ocean, the high-speed lifts of a skyscraper are all started by one little finge pushing one little button. Suppose now that the tiny impulses in the brain if properly directed could harmonise (get the correct wavelength) with much greater forces. What would be the result ? Subtle control of mind over matter. Not brute force such as steam pulleys, nuclear explosions, but subtle control, a thousand times more powerful and efficient.
The stones of the Great Pyramid’s central chamber, weighing seventy tons each and brought hundreds of miles, Stonehenge, the colossal stones of South American ruins, the great monolithic gate of Tiahuanaco—why use such colossal, unmovable stones when smaller ones would have done just as well ? How were the fifteen-ton polished casing stones of the Great Pyramid fitted to an accuracy of plus or minus one hundredth part of an inch without modern machinery ? How were they fitted at all, for that matter ?
Let us not start to probe too deep here yet, lest our minds be drawn to the awful possibility of a race whose civilisation might make our own look like a slum for backward children. Let us leave the Great Pyramid in Egypt, where it has remained for tens of thousands of years and where it will remain for tens of thousands of years after the last vestiges of New York and London have crumbled to dust, and come back to the question of things that appear to defy gravity.
Saint Teresa of Avila, according to Miss V. Sackville-West’s interesting biography 13 (valuable as coming from a non-Catholic and impartial source) tells us that she used frequently to rise in the air, and levitate at the most inconvenient moments. On one occasion this happened during the visit of a neighbouring abbess, and St. Teresa, from a point near the ceiling, was overheard to chide the Almighty in no uncertain terms for making a spectacle of her. In this she was unfair to blame her Creator for a phenomenon that arose only from the undirected power of her own colossal intellect. By accident she had hit off the ‘wave length’ that causes opposite forces to the earth’s magnetism to come into play, and the result was, quite rightly, according to the superb logic on which the mighty Universe is built, that she sailed upwards until the ceiling arrested further progress. I quote St. Teresa as a possibly better known version of this occurrence, although many other examples are on record. Possibly the most interesting is the case of St. Joseph of Copertino, a seventeenth century Italian monk, who could not only levitate at will, but also, sometimes carried passengers and freight into the bargain. On one occasion the friar was seen to pick up a heavy, wooden monumental cross, which ten workmen had failed to manage, and fly it several yards to its appointed resting place. The Calendar of the Saints makes interesting reading in the history of flight-without-wings, for it lists just on two hundred saints more or less adept in this amazing form of transport.
13/ ‘The Eagle and the Dove.’
Professor W. J. Crawford published the results and findings of some sixty-seven experiments in levitation under strict laboratory conditions in which tables, chairs, book-cases, and living human beings were raised in the air and moved silently round the room. 14 And some good pictures were taken by Mr. Leon Isaacs showing furniture levitation during the experiments described by Mr. Harry Edwards. 15 Now what has St. Teresa got to do with flying saucers ? St. Teresa and the furniture moved silently and without any signs of visible or audible power.
14/ W. J. Crawford, d.sc, The Reality of Psychic Phenomena.
15/ H. Edwards, The Mediumship of Jack W. Webber.
Do I then suggest that flying saucers are moved silently through space by the colossal wills of their inventors and builders ? Not necessarily. But I do believe it would be possible. I say not necessarily because voluntary levitation, according to those who have succeeded with it, is a very strenuous operation. So the mental force required for propelling a space ship over White Sands Testing Ground at 18,000 m.p.h. would give even the greatest of beings a headache. And yet I say it would be possible, but not for us mortals.
There was a tradition among the Egyptian Magi that the sign of a true priest was his ability to fly in the air, or to levitate, at Will. By this feat alone was he to be known and recognised as a true scientist of the Ancient Wisdom.
From South America come strangely coinciding legends; not legends originated by the present natives, but tales bequeathed them by earlier, greater races who disappeared leaving behind those splendid monuments, without explanation or apology.
According to the legends:
‘In the olden days everyone could fly... Everything was so light, great stones could be moved .. .’
‘In the old days men could fly by singing a song and striking a plate. 16
16/ Harold T. Wilkins, Secret Cities of South America, 1940, and Mysteries of Ancient South America, 1950.
Do the first two echo anything concerning levitation ? Do they not suggest a forgotten race who had mastered gravity ?
What about the third ?
A properly pitched note can break a mirror. Is it beyond the realms of possibility that if sound were completely understood in all its seven aspects it might be harmonised to the electrical magnetic forces that produce levitation ? After all, we have already succeeded in ‘harmonising’ it with radio waves and made it travel with the speed of light instead of the lumbering speed of a jet plane, and our grandfathers would have had us certified if we had even hinted at the possibility. So why cannot sound be harnessed, or transformed into further unknown forces ?
What is this ‘Word of Power’ we keep coming across in the ancient writings, this mighty ‘sound’ known only to the Adepts and Initiates, before which all matter bowed; a ‘sound’ which reaches its mystic apex in the ‘Fiat Lux’, ‘Let there be light, and there was light.’ 17 The Word of God which causes things to be ? We find it in every ancient race and scripture. The Popul Vuh, the South American Quiche ‘bible’, says: ‘Then came the word... Let the emptiness be filled, let the waters (primal matter) recede and make a void. Let the Earth appear and become solid... Let there be light... ! Earth ! they said and instantly it was made. 18
17/ Genesis I.
18/ Goetz and Morley, Popul Vuh.
Some ancient tablets found in Mexico read: ‘The first intellectual command was: "Let the gases which are scattered throughout space be collected together, and with them let worlds be formed ! Then the gases were brought together into whirling circulating masses (nebulae)".
‘The second intellectual command was: "Let the outside gases be separated, so that they form the atmosphere and the water ".’ 19
19/ Jas. Churchward, The Cosmic Forces of Mu.
In both we see the word, command, or cosmic vibration as the cause of each new manifestation; seven in all, corresponding to the seven ‘days’ of Genesis.
The sacred Stanzas of Dzyan, 20 said to be of Atlantean origin, contains the same idea at the beginning of Stanza 3.
20/ Stanzas of Dzyan as given in The Sacred Dostrine, Vol 1 (Adyar Edn.).
‘The last vibration of the seventh Eternity thrills through Infinitude.... The vibration sweeps along, touching with its swift wing the whole Universe.... Darkness radiates light, and light drops one solitary ray into the waters, into the Mother-Deep (Space).’
‘... The luminous egg... curdles and spreads in milk-white curds (nebulae) throughout the depths.’
In this brief abstract formula we see a clear hint as to how a new nebula comes into being, from a vibration uttered on a higher plane to the ‘milk white curds’ we see today in space through our strong telescopes. 21
21/ ‘Everything we call’matter is not material matter at all but radiant energy.’ (Sir James Jeans.)
How did the ancients know about nebulae, solar systems and the rest ? And what have they to do with flying saucers ? The Popul Vuh says: ‘They (the first race of men) were able to know all, and they examined the four corners, the four points of the arch of the sky and the round face of the earth.’ St. John describes the Creator, in the beginning of the manifest universe, as a ‘sound’.
‘In the beginning was the word and the word was with God. 22
22/ John I.
This sublime but now lost knowledge of the ‘Word’—the ‘Tau’ of the Egyptians, and ‘Aum’ of India, and ‘J.H.V.H.’ of the Kabbalist has now degenerated down to pantomimes like: ‘Open Sesame’ and the party conjuror’s: ‘Abracadabra’. But even in their debasement these are memories of the sonic power which could, when uttered in divine, or in properly developed human minds, cause solid atoms to form, and worlds to appear out of primal chaos.
How very confused and lost it now is. And it is liable to become even more so in the noise and jangle of our civilisation. For this mystic word is uttered in the silence of the mind. One must be very quiet inwardly if one is to sense its faintest echo. And uttered in the perfect controlled silence of a developed mind I believe it will do many strange things—move tables in the air for the benefit of photographers—lay fifteen-ton blocks micro-accurately in place on pyramids.
Move flying saucers ? Perhaps.
Can you see, in imagination, a highly developed being in his space vehicle uttering the correct vibration which will make the propelling forces obey and thrust him through the void towards our atmosphere ? And then on entering this, our ocean of air, whose nature he perfectly understands, utter a second vibration that will smooth out and completely neutralise all the jagged rending disharmony of a solid body being thrust through by sheer brute force ? But he is not using brute force. He understands air and all its hidden properties. As a result he respects it. He uses gentle harmonious forces that do not push and shove and heave and rend, but part it smoothly, with courtesy and scientific good manners. And when we have won a little more true knowledge we may be able to do likewise; at the moment we have only learned how to kick things out of the way.
(7)
The Vimanas
I was still musing on the possible sources of power when a very strange document 23 came into my hands—a book written nearly ten years before the Wright brothers had made their first flight. It described in some detail a type of flying disk or aerial boat used by the race whose descendants left behind them the mighty pyramids of Mexico and Egypt, the vast stones of Tiahuanaco and Sacsahauman, the 1,800-ton blocks at Balbac, the sacred tablets of Nacaal and the sublime Secret Stanzas of Asia. In this book were terms and expressions I had never heard of before, terms like ‘etheric force’ and ‘akkasha’. It was an intriguing book, and while reading it I sensed something familiar. Certain characteristics were described there which tallied almost identically with the United States Army’s flying saucer reports today. I began to think—and wonder. Here is the significant passage. The author, Scott Elliott, says: ‘Atlantean‘ 24 methods of locomotion must be recognised as still more marvellous for the airship or flying machine which Keely in America and Maxim in this country are now trying to produce [1895] was then an accomplished fact.... It was not at any time a common means of transport. The slaves, the servants, and the masses who laboured with their hands had to trudge along the country tracts, or travel in rude carts with solid wheels drawn by uncouth animals. The air-boats may be considered as the private carriage of those days, or rather the private yachts, if we regard the relative number of those who possessed them, for they must have been at all times difficult and costly to produce. They were not as a rule built to accommodate many persons. Numbers were constructed for only two, some allowed for six or eight passengers. In the later days when war and strife had brought the Golden Age to an end, battleships that could navigate the air had to a great extent replaced the battleships at sea—having naturally proved far more powerful engines of destruction. These were constructed to carry as many as fifty, and in some cases even up to a hundred fighting men.
23/ W. Scott Elliott, The Story of Atlantis.
24/ Too much already has been written concerning the famous lost continent to argue here the ‘pros and cons’ of its existence. As geology knows Atlantis is merely the name given of one of a long series of former land masses—in this case the one directly preceding our own. It seems reasonable to suppose that what is now the floor of the Pacific Ocean will in millenia hence be the home of future races who will have many tales to tell concerning the lost Arya (or Eur-asia). Certainly the Earth’s strata show that the land on which we live has been ocean bed, not once, but many times. Anyone interested in Atlantis for its own sake should read works of that title by Donnelly, Lewis Spence, Scott Elliott, and its history in the esoteric works of ancient India, South America, and Egypt; also ; Secret Cities of South America, by Wilkins, Built Before the Flood, and particularly ‘Letter No. XXIIIb’ in The Mahatma Letters to A-P. Sinnett, to name but a few.
‘The material of which the vimanas 25 (air-boats) were constructed was either wood or metal. The earlier ones were built of wood, the boards used being exceedingly thin, but the injection of some substance which did not add materially to the weight, while it gave leather-like toughness, provided the necessary combination of lightness and strength. When metal was used it was generally an alloy—two white-coloured metals and one red one entering into its composition. 26 The resultant was white-coloured like aluminium and even lighter in weight. Over the rough framework of the air-boat was extended a large sheet of this metal which was then beaten into shape and electrically welded when necessary. But whether built of metal or wood their outside surface was apparently seamless and perfectly smooth, and they shone in the dark as if coated with luminous paint.
25/ Vimana (Sanskrit) Vimanam (Pali). Lit.: to measure out or traverse a course; a Car Celestial; a flying chariot, self-propelled and self-moving; a flying palace.
26/ Probably copper, magnesium, aluminium, according to some alloys discovered and analysed from ancient Atlantean city sites.
‘In shape they were boatlike but they were invariably decked over, for when at full speed it could not have been convenient, even if safe, for any on board to remain on the upper deck. Their propelling and steering gear could be brought into use at either end.
‘But the all interesting question is that relating to the power by which they were propelled. In the earlier times it seems to have been personal ‘vril’ 27 that supplied the motive power—whether used in conjunction with any mechanical contrivance matters not much—but in the later days this was replaced by a force which, though generated by in what is to us an unknown manner, operated nevertheless through definite mechanical arrangements. This force, though not yet discovered by science, more nearly approached that which Keely in America used to handle than the electric power used by Maxim. It was in fact of an etheric nature. But though we are no nearer to the solution of the problem, its method of operation can be described. The mechanical arrangements no doubt differed somewhat in different vessels.
27/ ‘Vril’ or the raising of the personal vibrations sufficiently to overcome the Earth’s magnetic attraction, the principle of levitation.
‘The following description is taken from an air-boat in which on one occasion three ambassadors from the King who ruled over the northern part of Poseidonis made the journey to the court of the Southern Kingdom. A strong heavy metal chest which lay in the centre of the boat was the generator. Thence the force flowed through two large flexible tubes to either end of the vessel, as well as through eight subsidiary tubes fixed fore and aft to the bulwarks. These had double openings pointing vertically both up and down. 28 When the journey was about to begin the valves of the eight bulwark tubes which pointed downwards were opened—all the other valves being closed. The current rushing through these impinged on the earth with such force as to drive the boat upwards while the air itself continued to supply the necessary fulcrum. When a sufficient elevation was reached the flexible tube at that end of the vessel which pointed away from the desired destination was brought into action, while by the partial closing of the valves the current rushing through the eight vertical tubes was reduced to the small amount required to maintain the elevation reached. The great volume of current, being now directed through the large tube pointing downwards from the stern at an angle of about forty-five degrees, while helping to maintain the elevation, provided also the great motive power to propel the vessel through the air. The steering was accomplished by the discharge of current through this tube, for the slightest change in its direction at once caused an alteration in the vessel’s course. 29
28/ The torpedo or flying submarine on page 15 had double rows of strange blue lights. The vessel described as landing in Germany on page 142 also had a double row of exhaust jets.
29/ In other words, a ‘jet’ on a universal mounting.
‘But constant supervision was not required. When a long journey had to be taken the tube could be fixed so as to need no handling till the destination was almost reached. The maximum speed attained was about 100 m.p.h., the course of flight never being in a straight line, but always in the form of long waves, now approaching, and now receding from the Earth, The means by which the vessel was brought to a stop on reaching its destination—and this could be done equally well in midair—was to give escape to some of the current force in the tube at that end of the boat which pointed toward its destination, while propelling force behind was gradually reduced by the closing of the valves. The reason has still to be given for the eight tubes pointing upwards from the bulwarks. This more especially concerns the aerial warfare having so powerful a force at their disposal, the warships naturally directed the current against each other. Now this was apt to destroy the equilibrium of the ship so struck and to turn it upside down. This situation was sure to be taken advantage of by the enemy vessel to make an attack with her ram. There was also the danger of being precipitated to the ground, unless the shutting and opening of the necessary valves were quickly attended to. In whatever position the vessel might be, the tubes pointing towards the Earth were naturally those through which the current should be rushing, while the tubes pointing upwards should be closed.’
Donald Keyhoe in his book The Flying Saucers are Real, (Hutchinson, 1950) talks to one of ‘the top engineers in N.A.CA.’, who tells him almost word for word what Scott Elliott said about the vimanas:
‘It (the saucer) could be built with variable direction jet or rocket nozzles. The nozzles would be’ placed around the rim and by changing their direction the disk could be made to rise and descend vertically. It could, however, fly straight ahead and make sharp turns. Its direction and velocity would be governed by the number of nozzles operating, the power applied, and the angle at which they were tilted. They could be pointed towards the ground, rearwards, or in a lateral direction, or in various combinations. A disk flying level, straight ahead, could be turned swiftly to left or right by shifting the angles of the nozzles or cutting off power from part of the group. This... would operate in the Earth’s atmosphere... also... in free space.’
This is exactly the principle on which the Atlantean vimanas were said to operate. Thus the flying saucers seem to be an improvement upon the vimanas rather than an extension of the principle adopted by the Wright brothers and used by us today with incredibly powerful, noisy, and relatively inefficient combustion engines.
Certain other characteristics make the saucer seem to be only an interplanetary, more advanced, model of the ancient vimana, so that a positively terrifying inference comes to the mind— terrifying not because of any physical harm that might come to us as a result—but terrifying because of the shattering blow (if it were true) it would give to our pride. For it would be admitting that tens of thousands of years ago there existed on Earth a nation more advanced, technically, than ourselves. Capable, even, of travelling to another planet.
Scott Elliott may appear to have described a kind of flying saucer, but from where did he get his information ? No one seemed to know. The book was rare and long out of print. Elliott was dead. Someone who had known him told me he had found his material in the ancient records of India and Asia and that I should try the museums and oriental libraries.
Very well then—off to the museums.
But as is the way with these strange things, research is like a snowball; set it in motion and it picks up first one thing then another until, before you know where you are, it has gained unexpected proportions. Before I had even reached the British Museum (I was a hundred yards short of it) my attention was attracted by a little bookshop in Museum Street that specialises in rare and unusual books. On sudden impulse I went inside and began to browse. Soon the proprietor came up to me and said: ‘I have a book I think would interest you.’
He was a strange man, with the most penetrating eyes I have ever seen; eyes that seemed to reach in and examine one’s innermost thoughts and to smile at what they saw. I did not recall telling him what I was looking for; I hardly knew myself. However, I took the book he offered and went my way.
It turned out to be one of James Churchward’s works on the Lost Continent, called The Children of Mu. On page 188 I found the following passage which made me feel I was on the right track. The author tells how, on his travels in India towards the close of the last century, he was shown some ancient Hindu manuscripts which the priests told him were copies of the ancient temple records of a mother civilisation that preceded even that of India. Among them he saw:
‘A drawing and instructions for the construction of the airship and her machinery, power, engines, etc. The power is taken from the atmosphere in a very simple, inexpensive manner. The engine is something like our present-day turbine in that it works from one chamber into another until finally exhausted. When the engine is once started it never stops until turned off. It will continue on if allowed to do so until the bearings are worn out.... These ships could keep circling around the earth for ever without once coming down until the machinery wore out. The power is unlimited, or rather limited only by what metals will stand. I find flights spoken of which, according to our maps, would run from one thousand to three thousand miles.
‘All records relating to these airships distinctly state that they were self-moving, they propelled themselves; in other words, they generated their own power as they flew along... independent of fuel. It seems to me... we are about 15,000 to 20,000 years behind the times.’
Almost word for word that seems to tally with Scott Elliott’s description of the vimanas. The engine sounds like some simple form of perpetual motion.
Churchward says air was used as a propellant, in something resembling a jet engine. Elliott says it was ‘etheric force’; but the ancient words for air connote its etheric and hidden attributes rather than the ordinary gases which we know compose the atmosphere, so there need to be no haggle over terminology.
Encouraged by this I began to search the ancient records in an attempt to prove or disprove my hunch that flying saucers are nothing new. I was rewarded beyond all expectations. The Ramayana and Maha Bharata are full of accounts of immense prehistoric aircraft of all shapes and sizes—some large, some small, some jet-propelled, others powered by a source beyond our ken, a power that, at face value, looks very like the human will itself as mentioned in the previous chapter.
In the Ramayana there is a fine description of a large vimana taking off:
‘When morning dawned, Rama, taking the Celestial Car (vimana) Puspaka had sent him by Vivpishand, stood ready to depart. Self-propelled was that car. It was large and finely painted. It had two stories and many chambers with windows, and was draped with flags and banners. It gave forth a melodious sound as it coursed along its airy way.’ 30 In another translation I found:
30/ As translated in ‘The Children of Mu’.
‘The Puspaka Car, that resembles the sun and belongs to my brother, was brought by the powerful Ravan; that aerial and excellent car, going everywhere at will, is ready for thee. That car, resembling a bright cloud in the sky, is in the city of Lanka.’ 31 And the hero Rama answers:
31/ In the Ramayana, translated by Manatha Nath Dutt m.a., in 1891, the poet ‘Valmiki’ is held to have completed the ‘Ramayana’ more than three thousand years ago, but the old records on which he based this great historical saga must be many times older
‘"Do thou speedily bring the aerial car for me." Thereupon arrived the car, adorned all over with gold, having fine upper rooms, banners, jewelled windows, and giving forth a melodious sound, having huge apartments, and excellent seats.’
‘Beholding the car coming by force of will Rama attained to an excess of astonishment. And the king (Rama) got in, and the excellent car, at the command of Raghira, rose up into the higher atmosphere. And in that car, coursing at will, Rama greatly delighted.’
After a long flight, we are told that the machine landed, then Rama himself took over control.
‘Being then commanded by Rama, that excellent car, with a huge noise, rose up in the Welkin. And looking down on all sides, Rama spoke to Sita.’ (Ibid.)
From here on Rama points out all the beauty spots and places of interest both on land and on sea all the way to Ceylon. When they arrive over the city there is great excitement and all the passengers stand up in the seats to obtain a better view.
Earlier in the great epic, Ravan comes across Rama’s beautiful wife, ‘the slender-waisted Sita’, in a forest, and by guile and intrigue lures her away to where his airship is parked. Then comes a vivid description of the tragedy. Ravan seizes Sita, carries her into his vimana and sets off as fast as he can. Romesh Dutt’s translation says: 32
32/ Romesh Dutt, Ramayana.
‘... Lift the poor and helpless dame. Seat her in his car celestial, yoked with power winged with speed. Golden its shape and radiance, fleet as Indra’s heavenly steed.... Then arose the Car Celestial o’er the hill and wooded vale.’
Poor Sita weeps piteously and begs Ravan to let her go. He ignores her cries and gloats over her plight, so as she rises in the air, the poor girl cries out to Nature for aid:
‘Dim and dizzy, faint and faltering, still she sent her piercing cry. Echoing through the boundless woodlands, pealing to the upper sky.
As she ascends over the forests she calls out to them for help:
‘Darksome woods of Panchavati, Janasthana’s smiling vale, Lowering trees and winding creepers, murmur to my lord this tale. Speak to Rama that his Sita, ruthless Ravan bears away.’
Higher and higher they go; the great mountain ranges begin to unfurl beneath her. In vain she cries to them:
‘Towering peaks and lofty mountains, wooded hills sublime and high Far extending gloomy ranges heaving to the azure sky.’
Help comes from a loyal old friend called Jatayu who flies up, in the form of a great bird (or in something shaped like a great bird) and an aerial combat takes place. Jatayu is no match for the mighty vimana. After a few gallant head-on attacks, he falls to the ground bleeding and defeated.
Apparently there is no limit to the dastardly behaviour of Ravan. Unable to wait until they land at Lanka, he drags poor Sita on to his lap and ravishes her in the pilot’s seat en route. This rather suggests that the vimana was exceptionally well trimmed or that it possessed some kind of automatic pilot. ‘He directed its course towards the city of Lanka, taking Sita along with him. Experiencing the heights of delight, Ravan ravished her, taking her on his lap upon a serpent of virulent poison.’ 32
32/ Romesh Dutt, Ramayana.
Feeling better after this, he puts on a burst of speed. ‘Like an arrow shot from a bow he, coursing the Welkin, left behind the woods and trees and places of water, and coming to the boundless ocean crossed over it to Lanka.’ 32
32/ Romesh Dutt, Ramayana.
All ends well. Rama eventually catches up with the villain and an aerial battle takes place. Ravan is shot down and Sita restored to her husband. An interesting weapon called ‘Indra’s Dart’ is responsible for this.
Wrapped in smoke and flaming flashes, speeding from the Circled Bow Pierced the iron heart of Ravan, laid the lifeless hero low. 32
32/ Romesh Dutt, Ramayana.
The ancient books contain many significant descriptions of vimanas in flight. ‘Flaming like a crimson fire, Ravan’s winged courses flee.’ And later, when Rama attacks Ravan he describes: ‘The mighty vimana of Ravan coming at me, flaming like fire.’ 32
32/ Romesh Dutt, Ramayana.
In other accounts their beauty and luminescence is frequently mentioned:
‘The radiant vimana gave forth a fierce glow.’ ‘The fully-equipped vimana shone brilliantly.’ ‘When it set out, its roar filled all four points of the compass.’ ‘The beautiful car-celestial possessed the radiance of fire.’ ‘Bhima riding in his vimana of solar effulgence, whose noise was like the roaring of thunderclouds.’ ‘It seemed there were two suns in the firmament. The whole sky was ablaze when he ascended into it.’ ‘Blazing with a mighty radiance, like a flame on summer night.’ ‘Like a comet in the sky.’ ‘Like a meteor encircled by a mighty cloud.’ ‘It was drawn by steeds of solar ray.’ ‘Propelled by winged lightning.’ 33
33/ Protap Chandra Roy, Maha-Bharata (1889).
Crimson fire, brilliant fire, solar effulgence, like a second sun, like a comet, like a meteor encircled by a mighty cloud or corona -if you have read the flying saucer reports, do not these sound rather familiar.
Poetic though their description may seem to this mundane age, there is nothing allegorical or symbolic about the ancient vimanas. The writers invariably make a strict distinction between travel on land and travel in the air, viz: ‘Cukra proceeded to Militha on foot, although he was able to fly through the skies of the whole Earth and over the seas.’ 34
34/ P. Chandra Roy. Samsaptakabadha.
Later this hero takes an amazing aerial flight.
‘Ascending from the breast of the Kailasa Mountains he soared up into the sky. Capable of traversing the higher atmosphere, he identified himself with (became) the wind. As he was traversing through the skies with the speed of the wind or thought, all creatures cast up their eyes at him. As he proceeded he seemed to fill the entire higher atmosphere with an all-pervading sound. Beholding his coming in that manner, all the tribes below became filled with amazement, their eyes wide with wonder. Cukra then proceded to the Malaya Mountains. (A long flight) He proceeded through that region of the sky firmament which is above the region of the winds’ 34 (the higher stratosphere if we are to take it literally).
34/ P. Chandra Roy. Samsaptakabadha.
Nor are the car celestials, or vimanas, to be confused with the ordinary battle chariots or cars drawn by horses. The distinction between them in the Sanskrit is every bit as great as that made between carts and aeroplanes in our own literature. A good example appears in the ‘Samsaptakabadha’, in which a battle chariot and a vimana are mentioned, and their common beauty compared:
‘When drawn into battle by those white horses, that chariot looked exceedingly resplendent, like a car celestial that is borne along the sky. And like Cukra’s car celestial this chariot could move in a circular course, or move forwards, backwards, and divers kinds of movement.’ 34
34/ P. Chandra Roy. Samsaptakabadha.
There is no mistaking the meaning of this passage. The writer knew the difference between vimanas and chariots as well as we know the difference between planes and tanks.
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Flying Saucers Before The Flood
Lest you feel tempted to exclaim, concerning the Vimanas. ‘There is no such animal !’ I shall now offer more detailed evidence for the existence of these prehistoric flying saucers. I say ‘saucers’ and not ‘airplanes’ because the principle which held them aloft had nothing to do with wings. They were sustained entirely by the force they emitted; a stream-lined plane set at an angle of four degrees to the line-of-flight played no part in it. They were true wingless aircraft. So are flying saucers.
We are all very tempted to measure out the length and the breadth and the depth of what we are willing to believe, and circumscribe it with a magic circle containing many violent (and often none too polite) incantations prohibiting the approach of any alien idea, evil spirit, or malicious genii who threatens the security of our little flock of cherished notions. In that circle, for good measure, we set up Bacon’s Three Idols, which he aptly called the Idol of the Cave, the Idol of the Marketplace, and the Idol of the Theatre, an unholy trinity whose collective name is Personal Prejudice. These idols have always formed a triple deity for humanity, and will probably continue to do so until this planet reverts to a state of matter quite unknown to modern science whose exponents, through excessive worship at their shrine, may inadvertently reduce our Earth to that primal state, several billion years before it was originally intended.
It is easy to dismiss all the ancient Sanskrit descriptions of flying saucers as mere myth, until one has read them. But the ancient writers made a scrupulous distinction between myth which they called ‘Daiva’ and factual record which they called ‘Manusa’.
In the ‘Manusa’ accounts the most elaborate details for vimana building are set down. The Samarangana Sutradhara says that they were made of light material, with a strong well-shaped body. Iron, copper and lead were used in their construction. They could fly for great distances and were propelled by air. A hint is then given concerning the propulsion, by the statement that they had ‘fire and mercury at the bottom’.
The Samarangana Sutradhara devotes 230 stanzas to the principles of building vimanas and their uses in peace and war. They were very manoeuvrable and could attack anything in the air or on the ground. The author, like Scott Elliott, gives them three principal movements, that of ascending vertically, cruising thousands of miles, lastly halting and descending. They moved so fast that they could hardly be heard from the ground.
In the Vedic Brahmanas, description is given of the Agnihotra vimana, with its two propelling fires, the Ahavaniya and the Garhapatya. The curious statement is then made that the pilot offers milk to the three Agnis or fires. It is obviously a ‘blind’ for the secrets of their power were jealously guarded in case they came to be wrongly used.
The Sanskrit Samarangana Sutradhara says:
‘Manufacturing details of the vimanas is withheld for the sake of secrecy, not out of ignorance. The details of construction are not mentioned for it should be known that... were they publicly disclosed the machines would be wrongly used.’ This confirms Scott Elliott’s statement that they were never mass-produced like our modern aircraft. In another place, in the same work, we are told:
‘Strong and durable must the body be made, like a great flying bird, of light material. Inside it one must place the Mercury-engine with its iron heating apparatus beneath. By means of the power latent in the mercury which sets the driving whirlwind in motion a man sitting inside may travel a great distance in the sky in a most marvellous manner.
‘Similarly by using the prescribed processes one can build a vimana as large as the temple of the God-in-motion. Four strong mercury containers must be built into the interior structure. When these have been heated by controlled fire from iron containers, the vimana develops thunder-power through the mercury. And at once it becomes like a pearl in the sky.’
The Tibetan books, the Tantjua and the Kantjua, also contain many references to marvellous prehistoric flying machines, which they often call ‘Pearls in-the-sky,’ I had a letter from California recently from some friends who had observed a flying saucer for about six minutes. They wrote: ‘It was the colour and lustre of mother of pearl. In fact it looked just like a huge oval pearl flying along silently in the sky’. I have replied asking them to get hold of a copy of the Tantjua if they could, to make their own comparisons.
The Samar account makes it perfectly clear that the full details must be withheld ‘in the interests of security’, to use a phrase beloved by moderns. The ancients, however, took a less selfish and somewhat more moral view. They kept their secrets because they foresaw the terrible uses the vimanas could be put to in war: fears well justified in the Daytan Wars when whole cities were wiped out and armies destroyed by the airborne Astra and Brahma weapons. 35
35/ The ancient Aryans well knew how the Element Fire could be used in war, as can be seen from their ‘astra weapons’ which include—among the list of projectiles or Soposamhara (lit., throwing-out weapons): Sikharastra (a flame-belching missile); Avidyastra (a missile of illusionary powers); and the Prasvapana which caused sleep, also the ‘Arrow of Sleep’ (some kind of gas projectile); Gandharvastra (a weapon of Vishnu the Destroyer); Samvarta (a smokescreen or fog producer); Saura (a missile of the Sun God); four kinds of Agni Astras, or fiery missiles which travel in sheets of flame and produce thunder. Lastly, the terrible Dart of Indra which could slay ten thousand men with its thunderbolt. It was shot from a ‘circle bow’, which sounds like a piece of ordnance.
Then came ‘magical’ weapons controlled by will and sound: The Satyakirti; the Kamarupaka (taking shape according to one’s will); the Kamaruci (acting according to one’s wish); Vajara the Thunderbolt, which required Mantras or sound to operate it; and Viruci (a fiery weapon).
See Warfare in Ancient India, pp. 277-30, by V. R. Ramachandra Dikshitar, Macmillan & Co. Ltd.. 1948.
The Samar is sufficient to dispel any lingering doubt that the vimanas were a product of poetic imagination, or an allegorical account of divinities and certain cosmic forces. That description of the ‘Mercury Engine’ is intriguing. What exactly does ‘the power latent in the mercury’ mean ? Could they have known how to release the fundamental energy contained in heavy metals, and used it as a highly efficient type of jet propulsion ? Dr. Meade Layne of San Diego, California, had never heard of ancient vimanas until I drew his attention to them. But long beforehand he had written that he believed that a certain type of flying saucer (‘ a very ancient type’) propels itself by the atomic disintegration of air, while travelling in the atmosphere, and of metal when out in space.
A little later I shall present evidence to suggest that the ancients knew more than we imagine in that line; perhaps not nuclear fission, but some other aspects of atomic power which could be turned to peaceful or warlike uses with devastating results.
The Samar says a controlled fire was applied to the mercury: that thunder-power was then developed. Farther on its says: ‘Moreover, if this iron engine with properly welded joints be filled with mercury, and the fire be conducted to the upper part, it develops power with the roar of a lion.’
Now fire, in the ancient works, does not always mean the fire of combustion. The esoteric books list forty-nine fires, most of which seem to refer to various electrical and magnetic phenomena. The ‘controlled fire’ in this case might possibly refer to an ordinary furnace, although it is difficult to see how the formation of oxide of mercury is going to provide jet propulsion. More likely the ‘fire’ in question is one of the electrical ‘fires’ now more or less familiar to science.
The Samar then continues with a straightforward engineer’s account of the vimanas’ versatility, and gives performance figures which our aircraft designers might envy.
‘The subdivisions of the vimanas’ movements are: Slanting; Vertical ascent; Vertical descent; Forwards; Backwards; Normal ascent; Normal descent; Progressing over long distances, through proper adjustment of the working parts which gives it perpetual motion.’
‘The strength and durability of these machines depend on the material used. Following here are some of the aerial car’s main qualities: It can be invisible; It can carry passengers; It can also be made small and compact; It can move in silence; If sound is to be used there must be great flexibility of all the moving parts which must be made of faultless workmanship; It must last a long time; It must be well covered in; It must not become too hot, too stiff, nor too soft; It can be moved by tunes and rhythms.’
In fact there seems to be nothing it cannot do. It surpasses a helicopter in manoeuvrability. It can move silently without the helicopter’s rending uproar. It is so manoeuvrable that it can hover accurately a few measured inches off the ground. ‘Yudhishthiva’s vimana had remained at the height of four fingers’ breadth from the surface of the earth.’ 36 As an alternative method of propulsion it can be driven solely by the power of sound, ‘tunes and rhythms’. It also seems capable of appearing and disappearing at will, owing to some particularly clever optical illusions.
36/ Drona Parva.
All these things can also be done by flying saucers.
Very well ! Supposing that a forgotten civilisation did once know how to build a primitive form of flying saucer here on Earth, you’re not going to tell us, we trust, that they could go to or come from other planets ? There is a limit to what we can believe !
Personally, I shall do no such thing. But the Samar will; and the Samar unfortunately is one of those documents designated ‘manusa’ or ‘strictly factual’. Strictly and factually it makes the simple statement: ‘By means of these machines, human beings can fly in the air and heavenly beings can come down to Earth.’
In other words, the ancients were quite accustomed to receiving men from other planets, even in those days.
Another passage states bluntly that some vimanas could ascend to the Solar Regions (Suryamandala) and thence out and beyond to the Stellar Regions (Naksatramandala), which means that some vimanas were built to traverse the Solar System, or even the Galaxy itself.
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Saucers in Sanskrit
It would be so comforting if we could dismiss all these accounts as fable, but the farther we go into the ancient works, the more accounts we come across of aeroforms, power-sources, and super weapons, which meant little to the Sanskrit translators of the nineteenth century, but which have a very ominous and significant meaning to us today.
I am not trying to prove that the pre-Deluvians had atom bombs or something similar; I shall be quite content if I can show that they knew how to build a type of flying saucer. But I would like to quote a few passages from the Mahabharata, written over 3,000 years ago, which shows conclusively that certain tremendous cosmic forces and their manipulation were not unknown to them. I quote these not as an interesting digression, but merely to show that if a perished civilisation once understood the workings of nuclear energy as well as a type of radiant energy still unknown to us, then there is all the more reason to believe their reports that they also had flying machines of amazing power and ability.
The first excerpt is an eye-witness account of the weapon called the Agneya upon an unfortunate army below. Generals might do well to study it.
‘A blazing missile possessed of the radiance of smokeless fire was discharged. A thick gloom suddenly encompassed the hosts. All points of the compass were suddenly enveloped in darkness. Evil-bearing winds began to blow. Clouds roared into the higher air, showering blood. The very elements seemed confused. The sun appeared to spin round. The world, scorched by the heat of that weapon, seemed to be in a fever. Elephants, scorched by the energy of that weapon, ran in terror, seeking protection from its terrible force. The very water being heated, the creatures who live in the water seemed to burn. The enemy fell like trees that are burned down in a raging fire. Huge elephants, burned by that weapon, fell all around. Others, scorched, ran hither and thither, and roared around fearfully in the midst of the blazing forest. The steeds and the chariots, burned by the energy of that weapon, resembles the stumps of trees that have been consumed in a forest conflagration. Thousands of chariots fell down on all sides Darkness then hid the entire army....’ 37
‘Cool winds began to blow. All points of the compass became clear and bright. Then we beheld a wonderful sight. Burned up by the terrible power of that weapon, the forms of the slain could not even be distinguished. We have never before heard of, nor seen, the like of that weapon.’35
37/ P. Chandra Roy, 1889, Drona Parva.
This terrible description of chariots charred to stumps like burned trees, and thousands of men so burned that not even their shapes could be distinguished, was possibly first written 10,000 years before Nagasaki. In the Mausala Parva there is a weapon likened to an ‘iron bolt’, through which all members of the race of Vrishnis and the Adhakas became consumed into ashes. Indeed, for their destruction. Canra produced a fierce iron thunderbolt that looked like a gigantic messenger of death.’
So dreadful was this weapon that: "in great distress of mind the king caused the bolt to be reduced to a fine powder’. Even then it still possessed some dreadful virulent power for: ‘he employed men to cast that powder into the sea.’ 37
37/ P. Chandra Roy, 1889, Drona Parva.
But with all these precautions, a great deal of damage was done by some invisible, or radio-active, means. People’s hair and finger nails fell out overnight. Gales blew all day. Pottery cracked for no apparent cause. Birds turned white, and their legs became scarlet and blistered. And food went bad within a few hours.
Besides the Agneya Weapon there is the Brahma Weapon which was said to contain the powers of the God Himself, that not even the immortals could withstand. This weapon is interesting for it is like nothing known today. Also referred to as lndra’s Dart, it is operated by a circular reflecting mechanism. It is not fired, but turned on like a searchlight. Immediately a glow comes out from the mechanism: a shaft of light, growing steadily stronger until the target has been completely consumed. Its power is considerable, for on a perfectly fine day, it immediately causes a great disturbance in nature. Winds blow, water boils, animals run amok. The only thing that can counteract it is another Brahma Weapon. Two of these, operating in opposition, completely neutralise one another, which strongly suggests that they worked on a vibrationary principle, which could be neutralised by carefully turning opposing waves.
The restrictions given against the indiscriminate use of these weapons are many. They may never be employed except in dire emergency, when all other weapons have been tried and failed. They may not be used against civilians nor against soldiers in retreat.
Drona is roundly admonished for breaking these rules and told that he will have his power withdrawn if he ever does it again: "Thou hast with the Brahma Weapon burnt the men of Earth who are unacquainted with arms (civilians). This act is not righteous. Do thou not again perpetrate such a sinful act.’ 37
37/ P. Chandra Roy, 1889, Drona Parva.
Before using the Brahma Weapons, the operator invariably ‘touches water’, which to us would imply the making of an electrical contact, or a good ‘earthing’. The effects are described in many places.
‘Drona’s son touched water and discharged the ‘Narayana’. Violent winds began to blow, showers of rain fell. Peals of thunder were heard, although the sky was cloudless. Earth shook. The seas swelled up in their confusion. Mountain summits split. Darkness set in. 37
‘The Brahma Weapon afflicted Partha and all beings. Earth with all her mountains trembled Terrible winds began to blow. The seas swelled in agitation.’ 37
37/ P. Chandra Roy, 1889, Drona Parva.
In the rout following this desolation a curious thing happens. Among the stampeding, screaming elephants, runaway chariots and blazing desolation, the fleeing soldiers rush off to the nearest water where they strip and wash themselves and their arms while the rout is still in progress.
Now why should they stop to have a bath and wash their armour in water (never very good for it at the best of times) at a moment like this, unless they were frightened of being contaminated by something—unless some peculiar quality had been imparted to their armour by the blast that they knew would be fatal unless swiftly counteracted ?
We are told that only those wearing metal or grasping metal objects will be hurt by the Brahma Weapon. Those who throw down their arms and leave their chariots will not be slain by it. But those who even think to contend against it shall be slain even though they hide deep in the earth.’ 37
37/ P. Chandra Roy, 1889, Drona Parva.
The importance of avoiding metal when the weapon is active is frequently stressed. In one battle Bhimasena is narrowly rescued from certain death by being dragged from his chariot at the last moment.
‘Enveloped by the weapon of Drona’s Son, Bhima, with his steeds, driver and chariot, became incapable of being gazed upon. Like a fire of blazing flames, in the midst of another fire, all the fierce rays began to proceed towards Bhima’s chariot. As the Yuga Fire consuming the Universe comes at last and enters the mouth of the Creator, so that weapon began to enter the body of Bhima.’ 38
38/ The blast of the super-weapons was many times brighter than the sun. To describe it adequately the ancient writers frequently make comparison to ultimate dissolution of our solar system when the sun suddenly flares up into a Supernova, expands and devours the planets one by one; a tenet recently evolved by modern science, but frequently mentioned in the ancient books, i.e.: ‘Arjuna burned all the Kurus by the heat of his weapons like the sun that appears at the end of the Yuga (age) consuming all creatures’. (Drona Parva.)
Seeing this, Krishna and Arjuna shout to him to throw down his arms and get away from his chariot as quick as he can. Bhima, overwhelmed by the blazing electrical fire, stands in a daze muttering abuse at the enemy. Whereupon his two friends, who have already taken protective measures, jump down from their own cars and run across to him, shading their eyes from the glare while ‘That weapon of Drona’s Son, directed against Bhima, increased in energy and power.’
Grabbing him by the arms, they drag him from the platform, throw him to the ground, and quickly disarm him. Whereupon the weapon is ‘quieted’, the winds cease, and the blue sky is seen again. But Bhima is furious and feels he has suffered an ignominious defeat in the eyes of the enemy.
At the next encounter the two sides are more evenly matched. Bhima, on his chariot, rushes to attack, and once again becomes the target for the blinding rays of the super-weapon. This time it is neutralised.
‘Beholding Bhima overwhelmed by that weapon, Dhahajaya neutralised its energy by covering it with the "Varuna Weapon ". None could see that he had thus been covered by the "Varuna Weapon " owing to the fiery force that enveloped him.
‘The weapon of Drona’s Son began to enter the body of Bhima. As one cannot perceive a fire if it penetrates into the sun, nor the sun if it penetrates into a fire, even so, none could perceive the energy that penetrated into Bhima’s body.’ 37 As in an earlier combat, when Partha counteracted Drona with his Brahma Weapon, so now: ‘all agitation in Nature was speedily pacified.’
37/ P. Chandra Roy, 1889, Drona Parva.
So far the flying saucers have been singularly peaceful. In all the centuries they have been in our skies, I have been unable to find a single case of hostile action. The prehistoric earth-made saucer, or vimana, was, however, a formidable weapon in war. Let me give you a few instances of how they were used to attack cities and armies, and of the appalling destruction that resulted. ‘Cukra, riding in that excellent vimana—which was powered by Celestial Forces, proceeded for the destruction of the Triple City.’ For this particular operation it had been decided previously: ‘to build a vimana of great power.’
The city is so strong that only a weapon that can destroy its three sections at once is deemed practicable: ‘These three parts are to be pierced by ane missile, by no other means can their destruction be effected.’
First of all a general bombardment takes place: ‘Cukra, surrounded by the Maruts, began hurling his thunder upon the Triple City from all sides.’
Then the terrible ‘one missile’ is used: ‘He flings a missile which contained the Power of the Universe, at the Triple City... the city began to burn.... Smoke, looking like ten thousand suns, blazed up in splendour.’
So terrible is this weapon that even the gods are afraid: ‘Seeing the Powers of the Universe united in one place, the gods became filled with wonder.’ In fact they have to intervene and extinguish the fire, saying: ‘Do not burn the whole world to ashes.’
I do not wish to confuse the issue at this point for we are trying to confine the subject, more or less, to vimanas. But in 1945 did not the American Government succeed in producing a weapon that also contained the basic Power of the Universe ?
Vimanas were also used against armies:
‘A huge and terrible vimana made of black iron, it was 400 yojanas high and as many wide, equipped with engines set in their proper places. No steeds nor elephants propelled it. Instead it was driven by machines that looked like [the size of] elephants.’ 39
39/ Ghatotrachabadma.
An eye witness on the ground tells of the air bombardment of his army, by the Rakshasas:
‘We beheld in the sky what appeared to us to be a mass of scarlet cloud resembling the fierce flames of a blazing fire. From this mass many blazing missiles flashed, and tremendous roars, like the noise of a thousand drums beaten at once. And from it fell many weapons winged with gold and thousands of thunderbolts, with loud explosions, and many hundreds of fiery wheels. Loud became the uproar of falling horses, slain by these missiles, and of mighty elephants struck by the explosions. With cries of " Oh " and " Alas ", the wandering army seemed on the point of being annihilated. Those terrible Rakshasas had the shape of large mounds stationed in the sky. 40
40/ Karan Parva.
All would have been lost, had not Kama produced a secret weapon which knocked the Rakshasa bombing fleet out of the sky:
‘Karna took up that terrible weapon, the tongue of the Destroyer, the Sister of Death, a terrible and effulgent weapon. When the Rakshasas saw that excellent and blazing weapon pointed up at them they were afraid.... The resplendent missile soared aloft into the night sky and entered the starlike formation... and reduced to ashes the Rakshasa’s vimana. The enemy craft fell from the sky with a terrible noise.’
Even while falling to Earth out of control one of the vengeful Rakshasas was determined to do as much damage as possible, so he adopted the recent Japanese technique of ‘Kamakasi’ and crashed his monstrous machine on to the troops below so that ‘a part of the army were crushed and pressed into the earth.’
Recall—
‘The shape of large mounds stationed in the sky.’
‘Like a mass of azure cloud in the sky, surrounded by a rainbow.
‘Vimanas decked and equipped according to rule, looked like heavenly structures in the sky... borne away they looked like highly beautiful flights of birds.’ 41
41/ They were not all built in the original, more efficient circular shape. The ‘Ramayana’ describes aerial cars of changing whim and fashion; shaped like horses, eagles and elephants. But again it is possible that these were merely the names given to different sizes or classes of vimanas, just as we give our own ‘aerial cars’ names like Hornet, Moth, Dragon-fly, Albatross, Gull, etc., after whatever bird or animal that takes the maker’s fancy.
The ‘Puspaka Vimana’ was possibly of the ‘Elephant’ class with its furnishings, windows, many apartments and ability to carry ‘all the vanaras as well as Rama, Sita and Laksmana’.
We get occasionally stories of giant Vimanas, which seem to savour of ‘daiva’, in the ‘Mahabharata’ when the Asura Maya sets out in a huge gorgeous golden circular construction with four power plants and a circumference of twelve thousand cubits—about four times the size of the monster that destroyed Captain Mantell’s fighter plane over Godman Field.
Couldn’t the same be said for flying saucers ?
The Ghatotrachabadma makes a statement that is even more startling: ‘Gifted with great energy the Rakshasa once more came down to Earth in his golden vimana .. when it had landed it looked like a beautifully shaped mound of antimony on the surface of the ground.’
In the recent film The Day the Earth Stood Still, a clever representation was given of a flying saucer landing in a Washington public park.
It sat there on the grass, a shapely silvery mound of gleaming metal; for which I can think of no better description than: ‘a beautifully shaped mound of antimony on the surface of the ground.’
(10)
Saucers For a Song
No matter how many Vimanas come to light from hindu. Brahmin, Sanskrit and Pali literature, the secret of the power that moved them silently or musically, or with a mighty roar, is still denied us. Where can we search for a force that will carry a great aerial construction immense distances and to vast heights, without the use of fuel ?
Whoever heard of getting something for nothing—of power without loss or expenditure ? Until a few months ago such a thought was against all the known laws of energy and its conservation, and any physicist would have told you politely and firmly that it was impossible, just as an eminent Professor once told Edison, when treated to an actual demonstration of the first talking machine. The learned Professor was deeply offended and insisted that Edison was employing some kind of ventriloquist’s deceit, for everyone knew that sound could not be conserved—certainly not in little wax cylinders. The Professor was proved wrong, and his spiritual heirs are now undergoing the same salutary experience since they have got into the higher realms of nuclear physics, where certain work—particularly that concerned with the hydrogen bomb—entails the actual ‘creation’ of matter from energy. The laws concerning the conservation of energy are now undergoing a substantial modification, but it will probably not be until about 1986 before their full significance is understood.
But oddly enough, this mysterious Force made a brief reappearance in New York, of all places, during the 1890s. Overlooked in all the bustle and bustle with which Progress is progressing on its way, a lonely inventor named John Worrell Keely, of Philadelphia, Pa., rediscovered this lost power and gave it the name ‘Dynaspheric Force.’
Keely’s experiments aroused considerable interest at the time, and the wealthy Barnato Brothers sent their representative, Ricardo Seaver, across the Atlantic to investigate his work. This was long before anyone had produced a television set, discovered cosmic rays, or thought about conditions existing above the then current ‘Fourth State of Matter’.
Keely stated that, while investigating the magnetic forces flowing between the Earth’s two poles, he had discovered that ‘corpuscles of matter could be divided by vibration’ 42 and that he could apply this principle to drive a motor. For his demonstration to Seaver, Keely stood at one end of his New York laboratory; the motor was mounted at the other. Then he played a certain note on a violin, whereupon the 25-h.p. motor began to turn, gaining speed until it practically jumped its mountings. It ran at this high speed during which time the inventor did nothing more. Eventually, to stop it, he again took the violin and played a discord, whereupon the Force seemed to be withdrawn and the motor came to a stop. The surprised visitor was then invited to try to start the machine himself using the same violin. At first he was unsuccessful, but when Keely touched him he was able to start and stop the engine.
42/ Notice the similar idea behind Keely’s word ‘corpuscles of matter could be divided by vibration‘ and the modern discoveries that atoms can be smashed by ultra-high frequencies. We are dealing with a lower order of energy but the new concept is in accord with Keely’s postulation.
Why should this be ? From the surviving Keely papers we read concerning a later motor: ’ At one time the shareholders of the Keely Motor Company put a man in his workshop for the express purpose of discovering his secret. After six months of close watching, he said to J. W. Keely one day: "I know how it is done now." They had been setting the machine up together and Keely had been manipulating the stop-cock which turned the force on and off. "Try it then," was the answer. The man turned the cock and nothing happened.
‘“Let me see you do it again," the man said to Keely. The latter complied, and the machinery operated at once. Again the other tried, but without success. Then Keely put his hand on his shoulder and told him to try once more. He did so with the result of an instantaneous production of current.’
We see then, that in order to produce the required vibration Keely’s personal vibration was needed. The one problem which he never succeeded in solving was to produce a machine which would operate without the personal ‘vibration‘ or ‘will-power’ of the operator. Commenting on this, the author of The Secret Doctrine says:
‘It is just because Keely’s discovery would lead to knowledge of one of the most occult secrets, a secret which can never be allowed to fall into the hands of the masses, that failure to push his discovery to its logical conclusions seems certain to Occultists... the results obtained from the fifth and sixth planes of the Etheric or Astral Force will never be permitted to serve for purposes of commerce and traffic.’ The Secret Doctrine goes on to confirm what I had already-guessed—an easy guess:
‘If the question is asked why Mr. Keely was not allowed to pass a certain limit, the answer is easy; it was because what he had discovered was the terrible sidereal Force known to, and named by, the Atlanteans Mash-Mak and by the Aryan Rishis in their Astra Vidya by a name that we do not care to give. It is the Vril of Bulwer Lytton’s Coming Race and of the coming races of our mankind. The name Vril may be a fiction; the Force itself is a fact, since it is mentioned in all the secret books.’ 43
43/ The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, Adyar Edition.
It is this vibratory Force which, when aimed at an army from an Agniratha (Firechariot) fixed on a flying vessel, according to the instructions found in the Astra Vidya, would reduce to ashes a hundred thousand men and elements as easily as it would a dead rat.
‘It is allegorised in the Vishnu Purana, in the Ramayana and other works, in the fables about the sage Kapila whose " glance made a mountain of ashes of King Sagara’s 60,000 sons", and which is explained in the Esoteric Works, and referred to as the " Kapilaksha "—Kapila’s Eye. And is it this Satanic Force which, once in the hands of some modern Attila, would in a few days reduce Europe to its primitive chaotic state, with no man left alive to tell the tale—is it this Force which is to become the common property of all men alike ?’ 43
43/ The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, Adyar Edition.
The answer to this question, asked about eighty years ago, seems to be ‘Yes‘: but before we are all reduced to ashes, let us take a look at Keely’s next experiment. He made a model metal airship weighing about 81b. and attached it to a thin platinum wire. The other end of the wire was joined to his ‘sympathetic transformer’ and again applied the mysterious sonic principle. By this he was able to make the airship rise in the air, hover, descend and move about at will.
Now compare—12 August, 1950. The scene is the little mountain village of Campello, near the St. Gotthard Pass in Switzerland. Many people, including a professor of physics, reported eighty to a hundred flying saucers passing overhead. ‘As they passed they made a noise like an organ,’ said the professor. Others described it as the sound of a tremendous chord of music —’ a celestial symphony.’
‘Melodious sound as it coursed along its airy way.’
And on 22 May 1947 clusters of flying saucers shot across Denmark at tree-top height making a deep, tuneful, humming sound—like huge bees or ‘like vacuum cleaners’, said a mechanically-minded Dane. 44
‘A vimana can be moved by tunes and rythms.’—Samar.
‘By music alone, some were propelled.’—Book of Oahspe.
‘People did not walk up and down stairs in the very old days,’ say the legends of the Carribes. ‘They hit a plate and made a song and the song said where they wanted to go—and so they went...’
‘Anybody could dance in the air like leaves in a storm. Everything was so light.’ 44
44/ At this juncture, Professor A. C. B. Lovell, of Manchester University, springs to Menzel’s defence (The Listener, 2 July, 1953), pointing out that meteors sometimes make a drumming or buzzing noise at the point of fall. Possibly they do; but the subject in question happens to be not drumming or buzzing meteors but musically inclined flying saucers. Not one of these noisy saucers has fallen to the ground even though in some cases it has passed within a few feet of witnesses’ housetops (see Chapter 10), nor have meteors been found within hundreds of miles after such occurrences.
With a little encouragement I may be able to help Professor Lovell prove that London buses are only ionised pockets of air reflecting through temperature inversions the red neon signs of Piccadilly Circus, for which 1 should doubtless receive an Emeritus Chair.
According to the folk-lore of Galway, Ireland, on the opposite side of the Atlantic: ‘In the old days everybody danced in the air like leaves in the autumn wind... people made a song to a plate.’ And from St. Vincent Island in the West Indies comes this legend: ‘The wise people of old could fly quite easily. They had no wings. They clapped on gold plates, made music on them and flew.’ 45
45/ Wilkins, Secret Cities of South America.
Among the gifts which Montezuma, the last Aztec Emperor, gave to Cortez (who nobly rewarded him with torture and death) were two large flat gold disks about the size of gramophone records. These were said to be emblems of royalty and were intended for King Charles V of Spain and his Queen. The King’s disk was about a quarter of an inch thick; the Queen’s was much thinner. Montezuma knew what the disks were for, but it seems that Cortez looked upon them as very clumsy and heavy things to wear, and it is doubtful if they ever reached Spain, for they are not listed in any of the treasure ships’ inventories. These disks were cut to a size and thickness exactly corresponding to the size of the person for whom they were intended. They had to be of the correct size so as to suit the wavelengths of his personal vibrations. Thus the owner alone could use them.
Keely’s machine only worked when he was present and consciously directing his vibrations towards them.
Evidently the Spanish King never received, or never tried out his flying disks; had he done so there would surely be a minute in the most holy records of the Inquisition lamenting the fact that: ‘His Majesty, on striking a vile heathen cymbal, was seized by Satan and cast up into the air.’
Where is the connection with flying saucers ? I do not yet know. I see only many fragments divided by time and space, yet strangely alike. It is as if a jigsaw has been scattered over a field. There is no immediate connection, and yet there is a unity to all the pieces.
The Aztec disks were carefully measured to fit their user. Could the great secret of scientific levitation have been preserved up to the sixteenth century as the royal prerogative af the Incas ? Is it still preserved ? Somewhere, secretly, handed down from generation to generation under fearful vows lest it fall into the hands of the white destroyer ?
The car celestial uttered a melodious humming sound. Built by a people more civilised than the Aztecs, it might have utilised an extension of the same principle. Perhaps in its ‘two stories and many chambers ‘it contained multiple batteries of disks or a single huge resonant plate which, when harmonised to the vibrations of the pilot, would raise not just a single man, but the whole great machine.
What about the dark and light metals that fell on Maurv Island ?
Take another look at Keely’s engine. He struck a note and the engine ran until stopped by a discord He struck another, and a model airship rose from the ground. Whether sound was used to give Elliott’s ‘Ethenc Force‘ its first impulse or whether it was a mental radiation from the pilot, the idea is the same—a vibration. Sonic and mental waves are both vibrations. Just as the soundless waves entering a radio produce a physical sound in a lower plane and octave.
The science of harmonics and their application as a source of power was well understood until disaster overtook civilization and the great mother country sank into an abyss of destruction, spreading her surviving children to Brazil, Yucatan and Peru on one side, and to Egypt, India and Chaldea on the other.
The Drona Parva gives a beautiful, though veiled, description of how sound tuned to the will of the operators provided the motive power of the Cukra vimana, one of the greatest ever built:
‘We shall build a vimana of great power. The mind became the ground which supported that vimana. speech became the tracks on which it was to proceed. All speeches and sciences were gathered together within it, all hymns, and the Vedic Sound v ash at also. And the syllable om placed before that car made it exceedingly beautiful. When it set out, its roar filled all points of the compass.’
This needs a little analysis. Mental power, harmonised to certain magnetic forces, provided the lift. Graduated harmonics guided it on the desired path. The whole of the ancient sciences as known at the time had been employed to produce this masterpiece of celestial navigation. The Vedic ‘Word of Power’ Vashat is used to indicate and emphasise the use of harmonics. The Hindu ‘Word of Power’ om (the Fifth Syllable of the ‘Ineffable Name’) is also given to show how perfectly the whole project was attuned to the natural cosmic forces that ‘made it exceedingly beautiful’.
I have other records on my files of flying saucers that produced a strange musical note, described by observers as unlike any sound they had ever heard. For example:
At 5.50 p.m. on 27 September 1952 George H. Williamson, D.sc, of Prescott, Arizona, heard and saw a colossal saucer pass over his house with a noise he described as different and more powerful than a jet, musical, rather like a huge swarm of bees.
The colossal forces latent in properly regulated vibrations have long been suspected by modern science, and I believe I am right in saying that amazing discoveries have recently been made along those lines which may soon completely revolutionise our world—for better or for worse.
But what happened to Keely ?
His invention was in advance of the time. He died, poverty-stricken and broken-hearted; in disillusion he destroyed his models and most of his papers. Only a few pamphlets published by his patron, Mrs Bloomfield-Moore, remain to prove that he or ‘dynaspheric force‘ ever made a brief reappearance on this planet. 46
46/ I believe that this Force, or something very similar, was discovered again by Lester Henderson, of Pittsburg. Pa., in 1928, who produced a motor said to derive its energy purely from the Earth’s magnetic field. Henderson made a small model, powerful enough to light two 110-volt lamps. Such an outrageous flouting of Orthodox Proprietaries brought swift retribution in the form of Herr Doktor Hochstetter (principal of a research laboratory of the same name in Pittsburg), who went to pains to expose Henderson as a wicked, irreverent fraud. The Herr Doktor—’ so that pure science might shine forth untarnished ‘—went to the expense of hiring a lecture platform from whence to denounce Henderson and all his works, by demonstrating an exact model of the motor which, as was to be expected, failed to work. Hochstetter fumed that some years earlier Henderson had hidden a tiny battery in the motor. Quite how this was supposed to have run two 110-volt lamps, he didn’t say. Henderson admitted the battery as being a ‘blind‘ to lead inquisitive snoopers off the scent before he had patented his process. The good Doktor also failed to notice that Henderson at the time was in hospital recovering from a 2,000-volt shock which had suddenly blasted out of his motor during a demonstration. But. as is usually the way with these things, Hochstetter succeeded with his public damnation, and Henderson, discouraged, faded into obscurity.
Meanwhile we struggle bravely with almost insurmountable problems of building a rocket large enough to contain fuel with a sufficient exhaust velocity to lift a machine out of the Earth’s gravity. Tons and tons of expensive fuel which blows out at seven miles per second would be required, and millions of pounds would have to be spent on research and complicated equipment: and all so that some other unfortunate planet may enjoy the blessings of earthly ways and earthly politics; may become a bone of contention, a kind of Cosmic Korea to be fought over by the two opposing halves of our ant heap.
How funny if, all along, the answer could have been bought literally ‘for a song’.
(11)
Saucers in Atlantis
A large ball of steel will fly in the air if the gravitational pull of the Earth is neutralised by a magnetic force acting in the opposite direction. Nothing appears to support that ball. Nothing is visible, nothing tangible, nothing audible. If the Earth’s cold magnetic current could be studied, measured and analysed, sooner or later means might be found of producing equal and opposite forces, which would induce a weightless condition in any solid body to which they were applied. Increase them and they would exceed the pull of the Earth’s magnetism and move the body out into space.
Could the personal vibration of the body be raised sufficiently to produce this result ? Witnessed cases of levitation seem to say ‘Yes’. This might happen accidentally as with Saint Teresa, and with other saints who were seen to rise off the ground when the intensity of their devotions raised their vibrations to the required pitch. It might also happen to order, if the will were suitably tuned. James Churchward had the good fortune to discuss this with an old Indian Rishi who had taken a great fancy to him and told him of things normally not discussed with white men ‘Man has the power over what you call gravity,’ said the Rishi. ‘He can raise his vibrations above the Earth’s cold magnetic force and nullify its effects. It is only this force which draws and anchors him to the ground. When the magnetic force is nullified, man’s body being matter, and matter in itself having no weight, enables him to raise his body and float through the air. He can walk or float over water as on land. Weight measures the degree of attraction and pull which the magnetic force is enabled to exert on it. Without the magnetic pull there is no weight. The largest heavenly body, star or sun, has no weight in space. Jesus, the greatest Master who has ever been on Earth, gave a practical demonstration of this when He walked upon the water as related in your Bible. He was simply using, to Him, a well-known science which was known and practised years ago by our great forefathers of the Earth’s first civilisation. My son, these ancient cosmic forces must all be regained and brought back again to us before this world can come to its end, for without them man cannot be perfect. It is destined that man shall be perfect before the end.’ 47
47/ James Churchward, The Cosmic Forces of Mu.
Pause to consider—huge stones brought hundreds of miles to build ancient monuments; Irish Druidic stones weighing many tons which geologists assert occur in their natural state only in Africa; an Egyptian obelisk nearly 200 feet long lying in its quarry from which no possible amount of slave labour could have extracted it had it been completed; the great 1,800-ton blocks of cut stone lying at Balbek, quarried by the identical methods used on the unfinished seventy-foot monolith on Easter Island, at the opposite side of the globe; saw marks on Egyptian blocks which by calculation would require a saw exerting a pressure of several tons to produce.
Among the Arabs is an old legend concerning the transport of the great Egyptian stones: ‘They put sheets of papyrus on which were written many secret things beneath the stones and then struck them with a rod, whereupon they moved through the air the distance of one bowshot. In this way they eventually reached the pyramid.’ 48
48/ Kingsland, The Great Pyramid in Fact and Theory,
The ‘papyrus’ might have been some insulating substance to reduce the Earth’s magnetic pull. Striking the stones with a rod might be a hazy memory in the minds of bewildered and frightened natives who saw the ‘personal vibration‘ or sonic power applied to the stones through some sort of conducting rod—a copper ruler perhaps cut to the operators’ conditions.
Then why, we ask. if they knew so much more than we, did they disappear so completely, and with them all the wonderful art and knowledge they had learned ? The same question might well be asked in ten thousand years’ time of the ruins of our own civilisation, and the same answer will be true. The Ancient Civilisation perished as must all men perish whose personal power outstrips their wisdom. Man learned much of the subtle sciences and used them to advance his personal comfort and aggrandisement instead of to improve himself and the wisdom of all mankind. The result—a series of world cataclysms, one of which is probably the story of the Biblical Flood.
And from the other hemisphere come South American legends concerning the destruction of the first civilisation, which may be the fabled Atlantis. There was, say the legends, a temple of the mysteries, called the ‘House of the Flame’, in which the priest-scientists kept the secrets of cosmic power. No one except the Initiates was allowed to approach the ‘House of the Flame‘ without suffering instant death.
Now a young prince, says the story, ventured into the forbidden precincts and, like a child playing with things it shouldn’t, experimented with the terrible powers contained there in great underground vaults and tunnels. As a result, cosmic power was unleashed, flames burst out of the earth and destroyed nearly the whole country, which then sank beneath the sea with its 60,000,000 inhabitants.
Adam is commanded in Genesis not to eat the fruit of the tree of Knowledge. He does so, and the Garden of Eden, the glorious first civilisation, is destroyed. A cherub with a ‘fiery sword‘ drives him forth.
The Greek Pandora was told not to open a certain box. She did so and evil and misery came into the world. Is there a connection between any of these symbolic fables ? Pandora’s box, the fruit of forbidden knowledge, the secrets of the forbidden ‘House of the Flame’, seem only different ways of saying the same thing allegorically: that the world’s previous scientific civilisation perished through too much knowledge and too little wisdom.
In the Popul Vuh, the gods are worried that man knows all and sees all like themselves, so they blow mist in his eyes so he cannot see far and near at once. In other words, man’s knowledge of the secret sciences is reduced—for his own good, and for the health of the entire solar system in general.
The Book of Dzyan says:
‘Then the Fourth Race (Atlanteans) grew tall with pride. We are the kings, they said, we are the gods. They built temples for the human body. Male and female they worshipped (phallicism). Then the Third Eye acted no longer (man’s knowledge reduced, the psychic organs ceased to function)...
The first great waters came. They swallowed the Seven Great Islands. All holy saved, the unholy destroyed. With them most of the huge animals (saurians) produced from the sweat of the Earth.’
Air travel was well advanced in those days. According to another ancient commentary which tells in strange, moving language how the good rulers of Atlantis left the doomed continent by air, having first removed the aircraft of the evil-doers whom they had put in a hypnotic trance. When they awoke it was too late. The Great Flood was upon them; the terrible purification had begun.
‘The Great King of the Dazzling Face was sad at seeing the sins of the Black-faced (evil-doers). He sent his vimanas to all his brother kings with pious men, saying: "Prepare. Arise, ye men of the Good Law and cross the lands while yet dry. The Lords of the Storm are approaching. One night and two days only shall the Lords of the Dark Face (sorcerers) live on this patient land. She is doomed and they have to descend with her. The nether Lords of the Fires are preparing their fiery weapons. But the Lords of the Dark Eye are stronger than they. They are versed in highest magical knowledge. Come, use your own. Let every Adept cause the vimana of every Lord of the Dark Face to come into his hands lest any of those sorcerers should by its means escape from the waters, avoid the Rod of Karma and save his wicked people ".’ Overcome with grief the great King weeps. Yet even he wishes the evil-doers to be spared pain.
‘Then the Great King fell upon his Dazzling Face and wept. When the Kings assembled the waters had already moved. But the nations had now crossed the dry lands. They were beyond the watermark. The Kings reached them in their vimanas and led them to the lands of fire and metal.... When the Lords of the Dark Face awoke and looked for their vimanas in order to escape the waters they found them gone.’ 49
49/ The Secret Doctrine, Vol. III, Adyar Edition.
Then came the catastrophe. For several years, say the Indian, Puranas, and the South American, Popul Vuh, the stars and the sun and the sky were hidden by volcanic clouds and violent storms. It seemed that the end of the world had come. And the mighty Adept rulers left in despair. There is one sentence in the Old Commentary that rings out like the chill death-knell of that great civilisation:
‘The Azure seats are empty. The Lords of the Dazzling Face are departed in wrath.’’
Their departure marked the end of an age, and heralded in the mid-point of our planet’s cycle from whence onwards war, struggle, and chaos were to be the order of the day until a date (according to the Hindu figures) 300,000 years from now, when the spiritual and higher mental forces will have regained full mastery over matter.
Until then those Azure Thrones remain empty. Never again shall we see a human being of the highest possible Order ruling tribe or nation, nor gaze upon his Sun-aura or Dazzling Face which is the visible, unmistakable mark of the Adept unveiled. The Lords have departed, tome with their people and ‘keepers of the Good Laws’. Others, we are told, left the Planet Earth for ever.
Where did they go ?
The vimanas could travel to the Solar Region (Suryamandala) and thence to the Stellar Region (Naksatra) powered by forces beyond our comprehension. If, by using crude combustion giving an exhaust velocity of seven miles per second, we think we shall shortly be able to leave our planet and cruise in space, we should be ill-advised to laugh at those who could achieve the same by using the far mightier cosmic forces described in the ancient books. And if the question is asked—where did earlier space travellers go ? Venus would be the obvious answer. No other planet in our system holds such attraction for Earthlings who strive after perfection.
(12)
Are Vimanas Flying Saucers ?
I find three more characteristic shared by Vimanas and flying saucers. Things written thousands of years ago about vimanas bear an uncanny resemblance to things written today about saucers. The vimanas were round, sometimes boat-shaped. They glowed in the dark. They had twin rows of nozzles along the sides through which the Force could be released to control their manoeuvres.
On 22 March 1950 two American airline pilots, Adams and Anderson, saw a peculiar object from their cockpit windows. It circled their aircraft with ease, coming near enough for them to observe a double row of bluish lights, the weirdest, strongest light they had ever seen, along its great length. They took the lights for brilliantly illuminated cabin windows and were surprised that they saw no faces looking out at them. It also struck them as odd that the cabin of this monster should be so brightly lit, making observation difficult, if not impossible, from within. Their bewilderment is soon explained if what they mistook for portholes were in reality the double row of ‘jets’ known to be used in one type of Atlantean vimana.
Vimanas glowed at night, but not for any decorative purpose. Colour and colour-changes are inseparable from the operation of the higher etheric powers. Saucers are usually seen to give out an unearthly green, purple or bluish glow changing to a livid red or orange when accelerating rapidly. Apart from the obvious inference, it might be worth the while of more advanced students of the Occult to note these colours carefully and relate them to their proper correspondences in the different planes, and they will obtain some interesting results. Those who have studied colour seriously are now covering ground that will be common scientific knowledge in the next century. Vibration, manifest as sound and colour and used conjointly with either, may soon be demonstrated as a more effective power than the greatest rocket yet on the drawing board.
Hope that we are on the threshold of rediscovering this subtle force is given by the Adept known to students as ‘The Tibetan’, who, in 1920, wrote:
‘First, physical plane scientists will be able to speak with authority anent the fourth ether, even though they may not recognise it as the lowest of the four etheric grades of substance; its sphere of influence and its utilisation will be comprehended, and " Force " as a factor in matter, or the electrical manifestation of energy with indefinite limits, will be as well understood as is hydrogen at this time. Indications of this can already be seen in the discovery of radium, and the study of radioactive substances and of electronic demonstration. This knowledge will revolutionise the life of man; it will put into his hands that which the occultists call "power of the fourth order" (on the physical plane). It will enable him to utilise electrical energy for the regulation of his everyday life in a way as yet incomprehensible; it will produce new methods of illuminating, and of heating the world at a small cost and with practically no initial outlay. Transportation by sea and land will be largely superseded with the utilisation of air routes and the transit of large bodies through the air by means of the instantaneous use of the force or energy inherent in the ether itself, will take the place of the present methods.’
‘This will come through the study of the place of the solar system in the universal whole and the effect certain constellations have on it.... This will lead to a close investigation of polar conditions in the Earth, of the planetary and magnetic currents, and of the electrical intercourse between our Earth, and the Venusian and Martian planetary schemes. When this has been accomplished astronomy and esoteric astrology will be revolutionised. This will come at the close of the century after a scientific discovery of even greater importance than that as to the nature of the atom.’ 50
50/ A. Bailey, A Treatise on Cosmic Fire.
The ‘unearthly light’ seen by Adams and Anderson was out of time. To their grandchildren it will be as common as the electric light is to us. Our grandfathers would have considered a neon sign something out of this world, probably a manifestation of the evil one.
Some of the vimanas travelled in great waves, approaching and receding from the earth. This may or may not have been due to their following certain definite magnetic paths now known to surround and interpenetrate the planet. These magnetic forces were known to the Atlanteans, as we gather from Stanza XI of Dzyan: ‘The matter of Fohat circulates... the wheel that is not glimpsed moves in rapid revolution within the slower outer case (the crust of our planet).’
I have often wondered whether we do now in fact obtain a glimpse of the ‘wheel that is not glimpsed‘ in those ‘snowstorms‘ or streaks which dart across television screens and which relate to the fourth ether of occultism and the fourth state of matter of science.
Concerning his up-and-down motion of some vimanas, read what Donald Keyhoe wrote in his interesting book, The Flying Saucers are Real: ‘On the same day about two hours later a sky phenomenon was observed by several watchers over Lock-bourne Airbase, Columbia, Ohio. It was described as round, or oval, larger than a C47 and travelling... faster than 500 m.p.h. it glowed from white to orange .. it made motions like a lift, and at one time appeared to touch the ground.’ (p. 21.)
And on another occasion, two American officers reported a saucer flying along a valley with a ‘lift-like’ motion. ‘On 29 May 1951 at 3.48 p.m. three technical writers for the aerophysics department of North American Aviation’s plant at Downey, outside Los Angeles, were chatting on the factory grounds. They were Victor Black, Werner Eichler and Ed. J. Sullivan. All at once they stared at the sky. Sullivan describes what they saw:
‘“Approximately thirty glowing, meteor-like objects sprayed out of the east at a point about forty-five degrees above the horizon, executed a right-angle turn and swept across the sky in an undulating vertical formation.... They moved with the motion of flat stones skipping across a smooth pond ".’ 51
51/ Life, International. 23 May 1952.
Now the force emitted by the vimanas was sufficient to turn an enemy craft upside down or to bend trees as they passed over the great prehistoric forests. Keyhoe writes: ‘24 June 1947. A Portland prospector named Fred Johnson working up in the Cascade Mountains spotted five or six disks banking in the sun... then he noticed that the compass hand on his special watch was weaving wildly from side to side.’ (p. 24.)
And two observers at Twin Falls, Idaho, saw a disk fairly low down over a forest Although it was a perfectly calm day the trees beneath it were whipping about as if lashed by a furious gale. Yet they thought it was too high up to cause such a disturbance by the backwash of an ordinary jet engine. I have heard several other reports of this kind of occurrence.
Vimanas were sometimes made of metal, at other times of layers of thin wood cemented together by a chemical process that made them as tough as metal. Did not the De Havilland Aircraft Company produce a process during the recent war known as ‘wood lamination‘ which consisted of cementing thin layers of plywood together under great pressure, to produce something lighter than metal but equally strong, and with it manufactured those highly successful all-wooden warplanes, the Hornet and the Mosquito ? If so, it seems that Sir Geoffrey de Havilland is the first to reintroduce a process known and used in Atlantis.
Pic. 1
Venusian flying saucer photographed by George Adamski through his six-inch telescope. Palomar Gardens. California. 9.10 a.m., December 13, 1952
Pic. 2
A detailed view of one of the three landing spheres on Adamski's flying saucer
Pic. 3
The Venusian saucer travelling fast over low trees. Taken with an ordinary camera by Sgt. Jerrold E. Baker, December 13, 1952
Pic. 4
Another photograph taken by Adamski on December 13, showing the underside of the Venusian saucer
Pic. 5
A similar croft seen by Adamski through his telescope passing between earth and the moon. 2.30 a.m., June 6, 1950
Pic. 6
A formation of space craft apparently rising from the moon. May 29, 1950
Pic. 7
March 5, 1951. Cigar-shaped space craft releasing flying saucers
Pic. 8
7.58 a.m. May 1, 1952. A giant carrier ship seen hovering about thirty miles away
(13)
The Solar System
I find it hard to belive that the cosmic economy has ever brought or ever shall bring a planet into existence without the intention that, at some time in its career, it shall bear a form of sentient and intelligent life. According to our instruments, and the calculations based on what they say, the Solar System is a very large place. It is millions of miles from one planet to the next; while from here to the system of which our nearest star is the presiding sun, would require several years’ travelling at the speed of light.
All this is based on the assumption that light invariably travels at 186,000 miles per second, and that the neighbouring system is several ‘light years’ 52 away. But suppose light does not travel at all; suppose that light is ? Suppose that the nearest star is inconsiderably nearer than we imagined; or that there are ways of bridging distance into which the time-factor as we know it, does not enter ?
52/ In outer space where sizes are beyond our comprehension, distances are measured by ‘light years’, or the distance light is held to travel in one year, i.e. 186,000 x 60 x 60 x 24 x 365,25 miles.
Until we have made such a journey for ourselves, I do not see now we can positively make a statement one way or another. Simply because certain things seem to fit into a neat little pattern here on the surface of Earth, it does not follow absolutely that they will fit so neatly out in that mysterious spatial ocean into which none of us earthlings have ever penetrated. Everything We know—or think we know—concerning other celestial bodies has reached us via space, and via our own atmosphere, both of which, conceivably, might be so filled with little-known distortion factors as to invalidate most of our information.
The fish idea of the outside world must be strangely distorted by the watery medium in which he dwells. We live at the bottom of a similar (but far deeper) watery medium called ‘air‘; so until we can venture out and beyond and have a proper look-round for ourselves, we should treat the lofty calculations of astronomers with caution, to say the least. 53
53/ Since this was written Mt. Palomar Observatory has admitted a 100-200 per cent error in its former calculations regarding universal measurements. For example, our own galaxy is now at least 60,000 light years larger than previously imagined. Quite a little difference !
Objections are raised by the rocket devotees against the chances of other worlds visiting us. They complain that the expenditure in weight and fuel would make it almost impractical. I agree. So would the application of James Watt’s original steam-engine to powering a modern bomber.
Rockets are the last word in earthy notions of high-speed travel. One hundred years ago steam held this office. A century or so before that good horse-flesh and well-trimmed sail provided the ultimate in propulsion. So it is not to be expected that a people, even a few hundred years in advance of our own—or a people capable of creating machines that can rush through the atmosphere with a beautiful musical sound, or in complete and mysterious silence—must now look back upon their own rocket age as interesting museum material ?
My grandfather could recall the days when it was held that if a human body were to travel faster than the gallop of a horse it would be disintegrated instantaneously. Trains proved otherwise. A few years ago we can recall being told that nothing could exceed the speed of sound. A supersonic aeroplane would disintegrate. A supersonic aeroplane was built, and another theory of limitation was buried unmourned. Today we believe that the speed of light is the maximum rate a body could travel without being disintegrated into pure energy. Our grandchildren may live to see that, far from disintegrating, a super-luminary body retains its material essence but enters instead into that very interesting state of time-matter known as (because we have no better word for it) the ‘Fourth Dimension’, where time is annihilated and the traversing of near-infinite distance a possibility.
If this proves to be true, then inter-galactial as well as interplanetary travel may become an actuality, even for us.
Suppose now, for the sake of further argument, that the wonderful force that causes the components of atoms to whirl round central nuclei, and moons to spin round planets, planets to rotate round suns, suns to roll round galaxies and, possibly, galaxies to circle, with majestic quadrille, something infinitely greater; suppose that this splendid and colossal primary force (the Cosmic Serpent of the Ancients) could also be used to ‘skid‘ flying saucers from one system to another at speeds beyond our wildest conception ?
As I write this, I am riding on a great green luminous spaceship, some 8,000 miles in diameter, that is rushing through the Ocean of Space at many thousands of miles per minute. For the last two billion years this huge vessel has been careering through the Ocean silently and smoothly, without loss of power, and it will continue to do so until it reverts to its primal condition. Instead of messing about with rockets and jets and other extravagant wastes of fuel we might profitably study this great space-ship (for it is right here under our feet) and try to discover what makes it ‘float’ and what makes it move.
We should then try to float ourselves. After that, we should find out how to move and how to keep moving. When we have done this we shall have solved the secret of space-flight. It is as simple as all that.
I am not going to develop this theme with a pack of quasi-scientific jargon on ‘magnetism’, and I trust that no one will try to disparage it with the same; for not one of us mortals knows enough about it, one way or another, to make the effort worth while. But should anyone feel rash enough to compose a paper flatly denying this obvious possibility, I would like to point out that a similar paper was prepared by an eminent scientist for the benefit of the Wright Brothers in 1902, in which it was proved, for their enlightenment and correction, that heavier-than-air flight was ‘mechanically impossible’.
In 1903 the Wright Brothers flew.
Many things are mechanically impossible. The flight of the bee contradicts every known law of aerodynamics. His wing-area is hopelessly insufficient; his wing-loading is too high to provide the necessary lift. And yet he flies.
Columbus had the temerity to discover America, when all the best people knew (for the Sages had told them it was so) that there was nothing beyond the Atlantic but the ‘Edge of the World‘—a vast abyss over which he and his ship would fall if they ventured too far. And yet Columbus found, not only a new world, but men—men like ourselves—better men, if compared with the rapacious Conquistadores—men, to whom gold was a pretty ornament, and the Great Sun-Father a God of brotherly love instead of a Totem of jealousy and hate.
The obiection has also been made by those who feel that all men should think as they think, that if space-men had wished to contact us, they would have landed years ago. I heartily disagree !
For if we, of the West, complain that we simply cannot understand the Russian or Chinese mentality, how can we presume to probe the minds of humanities even further removed from our own ? We discredit landings from outside, simply because these landings have not been conducted with the same dashing bravado we would display, should we ever succeed in reaching another planet. Because space-men have not come down with glass heads for the natives and silk hats for the local witchdoctors, we feel, alas, that they shall never come down or, taking it one stage further, that they cannot possibly exist. Messrs Arthur Clark and Willy Ley have by now established the correct etiquette for landing on another world. Because our visitors have not adopted this procedure, they must be demoted to the dubious office of lenticular clouds, cobwebs, refractions, and the rest. We are pained that they have not swept down with dash and fanfare and a fleet of high-pressure publicity agents in attendance. We feel that, in deference to ourselves, they should rush in and land like fools where angels fear to tread. Why should they ?
Let us—if it be possible—put ourselves in their position. They know something of our Earth. It has several names in the old Solar Archives that would make the most foolhardy think twice before revealing himself among us. 54
54/ See ‘A Treatise on Cosmic Fire’, page 1178 (Lucis Press.)
In any case, they have no need to land in order to acquire information. Those little controlled disks, 55 those ‘Foo Fighters‘ — ’Flying Eyes‘ sent out from their mother ships—flash back to them close pictures of anything they wish to see. Already they have given them details regarding our internal combustion aircraft. They have rays that will penetrate the planet’s crust and send back information on conditions far below the boiling magma pools, down even to that central and most dense seventh layer. They may have listened somewhat wearily to the outpourings of our radio in attempts to find out how we think; and should this be the only means at their disposal they would by now have come to the conclusion that possibly we do not think at all. They have ways of picking up the thought currents that emanate from our minds. They can focus upon a group of individuals to learn their innermost secrets. In fact, as I write this hopelessly inadequate account of their powers, they may be watching with bemused tolerance.
55/ For example, on 27 January 1953 some United States jets flying over Japan chased clusters of red, white and green ‘Foo Fighters’, tiny disks which were travelling at tremendous speeds and were picked up by radar. One of the small objects made a controlled sweeping pass at one of the planes. It was a bright, cloudless day and the pilot got a good look at the thing. It was a small metallic disk, about eight inches in diameter, very thin, round and shiny. This is the best and closest daylight observation of the little disks yet made. And from Ireland comes the report of a ten-inch red-hot disk landing near Dublin, November 1952, and burning a child, which I am investigating to see if fragments of this disk can be found and analysed.
So why should they risk a public landing ? They have seen what the mob does to that which it fears, and what it does to that which it worships. Their ship would be impounded for evasion of custom duties. Their clothes would be torn off and sold as souvenirs. They would be denounced as saboteurs, anti-Christs, disturbers of the peace, emissaries of Satan, and the rest, as happened on that ill-advised attempt made in France during the reign of Charlemagne. 56
56/ These remarks have since been justified. On 20 July 1953 a crowd of people assembled in the lodestone country of California to witness what they had hoped would be a saucer landing. Among them were immigration officers duly armed with rubber stamps and the McCarren Act to ‘arrest the visitors‘ should their papers be out of order. Naturally enough no public landing took place, nor will one until the authorities and mob at large take a semblance of an adult attitude.
The Comte de Gabalis tells us that on this occasion the famous Quabbalist Zedechias attempted to improve conditions on Earth by suggesting to ‘the aerial peoples’ that they should make a ‘great and wondrous demonstration’.
‘They did so sumptuously’, says de Gabalis. ‘These beings were seen in the air... sometimes on wonderfully constructed aerial ships whose flying squadrons roved at will.’ 56 The result of this attempt to win recognition was no more successful than it is today, assuming that the apparitions seen in our skies relate to the same cause. The people insisted that sorcerers and demons had taken possession of the air (today it is ‘secret weapons’; just as bad). Even the Kings believed it. Charlemagne and his successor, Louis the Debonair, decreed terrible penalties for these ‘tyrants of the air’.
56/ These remarks have since been justified. On 20 July 1953 a crowd of people assembled in the lodestone country of California to witness what they had hoped would be a saucer landing. Among them were immigration officers duly armed with rubber stamps and the McCarren Act to ‘arrest the visitors‘ should their papers be out of order. Naturally enough no public landing took place, nor will one until the authorities and mob at large take a semblance of an adult attitude.
The first chapter of the Emperor’s Capitularies says that the Aeriels were so upset at seeing the people alarmed against them that they came down to Earth in their great flying vehicles and carried off men and women the better to instruct them, ‘determined to dissipate the bad opinion people had of their innocent fleet by carrying off men from every locality... and setting them down again in diverse parts of the world.’ But the unfortunate mortals seen landing from these vessels were mistaken for saboteurs, commandos and ‘sorcerers come to scatter poison on the fruit and in the springs’ and were promptly hastened off to the kind of horrible fate that awaits the doers of such activities.
‘The great number of them put to death by fire and water throughout the kingdom is incredible. One day... at Lyons, three men and a woman were seen descending from these aerial ships. The entire city gathered about them crying out that they Were magicians and were sent by Grimaldus, Duke of Beneventum, to destroy the French harvests. In vain these innocents sought to vindicate themselves by saying that they Were their own countrvmen and had been carried off a short time since by miraculous men who had shown them unheard-of marvels and had desired them to give an account of what they had seen.’ 57
57/ Compte de Gabalis’ Discourses.
So when, in 1952, a strange aerial vessel containing silvery men is reported to have landed in the eastern zone of Germany, the first fear among us is that it was sent by the enemy— Grimaldus, Stalin, or whatever his name may have been.
At the moment our object is to find out from which other globe the true interplanetary saucers originate. The neighbouring planets provide the easiest answer—Mars and Venus. If Mars and Venus, why not also Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and any undiscovered planets far, far beyond ? The objection given is that the surface of any planet beyond the orbit of Mars would be too cold to support life as we know it, and that Venus and Mercury (working inwardly towards the sun) would be too hot; all too much is made of the assumption that heat-as-such actually leaves the sun. The ancient books tell us that the sun produces radiant energy but no heat (as we know it) and that heat is only the by-product of the energy overcoming the resistance of our atmosphere. If such is the case it would certainly explain the recently discovered belt of hot air, forty miles above Earth’s surface, in whose temperature of 170° we would find life intolerable. A planetary atmosphere, according to the ancient teachings, acts in the dual purpose of an energy-converter, and a filter to adjust the amount of heat so formed. The converter and filter ratios are so adjusted that all the planets in our system can have surface temperatures akin to our own. For if we were to take our instruments to Mars and peer back at the Earth, that 40-mile high belt of near-boiling air might give our planet an apparent surface temperature of 170°. And if the Martians had no better instruments that our own, they would be pardoned for stating that human life on Earth was quite out of the question. So until we have actually been to other worlds and seen for ourselves, it is unwise to pontificate strongly one way or another.
We might not find the living beings of any planet so very different from ourselves; except that some of them may be infinitely more pleasant. And if they are that much more pleasant, they would surely feel a certain duty towards the laggard member of the Solar Family: a desire to resume friendly relations—so drastically cut off at one point in the cycle—and to help us back towards a semblance of human civilisation.
Several saucer-research groups with whom I am in contact have quite independently of one another come to the same conclusions. One of them, headed by Dr. Meade Layne in San Diego, California, consists of a group of scientists, engineers and students of the ancient wisdom who have been working on the problem incessantly for the past five years. I hope to dwell at length on their experiments and methods of research in a future book. For the moment I shall only give a resume’ of their findings and leave the explanation until another time. The reason I am prepared to let these findings stand on their own, without aid or comment, is that, since they were first written and privately circulated to Dr. Layne’s associates, there has been a remarkable occurrence which seems to be the first concrete proof that they are fundamentally true—or at least very near the truth. For, in the space of one fantastic hour on 20 November 1952 similar information was divulged by the pilot of a flying saucer himself.
(14)
The Findings of Dr. Meade Layne
Most of the objects seen in the sky come from our two neighbours, Mars and Venus — particularly Venus. Dr. Layne and his fellow scientists dwell at some length on the probability that life on Venus takes place on a higher octave of matter than on Earth; in other words, at a higher vibrationary rate, and that by reducing this vibration to the rate of that of earthly gases, liquids and solids, the Venusians are able to appear here in solid or semi-solid forms, as they will. This hypothesis would require more than one volume for full discussion, and in any case we have not yet sufficient data, for or against, to make that discussion profitable. In any case, I do not think it matters very much whether men of other worlds appear ‘solid‘ or ‘unsolid’. What matters to us is, ‘do they exist ?’
Dr. Layne says ‘they do’; and that, besides coming from our neighbouring planets, they also pass us on long voyages from some of the many millions of other systems that comprise our galaxy.
They have overcome the space-time problem sufficiently to make inter-stellar voyages practical. Possibly time is only what we think it is. Our great-grandfathers would have considered a voyage round the world as a project requiring the best part of a life-time. We regard it as a pleasant little jaunt, by jet-propelled airliner. We now consider rocket-trips to the nearest star the way our great-grandfathers regarded a trip round the world. In a few hundred years’ time we may also look upon stellar travel as an interesting holiday experience, and no more.
Dr. Layne gives details on the Venusian craft which certainly fit in with many observed facts, and are largely confirmed by witnesses who have testified in sworn affidavits. As such 1 feel they are worth considering as perhaps a piece of advance information on what may in a few years seem no more fantastic than the miracle of radio and television.
Dr. Layne believes that the moon, though an uninhabited dead planet, is frequently used by space travellers as a convenient stopping-off point; and that the first earthly expedition to arrive there will find, to its surprise, some wonderful installations and equipment established for the use of all bona-fide travellers— that is, travellers bent not solely on rape and planet-snatching. I took the trouble to consult some of the astronomers’ records regarding the moon and find ample evidence that great activity does, in fact, take place on its surface at certain times; particularly in and around the crater Plato which, by all appearances, seems to be some kind of lunar headquarters.
George Adamski was the first astronomer to obtain photographs of activity on or near the moon, but he is by no means the first to observe lights, moving bodies and signals, that are as good a proof as any that our satellite is frequently used by person or persons unknown. On locking up some records, I discovered a number of instances, but I feel sure there are many others tucked away in dusty astronomical archives about which I should be delighted to hear should anyone know of them. The following notes date from the time large telescopes first made their appearance on Earth, and are taken from the records of various observatories.
1824 October 20th. A flashing light seen on the dark part of the moon; flashing intermittently from 5 a.m. till 5.30 a.m.
1832 July 4th. A display of flashing dots and dashes seen in Mare Crisium when in the dark part
1835 December 25th. Something resembling a bright star seen in Crater Aristarchus.
1836 February 13th. Two straight bands of light with luminous dots arranged symmetrically between them.
1847 March 18th and 19th. Luminous dots appear on the dark part.
December 11th and 12th. A bright flashing light on the dark part.
1866 May 4th. Crater Linné changes from black to white. Small well-defined dots then appear in the centre.
1867 April 9th. Small shining point in dark part.
May 7th. Another bright light in the Aristarchus.
June 10th. Three distinct black spots near Sulpicius Gallus, remaining there till June 13th, when they vanished suddenly.
August 6th-October 1st. Odd movements in Crater Linné.
1869 From August 16th till April 1870. Strange moving lights and changing patterns observed in Crater Plato.
1873 Large number of luminous bodies cross the moon.
1874 April 24th. Dazzling bright object leaves the moon and speeds into space.
1875 July 13th. Luminous projections like a searchlight beam, stabs out from moon’s upper limb.
1877 February 20th. Strip of light is drawn across Crater Eudoxux.
March 21st. Strip of light across Crater Proclus.
1887 November 23rd. Huge illuminated equilateral triangle in Crater Plato. Tiny points of light appear all over the moon, originating in different craters, they converge on Plato. traverse its high walls and are seen to unite themselves in the huge floodlit triangle. (If a secret Order were convening in Plato, that night they took no pains to conceal their activity.)
1893 April 1st. Shaft of light, as from a great searchlight, shines from the side of the moon.
September 25th. It is repeated.
1903 March 3rd. Flashing light in Aristarchus.
1915 January 13th. Seven white spots appear in Littrow, arranged like the Greek letter ‘Gamma‘.
December 11th. Very bright spot on north shore of Mare Crisium. A few days later a black line projects across Crater Aristillus.
1916 October 10th. Red glow in Plato.
1917 August 29th. Luminous, moving spot (position not given).
1919 February 21st. Extremely dark line reaches out a long way from Lexall.
May 19th. Marconi picks up radio signals on the 150,000-130 meter band, ten times longer than any used on Earth. The signals were regular, and appeared to be some form of code—never solved.
1920 November 23rd. Brilliant shaft of light projects from Funerius.
In 1871 Astronomer Birt deposited in the library of the Royal Astronomical Society a record of some sixteen hundred observations he had made of light changes, moving bodies, geometrical patterns and flashing signals in the Crater Plato. No one seems to have tried to analyse them, or we might now have an understanding of a language older than Sensar, as well as the recognition signals and codes of inter-system travellers: a useful perquisite for Messrs Clark and Ley to have on that first lumbering rocket flight to Luna on which they have set their hearts.
And lastly, we have Adamski’s amazing pictures of craft moving from or near the moon; pictures he obtainsed as the culmination of several hundred unsuccessful attempts. On 9 March 1953 Professor Shapely at Harvard Observatory announced that he had discovered a thin but breathable atmosphere on the moon. But in 1949 Adamski speculated that the moon had a breathable atmosphere in his book Pioneers of Space.
Meade Layne lists the following type of craft originating from Venus alone:
‘(1) A crescent, or rubber heel-shaped craft about 45 feet in width and 18 feet high. It uses a form of "jet " drive; with "jets" set in universal mounting at each point of the crescent. Control is obtained by changing the direction of these "jets"; no external control-surfaces are used. This is a very ancient type of flier, but well suited to present requirements.
‘The small fliers use several types of propulsion. A form of "jet" drive, although very ancient in origin, is still extensively used. A very small "dis" ray plays on a stream of fuel in a closed chamber, and automatically disintegrates it. The usual fuel is air, which is collected in scoops through the forward motion of the craft, and automatically compressed to injection pressure Other fuels, including metals, can be used in airless locations.’
Dr. Layne has never read Scott Elliott, nor the description of the vimanas in the ancient books, nor did he know that a similar engine, using mercury as fuel, is discussed in the Samarangana Sutradhara. When I sent him a translation of the stanzas given on pp. 93-94 he was amazed. Certainly his information adds weight to the theory that the vimana was an early type of flying saucer and that this method of propulsion has been known for thousands of years.
‘(2) A doughnut-shaped craft, about 125 feet in outside diameter and 36 feet thick. In the centre of this disk is a hole about 25 feet wide. These craft are sometimes referred to as "Flying Laboratories" because of the large amount of test equipment which they carry. They are observation craft and used only when very involved technical observations are required. Normal crew: fifty. "Electro-Magnetic Drive".’
Note the resemblance to the ‘Earth Satellite’ now being designed in America, which also is doughnut-shaped, and most certainly a flying laboratory. The first recorded object answering to this description appeared over Cherbourg for three successive nights beginning on 12 January, 1836.
‘(3) A cigar-shaped craft, about 100 feet long and 25 feet wide at maximum diameter. Primarily an escort and fighting craft. Used only if circumstances required protection for the other craft. Normal crew: twenty. Uses both "jet" drive when in the atmosphere, and " Primary Drive" when in space.’
This appears to correspond to the silver cigar-shaped craft that was seen in company with sixteen flying saucers over Gaillac, France, in November, 1952. I suggested that the saucers were escorting it. According to Dr. Layne it was escorting the saucers. The huge luminous " aerial submarine " that flew alongside an American airliner in early July 1948 was described by the pilots Chiles and Whitted as being at least 100 feet long with peculiar blue lights along the side. These I suggested might have been the exhausts of its jets. Certainly it is to be expected that such a vessel would be using ‘jet’ drive in the low levels of the atmosphere where ‘primary’ or ‘space‘ drive would be impractical. I shall discuss these other types of propulsion in a moment.
‘(4) A spherical craft, about 100 feet in diameter. A transport vessel, used to carry passengers and cargo. Normal crew: twenty-five to thirty. " Electro-Magnetic Drive ".’
Many reports of such a craft cram the records. Unfortunately, its resemblance to the ‘Skyhook’ or high-altitude meteorological balloon make it the most difficult of all craft to identify with accuracy. It would be safer to confine ourselves to the pre-Skyhook Age of the Flying Saucer Museum, there to examine the reports of ‘large luminous spheres‘ travelling too slowly for meteors; or else those modern reports where such objects have been seen moving against the wind at speeds too fast for any balloon. The object photographed over New York by August Roberts may well have been one of these.
‘(5) A smaller version of the heel-shaped craft. Only about 14 feet across. A single seater, but can carry two men when required.’
Scott Elliott says the early vimanas were two-seaters. Perhaps this is a museum model !
‘(6) A spherical craft, 5 to 6 feet in diameter. Robot or remotely controlled from some other craft. Used for visual observation where larger craft would attract too much attention. " Electro-Magnetic Drive ".’
‘(7) A smaller, more frequently used version of the above. Only a foot in diameter. Sometimes these are disintegrated after use, and are regarded as expendible.’
Possibly it was one of type (7) that played tag with Lt. Gorman on 1 October 1948 over Fargo, North Dakota. In his book The Riddle of the Flying Saucers Gerald Heard refers to these objects as ‘Thinking Lights’, and puts forward similar suggestions. Other authors, believing that everything which flies must contain a pilot, have said they carry tiny beings six inches in height. Gerald Heard tried to convince us that they were propelled by intelligent insects from Mars. And one scientist, who should have known better, advanced a theory for small intelligent vegetables !
These craft turned up in large numbers during the latter days of World War II, giving some alarm to Allied pilots who thought them to be a new German weapon and nicknamed them ‘Foo Fighters.’ They joined on to formations of bombers, dived, circled and played around them, quite unafraid of our gunners. It was not until after the war we discovered from enemy records that the Germans had been equally alarmed and bewildered by their appearance, and had, like ourselves, attributed them to some new secret weapon. On the files of the American Air Force there is an account by a bomber crew who stated that one of these objects penetrated their plane, flew slowly up and down the interior, and then disappeared through the tail. Before leaving, I hope it transmitted an accurate picture of the crew’s expressions to the high-riding mother-ship above.
According to Meade Layne these little craft are simple to make and are considered expendible. They contain a simple form of ‘television‘ device which sends back a complete picture to the mother-ship. At the end of their mission they may be disintegrated harmlessly. This may account for some of the things that have fallen from the sky and for many of the ‘fireballs’ that have exploded in the air, dropping curious fragments on the ground that cannot be fitted into any meteoric categories. On several occasions small disks or spheres have been seen to land and then to disintegrate in a shower of sparks, leaving nothing but scorched grass to prove they ever existed.
In all cases, great care seems to be taken to see that they do not cause injury or damage.
‘(8) The green fireballs. These are devices sent out to counteract radioactivity in the atmosphere, caused by the haphazard release of atomic energy.’
According to Meade Layne, the floods and weather disturbances of the past few years would have been vastly greater had we not benefited by the timely assistance of these peculiar constructions, which usually appear shortly after an atomic test. We know precisely nothing concerning the long term effects of atomic fission on our world. Our scientists go ahead in the hope that because they do not know, there is nothing to know. A child plays with fire because it does not know that it may get burnt or set its house on fire; so, because we have let off a few dozen atom bombs with nothing worse than the most violent weather for years, and floods destroying much of East Anglia and Holland, we continue blissfully in the hope (with no proof whatsoever) that these disasters had nothing to do with atomic explosions.
I hope we are right.
But if we are not right, then I sincerely hope that Dr. Layne’s information is accurate and that this friendly intervention with green fireballs will continue. It is worth noting that the highest concentrations of saucer-sightings are usually in areas where atomic tests, or atomic production plants are situated.
There is a very old tradition in the Arcane Schools of Egypt, Greece, South America, and in some of the Western Arcane Orders that a planet in our system was once destroyed by the misapplied discovery of the fundamental power of the atom. Modern astronomy has calculated that, according to their rules of celestial mechanics, there should be another planet—about the size of our own—between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, Instead of a planet, however, there is a ring of cosmic dust, stones and debris called ‘The Asteroid Belt’.
If such a planet did exist and was suddenly destroyed, the repercussions on the rest of the Solar System must have been catastrophic, particularly upon Mars and Jupiter. It is possible that our own universal Deluge Legends and accounts of a terrible catastrophe in which the ‘stars fell from their places and rained down on the Earth ‘may be related to the same cause. And the name of that broken planet is given as the name borne by Satan before his ‘fall from heaven’.
This would certainly explain the tremendous interest shown in our Earth displayed by the flying saucers since the discovery of atomic energy, for the Solar System happens to be their home as well as our own.
Lastly, Meade Layne’s group gives a brief account of an immense torpedo-shaped carrier-craft, or mother-ship, a kind of interplanetary aircraft carrier which brings the smaller saucers through space, releasing them when it has entered the atmosphere. Its length they give as about 7,000 feet, with a crew of 2.000; figures which sound quite fantastic. And yet the huge ‘spindles’ and ‘torpedoes’ seen and reported by astronomers were estimated to be hundreds of miles away, at which heights they must be immense to be seen at all. But once the problem of efficient space propulsion has been solved I do not suppose that actual physical size is very important.
Propulsion: ‘Electro-magnetic Drive operates by cutting the natural magnetic lines of force produced by a planetary body, and can only be used relatively near the surface of some planet or celestial body. When used at low altitudes it has the effect of " blanking out" radio apparatus and causing variations in magnetic compasses and other magnetic apparatus in the vicinity.’ There are several cases on record of radio fade-outs at the same time as saucers were seen in the area. Sometimes they had the effect of cutting out the electrical components of aircraft whose engines stopped until the saucers had passed. This, possibly, may have happened to Captain Mantell when he flew too near the metal monster of Godman Field.
‘Primary Drive is true space-drive and, although it can be used on a planet, it is ordinarily used only when it is desired to travel at a very high rate of speed for a long distance. Control mechanism in the craft is placed in synchronous frequency with the universal energy flows which exist in all space, but slightly out of phase with them. Either " lagging " or "leading" phase can be used, depending on whether it is desired to travel with the flows, or against them. The speed depends on the degree of phase angle which in turn depends on the amount of " shading power " which the control apparatus can apply. In addition to the three types of propulsion listed, all craft have the means of hovering motionless when desired.’
One piece of mechanism produces a cone-shaped electrical field which diverts the ‘gravity‘ around the craft much as: ‘an umbrella diverts rain, thus cancelling most of the "weight". It is quite common to use this diversion field while in flight, in order to reduce the effective mass of the craft, thus making it very manoeuvrable, and reducing the amount of power required to maintain flight. This field will, under certain conditions, produce a corona discharge which will give the craft the appearance of being surrounded by a luminous or fiery envelope. A similar corona is quite common also on craft using the electro-magnetic form of propulsion.’
I have already listed many cases where a saucer was seen surrounded by a halo or corona of changing shape and colour. It is my belief that those accounts of huge glowing pear-shaped objects hanging motionless in the sky, such as the one seen by Mrs Gladys Keevil at Purewell, Christchurch, Hampshire, on 28 January 1952 may have something to do with this. Such objects are always described as ‘pears’ or ‘cones’ with the ‘pointed end‘ uppermost. They do not move; they simply fade away. The saucer itself is hanging invisibly in the dark sky just above the glowing apex, and the ‘pear‘ is merely an auroral effect, or ionisation of air within the cone of force. When the craft move away these cones do not move too but, according to eye witnesses, slowly fade out. 58
58/ ’I got out of bed to see what it was. Hanging in the sky was an object shaped like a pear, with the big end downwards. It was glowing with a red firelight glow and appeared to be hovering... We watched it for a quarter of an hour until it gradually faded away.’—Sunday Dispatch, 20 April 1952,
Certainly if the weight of a craft could be reduced practically to zero, most of the problems concerning their sudden changes of direction, and almost impossible rates of turn, are solved. An object with zero mass would experience as little difficulty in changing direction at 2,000 m.p.h. as would a beam from a searchlight waved back and forth in the sky.
During the time I have been corresponding with him, Dr. Layne has sent me several hundred pages of typescript, not only on flying saucers, but also on experiments being conducted in very advanced and mysterious fields of physics—fields where the familiar signposts are left behind and where anything might— and does—happen. Much as I would like to discuss them here, there simply is not the time nor the space, for some of these experiments, on their own, would provide material for many volumes which I hope one day will be written.
So, for the time being, I shall have to leave his remarks on space-craft for the reader to accept or reject as he feels fit. They are, at the moment, no more than fragments of advance information, glimpses of the future, tips—if you like—on the trend future flying saucer books may take. As a saucer investigator of several years’ solid study, I think that Dr. Layne should be closely watched, and that his information should not be lightly disregarded. For since he has spoken I have been supplied with first-hand, concrete evidence that much of what he says about the small saucers; the great carrier craft; their methods of propulsion (particularly their magnetic hovering devices) is very near to the truth.
(15)
Waste Products
Since the seventeenth century, many strange shapes and substances have tumbled from the sky and distressed local sensibilities. They have been identified as gelatinous and bloodlike, fungus, coke, clinker, anthracite, slag, ash, yellow oil, high-grade steel, furnace products, also receptacles. Sometimes these have descended in neatly-contained, well-turned metal vessel;-., despite which they have usually smelt abominably.
From 1800 onwards, whence dawned the rosy ‘Age of Experts’, appropriate savants have been called in to examine, prod, probe and identify. When two or more experts were called in, each pronounced unhesitatingly, and with equal sureness. totally opposite findings; and when in doubt fell back upon his old friend and stock-in-trade ‘fungi’, for which no one was going to contradict him.
At Maury Island, a saucer appeared to be in trouble. It dropped something near the shore, preceded by a loud booming report. Pieces recovered later were variously identified as volcanic matter, slag, basalt, furnace residue, unknown metal, etc. Pre-1900 showers of the same stuff were likewise usually heralded by loud explosions, booming reports or thunder-claps of ‘unusual nature’. In falling from a great height this explosion could have been caused by matter breaking through what is now called the ‘Sound Barrier’.
Maury Island is the first case in the twentieth century where the source of falling matter was low enough to be seen. Are there any other cases in which matter, jelly, waste-products, and engine-room bilge have actually been observed to leave a flying saucer and fall to the ground ?
Yes, in Autumn 1952, a scoutmaster from West Palm Beach, Florida, was out with two scouts when they saw flashes of light in a wooded area. Going to investigate, they found themselves standing beneath a heel-shaped saucer, about 30 feet in diameter. The machine was hissing and hovering about 10 feet off the ground. It was solid, semi-circular and surrounded by a corona, or outer rim, of glowing phosphorescent light. The next minute the machine projected, or allowed to fall, a ball of fire, which narrowly missed the scoutmaster who either fainted, or was overcome by the stench. He said the ball of substance gave out a misty flare and floated straight towards him causing minor burns. The two scouts who were with him confirmed his testimony and the incident was widely reported by the American Press.
But something very similar happened back on 26 October, 1846, when a flying object shot over Lowell, Massachussetts, coughed, puffed, and ejected a large lump of evil-smelling jelly, 4 feet in diameter, and weighing 442 lb. It was examined, prodded and inspected, none too enthusiastically, for it was ‘extremely odiferous’. Various accounts appeared in local papers, and the inevitable experts finally identified it as ‘odorous jelly’.
The Annals of Philosophy report that near Rome in May 1652 a sticky mass of jelly fell at the time of the appearance of a large luminous body. And in March 1796 another great clot of jelly fell at Lusatia from an aerial ‘fireball’. A huge lump of sticky stuff fell just after some enormous flying object had exploded (or caused an atmospheric explosion) near Heidelberg in July 1811. And the American Scientific Journal reports that in 1718 another lump of ‘gelatinous substance’ fell on the Island of Lethy, India, from a ‘globe of fire‘ in the sky.
It is a pity that none of these reports tell what happened to the jelly; whether it melted, evaporated, was analysed, or just left to stink, for had notes been made, we would now have something to compare with an extraordinary occurrence that took place over Gaillac, in south-west France, on 29 October 1952, where matter falling from a squadron of sixteen saucers escorting a huge ‘flying cigar‘ was picked up by people underneath, which unfortunately ‘disintegrated’ before they could get it to a laboratory for analysis. The reasons for its disappearance will be discussed later in this chapter. But slag, ash, bloodlike rain, lumps of jelly, congealed ‘blood‘ and incendiarised metal objects (not meteors) and blocks of ice—sometimes blue ice—have, and do, frequently precipitate themselves from out of the dazzling blue. In 1951 there was a great descent of ice, and several cars had holes torn in their roofs from lumps the size of beer bottles. Experts blamed freak conditions in the upper atmosphere (they did not say what freak conditions), while aviation people said with equal certainty that they were lumps that had fallen off the wings of high-flying aircraft. Even blue ice fell !
Thousands of improper objects have fallen upon our Earth, improper not from any lewdity or suggestiveness, but improper because they have been improperly explained away as meteors or ball lightning, when it was also affirmed they were not of meteoric material; and because no one has ever hazarded a sensible guess at the nature of ‘ball lightning’. Smelted iron fell at Braintree in 1903. ‘Soft carbonaceous substance‘ fell at the Cape of Good Hope and exploded so violently on touching the ground the report was heard for 70 miles.
‘Meteorites’ have arrived, which turned out to resemble various furnace products, cankers, and smelted alloys. Unaccountable ‘showers of ashes’ have fallen and darkened whole districts for days when nowhere in the world was any known volcano active. Even peculiar, polished ‘marble cylinders‘ have swished down and embedded themselves in startled suburban gardens at times when the Weather Offices knew nothing of approaching storms of marble cylinders. No weather forecast has ever announced that tomorrow would be ‘mainly fair; rainy in parts with occasional marble cylinders towards nightfall, and a further outlook—ashy, slaggy and possibly metallic’.
Nor are they likely to co-relate improper objects seen in the sky with improper precipitations raining to the ground until someone finds out and issues a comprehensive list of the byproducts of waste from etheric, magnetic and sonic engines for inclusion in ‘Jane’s Book of Flying Saucers‘ to be published by out great-grandchildren.
On 29 October 1952, according to the London Evening News, about 100 people of Gaillac in south-west France saw a formation of 16 saucers (circular with the familiar raised central position) escorting a ‘saucer‘ of the torpedo, or flying cigar, variety, such as the one that shot up Captain Chile’s airliner (see p. 12). They gave out a bluish glow from their edges, as did the vimanas; and the flying ‘cigars‘ in the middle proceeded to jettison or discharge ‘bright, whitish filaments like glass wool‘ This is the first time a saucer of the torpedo variety has been seen in company with circular disks. So, two more bits fit into the jigsaw. If a torpedo flies in company with disks, then the makers of both types of craft (hitherto only seen separately) must be on friendly terms. Going further, one can propose that the makers of disks and the makers of torpedoes are the same. Therefore, disks and flying cigars come from the same place.
The Gaillac sighting is even more important in that ‘pieces of this bright glass fibrous substance floated down to treetops and telegraph wires and that many eye witnesses gathered whole tufts of it’.
‘Unfortunately it disintegrated and disappeared before it could be taken to a laboratory for analysis.’ 59
59/ Evening News (London), 29 October 1952.
I have heard this said about a similar mysterious substance— a bright, fibrous filament, rather like glass wool—that can be produced out of the body of a medium in a trance in the seance room. No, there is nothing spooky about ‘ectoplasm’, as this peculiar stuff is called. It has been procured, touched, photographed, looked at under microscopes, and subjected to the whole gamut of analytical tests. It appears to be physical for as long as it lasts. Unfortunately it, too, disintegrates and disappears, ‘leaving not a wrack behind’, within a period of seven days—more usually within minutes. Ectoplasm is held to be etheric in nature. It becomes physical temporarily, owing to certain biomagnetic processes not yet understood.
But, whatever the purpose was of this strange procession passing through the autumn skies of France, the fact remains that something very akin to ectoplasm floated down, got tangled in the telegraph wires, and did not survive its trip to the analysts’ benches; which was a great pity. Had it reached the microscope, somebody could have pontificated to the satisfaction of all that it was fungus/cellular/vegetable/animal/slag/resin and the rest, and everyone would have been much happier. As it is, we are left with a substance answering to all the characteristics of ectoplasm.
But intellects capable of producing flying saucers would have little use for the negative aspects of this phenomenon; rather would they have solved and explored its positive and creative possibilities, and harnessed it to produce scientific marvels, which the natives of Gaillac may have glimpsed unwittingly when that bright fibrous substance drifted into the phone wires, only to disintegrate before it could be correctly inspected, catalogued and identified.
Before leaving this odd subject, I would like to mention a very curious occurrence which was reported in the Sunday Express of 1 October 1951. Two Philadelphia policemen, John Collins and Joseph Keenan, saw a large spherical shiny object float down to land in a field. They called another patrolman, James Caspar, and a sergeant, Joseph Cook. Warily they approached the fallen, silent monster which sat where it had landed, gleaming in the light of their flashlamps. Eventually, after regarding it for some moments, Patrolman Collins plucked up courage and prodded it. His experience was unpleasant.
‘I touched it,’ he said, ‘and it just dissolved, leaving my fingers sticky. There was no smell, no anything, just stickiness.’ During the next twenty minutes the thing became less real. Like the Gaillac fibres it was slowly disappearing before their eyes— not melting, not evaporating, just disappearing—ceasing to exist. After half an hour it had gone completely—not a dent in the ground, not even damp grass. It just wasn’t there any more. Like ectoplasm it appeared, and it disappeared, as if it was made of ‘temporary matter’.
Returning to solids and things we know more about, there is a crash, a thud, and a block of ice weighing nearly a ton lands in Hungary, sending the rabbits and peasants scuttling to safety. For ice, in assorted hues and sizes, has clattered down from heaven long before there were petrol-driven aircraft with leading edges from whence to drop. The London Times of 4 August 1847 reported that a block of pure ice weighing 25 lb. fell in a meadow in Cricklewood.
A lump 3 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 2 feet deep—almost a cubic metre—fell in Hungary on 8 May 1802; and in Salina, Kansas, 1882, a block weighing 80 lb. arrived and was packed proudly in sawdust by a local merchant. Ice in cubic yards struck India in 1828. But here is the climax—In August 1849, at Ord in Scotland, there was an explosion in the air or ‘extraordinary peal of thunder,’ and an icy asteroid 20 feet in circumference hurtled down to earth.
Somewhere in the upper air were vessels so vast that their leading edges could accumulate single chunks weighing over a ton; or just more things the weather experts cannot explain ? Yet if, according to the officials, the small lumps of ice that smote Croydon and South London in 1951 fell from the leading edges of high-flying aircraft, why not the metric block that tumbled a century before—from leading edges a hundred times or even a thousand times larger ?
The Godman Field monster was reported as 500-1,000 feet in diameter. Can anyone volunteer information of cubic yards of ice arriving anywhere on the world around that date; or have they been mentioned in some local paper without anyone seeing a connection ?
If 1,000 feet, why should not super vessels exist of 10,000 feet ? The Asura Maya vimana in the Samar was 12,000 cubits in circumference. Why not ten miles ? If we, the terrestrial pygmies, think we can soon make an artificial satellite, why limit its size, once the Earth’s magnetic field has been overcome ? So why not ten miles ?
Phobos is about ten miles in diameter.
Phobos and Deimos are the two tiny ‘satellites’ of Mars estimated (though it is hard to be accurate with things that appear as tiny bright dots under the most powerful telescope) as ten and five miles in diameter. Strange things have been said of them. Intuitional things that should not—must not—be said, according to the laws. Dean Swift said that Mars had two tiny moons, over 100 years before they were discovered. Guess ? Fluke ? Intuition ? Where did Swift obtain his information ?
Denis Wheatley suggested in Star of Ill Omen that one of these tiny ‘moons’ was an artificial construction similar to the ‘space station’ now being contemplated by the American Government, and Gerald Heard made the same suggestions earlier in The Riddle of the Flying Saucers. But at the time of their ‘official‘ discovery, the Mahatma Kuthuami Lal Singh wrote to A. P. Sinnett in 1882: ‘The inner satellite, Phobos, is no satellite at all. It keeps too short a periodic time.’ 60
60/ Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett.
If our world were approaching obscuration, with water scarce as gold, and with drastic conservation required, what would a highly scientific humanity do ? It would try to control the weather. It would be much easier to do this from a few thousand miles out in space where the meteorological conditions of the whole planet could be observed at once, than from stations on the ground. First of all, what is weather ? We don’t know many of the answers, but assuming that eventually we take the trouble to study polar and terrestrial magnetism properly, as well as the mysterious magnetic layers of the upper atmosphere, we shall get far nearer the answer than we do now with our insistence on attributing cyclones, anti-cyclones, depressions and the rest to changes in the amount of solar heat reaching the Earth.
Old, despised and primitive sayings say that the Earth has its moods just as we do. When agitated, there are storms; when peaceful, it is fine. When the proper relationship between weather and the Earth’s magnetism is established, this old myth will not sound so absurd, as it would today if suggested to the people who write the Air Ministry weather reports with such consistent lack of success.
So if, in millennia hence, we have learned to look for and to control the causes of our weather in the higher air, would we not build an enormous satellite weather station out in space to circle the planet and influence its ‘moods’. That is just what a disappearing Mars’s humanity may have done. An artificial satellite can have many uses besides a mere convenient platform from whence the other half of humanity can be briskly and economically annihilated—controlling weather, mapping the heavens free from atmospheric distortion, a half-way house for inter-planetary vehicles, for example. Also, building a tiny artificial planet may be very good practice for something much more involved which the Gods have in mind for Man to do when he has finished his earthly schooling.
A brilliant, shining city flying in space. A round thing, a beautiful thing, the summit of achievement for the drifting mindless thing that once oozed out of primal matter, and grew in consciousness and wisdom until it also became able to con struct a radiant, miniature world of its own.
(16)
One That Came Down
In the spring of 1952 an event took place four miles inside the Russian Zone of Germany which caused some alarm in high circles. A forty-eight-year-old ex-mayor named Linke was chugging along through the woods near Hasselbach, Meiningen, when the back tyre of his motor-cycle burst. He and his daughter, the eleven-year-old Gabrielle, jumped off and started pushing the bike towards the village. As they pushed, Gabrielle pointed to something 150 yards away in the twilight, which Linke thought must be a young deer. He crept up cautiously to investigate, leaving his bike against a tree.
At 60 yards (twilight plays strange tricks) the deer turned into a couple of weird silvery human figures, all too like the man in the film The Day the Earth Stood Still. Either their skin or their clothing shimmered like metal, and one of the creatures had a light in his chest which, flashed on and off as if signalling.
And then Linke rubbed his eyes. Behind these creatures in the forest glade loomed an enormous circular object, ‘like a huge warming pan’. Fifty or sixty feet in diameter, it sat there, squat and enormous in the failing evening light. But super-warming pans do not sit around in forest glades in normal civilised communities. Linke was in the Russian Zone where anything might happen; where anything unusual was frightening; where it wasn’t good to see unusual objects; where people who did, and were known to do so, usually disappeared. He kept very quiet and wished he had never come.
At that moment his daughter called across to him and the two silvery figures jumped up from what they had been examining, rushed towards the saucer and scrambled up a dark central conning tower in the centre and disappeared inside it.
Immediately the outer rim began to glow. Linke noticed a double row of foot-wide holes, eighteen inches apart. The glow changed from bluey green to red and a faint humming was heard. Linke describes this glowing, at the same time he says that swirling exhausts gave the whole contraption the appearance of spinning round and round like a top. He does not seem quite sure whether it was gases corning out of the vents, or the glowing metal, or actual rotation of the saucer that produced this effect.
Then the dark conning tower disappeared. It was a simple and ingenious arrangement; just what one might expect to answer the question of how a whirling disk can take off from the ground. The saucer rose up its own conning tower until is resembled a flat mushroom on a stalk. This enabled it to whirl until it had obtained enough rotation to become airborne. Slowly at first, it rose in the air, then gathered speed. Immediately the conning tower retracted and returned to its normal position on top, where Linke observed it, as the saucer gained speed and altitude, with a faint whistling sound ‘like a falling bomb’.
Linke does not seem quite sure whether the saucer actually rotated or whether only the outer rim was spinning. Nor is it certain whether he saw actually smoke and flames coming from the perimeter or whether it was merely a sudden increase in radiance. I am inclined to believe the latter, for the actual discharge of gases from a series of whirling jets would surely have made a considerable noise. And possibly the appearance of the outer rim riding up the dark central conning tower was an illusion, easily understandable in the bad light, especially if one studies the two pictures (Plates 1 & 3) of Adamski’s saucer in one of which the lower dark ‘conning tower’ appears to extend almost to below the rim, but when the structure was higher in the air this central object gives the appearance of having retracted.
At the time of writing, Adamski’s photos had not been sent to Herr Linke, but later, when this is done, it will be interesting to see if he identifies it as a similar craft to the one he saw or whether he considers it to be different, like the drawings made at the time. Certainly there is little evidence to suggest that all saucers are identical in shape, propulsion or place of origin.
Other observers—a sawmill watchman said he saw something like a comet flash away from the hill where Linke had been, and a shepherd, half a mile away, thought he saw ‘a comet bounce off the earth’.
There was great alarm when Linke finally escaped to Allied territory and revealed his carefully-kept secret before a judge in a sworn statement. Nasty cold feelings down the spine. Is it— are they Russian ?
If it is a secret Soviet weapon it was surely not on the agenda that it should come down within four miles of the decadent capitalist plutarchy and risk detection ? Certainly it was nowhere near its base. Notice the absence of forbidden zones, barbed wire, sentries and all other indications of secret experimental areas. And, if challenged point blank, the Russians would surely give a typical Russian answer, for it would be in their interests to make us believe they were one up on us in the field of aerial surprises.
If it and its strange, silvery crew were from another planet or of the ‘aerial hosts’, it was just curious chance that brought them down on that side instead of our side, or in the American Zone, where camera-happy fingers are more numerous. We might then have had another close photo of a saucer on the ground to include in this book. But in Russian countries, the casual camera is a one-way ticket to Siberia, so Linke swore his daughter to silence until they had left the zone. Later he said he could convince himself that they had both imagined the whole thing but for the circular depression he later found in the grass where the conning tower had stood.
Linke, then, is the first of our race publicly to announce setting eyes on the men who pilot the most common category of flying saucer—the disk with central cabin. What has been seen in secret is a matter for later chapters. Compare the frontispiece with Linke’s story. He swears he had never heard of saucers till his escape, and had thought all along he had seen a new Russian weapon land four miles inside the Eastern Zone.
But are those four miles so important ? A secret Russian weapon could force-land by mistake four miles inside the Soviet Zone or it could force-land four miles inside the American Zone—or in America itself. And, unless apprehended and examined, could still be (a) Russian, (b) Inter-planetary. Objects of both categories could land in Allied, or in Russian, Zones. If (b) landed in Russian Zones, the Russians would be just as alarmed as ourselves, and suspect it to be part of a capitalist plot to sabotage the ‘People’s Democracy‘ just as the passengers from aerial ships landing in the ‘Charlemagne Zone’ were accused of coming to poison the springs and pollute the crops. No wonder that when the silvery men heard a human sound, they made off as fast as their saucer could carry them.
(17)
Saucers in Celtic Prehistory
Cuchulain was a hero of irish mythology. Quite unbelievable were some of his feats in battle. He is to Ireland what Siegfried is to Germany, Quetcoatl to South America, Drona to India—a super man of the Golden Age invincible in war, unsurpassed in beauty. St. George, in his mild, obscure, and typically British way, fulfils the same function in England.
Most people regard Cuchulain, Siegfried and the other national supermen as attractive myths based on man’s subconscious desire for (a) omnipotence or (b) orgiastic wallowing in blood and gore. Certainly the poetic imaginings have attributed to Cuchulain the liberation of more blood than Attilla.
But among all the frills, fripperies, exaggerations and bardic improvements, there stand out certain statements that seem to mean much more than mere myth, and to give one the impression that the bards are merely reciting verbatim what has been handed down, without any inkling as to what they are really saying.
Cuchulain had weapons called the ‘Thunder Feat’ of ‘an Hundred, of Five Hundred or of a Thousand’. This means that the ‘Thunder Feat’ could be adjusted to slay a hundred, five hundred or a thousand men, as desired, all in one bang, and evidently relates to some form of explosive weapon, with variable charges. But to my mind it echoes strongly Indra’s Dart and the Brahma Weapon or the Mashmak in a more controllable form.
Consider for a moment that some of the prehistoric stone hill forts in Ireland and in West Scotland have their stones blasted and fused together as if by colossal heat.
He also had two chariots called the ‘Scythe Chariot’ and the ‘Enchanted Chariot’. The former is described as being a great heavy-armoured affair bristling with poisoned spears and scythes, so heavy that only his two magic steeds, the ‘Dubhshaoileann‘ and the ‘Liath Macha‘ could move it. It also served as a platform for discharging the ‘Thunder Feat’, which suggests a piece of ordnance requiring a pretty strong mounting. It could have been an ordinary primitive cannon firing an explosive shell, but more likely it was similar to the ‘circled bow‘ of Indra as mentioned in the Ramayana. Whatever it was, whether high-explosive, Mashmak or Agni-Indra, it was bulky and required a heavy strong platform for its discharge.
The pattern is becoming clearer. An early form of tank powered by two unknown engines, mounting a terrible piece of ordnance, has left its mark on Irish legend.
The ‘Enchanted Chariot’ is described as light and airy’. ‘It flew swifter than any bird, and no horse pulled it. All the way through, this strange light vehicle is compared with birds in flight and is remarked upon for its wonderful lightness. All the ‘Magic chariots‘ of the Celtic heroes were described as being able to mount up into heaven to the ‘Palaces of the Gods‘ and to other wonderful lands in the sky. This myth is easily explainable as a race memory of the coming and going of vimanas to other planets, as in the ‘Samar‘ which states that by means of these craft men could ride up to the stellar regions and heavenly beings could come down to Earth. In turn, the ‘heroes’ and ‘gods’ are largely race memories of the elder races of the Solar System. The aerial ships that landed in France at the time of Charlemagne were also ‘magic chariots’, vimanas or flying saucers, depending on which name you care to give them.
When a little more research is done on the ancient sagas of Greece, Egypt, India and the Celtic countries, many interesting revelations will come to light concerning inter-planetary flight, and such fantasies as the Asura Maya Vimana, which was golden and 12,000 cubits around, my leave the realms of myth and turn out to be merely another memory of the vast carrier ships which have been seen many times (see Flying Saucer Museum) both as dark spindles and golden cigars, and have been finally photographed by Adamski.
Now comes a strange thing. After one of Cuchulain’s battles in which the super-weapons were employed, the survivors flee, not as one would expect, to Tara, Emania, Dun Dailgan, or any of the Irish strongholds, but to the ‘City of The Three Peaks’, a fabulous mountain fortress which figures largely in all South American legends as one of the great latter-day Atlantean capitals, and which may be associated with the ‘Triple City’ of the Mahabharata which was destroyed by the atomic Bolt or Mashmak or Brahma Weapon. This city not only appears on many of the Maya and Toltec inscriptions but its image—the triple mountain—has been found on many ancient coins, dug up on pre-Inca sites. Notice also the similarity between ‘Cuchulain‘ and the name of the South American god of war, ‘Kukulkan’, and even the Olympus or Holy Mountain of Poseidon which was called ‘Cumhuilan’.
The more one delves into the doings of Cuchulain the more likely it seems that he is a composite character of Celtic and Atlantean origin. His training by a race of Amazons, his magic weapons, above all his Faiery helmet brought to him from ‘The Land of Promise‘ (an old name for Atlantis), his counterparts in Mexico, South America and Egypt make it appear that he is based on the memory of a great and warlike race who originally inhabited the mother country, and came to Ireland bringing their arts and sciences with them. Later Irish heroes and warriors became confused and identified with them. Still later, the Celts borrowed feats from the Daytan Wars and overlaid them on their tribal squabbles. As the knowledge of the arts declined, names and places from the previous civilisation became identified with their own; every old country has its Tower of Babel, and its Mount Olympus. The original Holy Mountain is under the sea today, but descending races transplanted and transformed it to their own requirements. Likewise, the South American and the Celtic races brought the memory of their lost motherland and fragments of their sciences which became overlaid with successive layers of legend and fable, so that to find the original truth (what fragments remain of it) one has to dig deep into every quarter of the globe where man has lived for at least 10,000 years.
So we find in India the ‘car celestials’, the vimanas, the fiery agni-weapons and ‘Indra’s Dart‘ and the appalling Brahma Weapon.
Likewise-, in South America we find the terrible Mashmak and fire that could wipe out an entire army.
So, in Ireland the same principle becomes Cuchulain’s ‘Thunder Feat’, and his two chariots (artillery and aircraft ?) Cuchulain is the composite character of a Celtic-Atlantean war lord complete with a fairly well catalogued armoury of magic, overlaid by various later heroes of prehistoric Ireland who in fact did raise the great fort at Dundalk where Cuchulain is said to have lived, and in early times probably did understand, in part, the Agni lndra and other super-weapons, if the fused and vitrified stones on their hill forts are anything to go by. If you prefer these stones to have been melted by lightning, well and good. But I have yet to see lightning melt stone. Its effect is usually more like high explosive.
Which is the simpler ?
To believe that all legends of fire weapons and aerial vehicles from all parts of the world owe their remarkable similarity to acutely stretched coincidence ? Or to believe that there once existed in dim distant ages, great empires whose knowledge of Natural Science was as great, if not greater in some respects than our own ?
I have said before—and will now say again at the risk of causing boredom-that no true magician believes in ‘magic’. There is no such thing. What is superstitiously called ‘magic’ is in reality Natural Science—knowledge of the Universal Laws and their application, nothing more. The ancient ‘magician’ controlled these laws largely by sound; the modern laboratory ‘magician’ controls them largely through the use of heat; and he concentrates on different aspects. The ancient ‘magician’ came to know them through study and psychic intuition; the modern ‘wizard‘ obtains his knowledge through an intellectual process based on observations and mathematics. The results are similar.
Certainly the ‘magic’ weapons of yesterday are no more magical (and mechanically less ingenious) than today’s complicated ‘magic’ radar; guided missiles, and ten-ton ‘Thunder Feats‘ dropped from bombers, vimanas, or whatever you care to call them.
More deadly even than the ‘Thunder Feat’ was Balor’s Eye, a huge round ‘eye’ or circular reflecting implement that, when directed on the enemy, destroyed them in a flash. An identical weapon appears in ancient India with a similar name—Kapilla’s Eye (mentioned on page 106), which could turn 10,000 men to dust in a second, lndra’s Circled Bow or the Brahma Weapon seem to be other variations. The power they used was possibly concentrated soundwaves. The ‘Circled Bow‘ or the ‘Round Eye‘ was most likely a parabolic reflector, the only shape that could focus supersonic waves to an accurate point.
Against these, the primitive tribes had no fair chance; even the smaller weapons terrified them. The narrative tells how frightened they were of ‘the hissing red flames and sparks from Cuchulain’s darts and spears’.
Do spears and darts emit sparks or flames ? Modern ones do, but we call them rockets and bazookas, names lacking in the bardic vocabulary. Very well—supposing Cuchulain did have all these armaments. Where did he get them ? Where did he learn the knowledge ? From the Lands of the West, say the narratives; from the Land of Promise, Tir na Oge, the Land of Youth, the beautiful Isles which lay across the sea towards the setting sun. America ? South America ? Atlantis ?
He was taught his Natural Science by three wise women of the Amazon tribe; this points to South America. But his magic helmet and magic ship were given to him by Mananan the Sea God, who later becomes Neptune-Posseidon. Now Posseidon, according to Plato, was King of the great island of the West called Posseidonis—the last great fragment of sinking Atlantis
The magic helmet, like Siegfried’s ‘Tarnhelm’, made the warrior invisible. According to the ‘Samar‘ on page 95 the vimanas could also be made invisible, and every ‘magical’ system contains formulas for bending light-waves round a person or object so that it cannot be seen. Even with our present knowledge of ‘magic’ (or Natural Science) this seems rather far fetched, but not impossible.
Mananan 61 also lent Cuchulain his ‘magic‘ ship which required no oars or sails. All that was necessary to make it move was the correct sound. The bards say that you told it where to go, and it went. In other words, it was controlled and guided by soundwaves or vibration. Herodotus mentions a galley that entered the Mediterranean through the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar) which had neither sails nor oars but was exceedingly swift. Scott Elliott says the ships of Atlantis were powered by the ‘etheric engine‘ that also drove the vimanas.
61/ In Celtic cosmogony, Mananan is the personalised symbol, corresponding to the ‘Verbum’, the ‘Anum‘ the ‘Word of Power‘ or Cosmic Sound by which all things are called into being (the very expression ‘called into being‘ has significance). The Sound is the essence of every ‘magical’ system in every country in every age and in every religion. The sacramental words uttered by anointed priests today have no less power when used in our churches than they had when uttered, in different form, in the first sun-temple of Atlantis. Manana came forth from the ‘Bosom of Lir’, which represents the boundless All, the Infinite Stillness before the first vibration of a new universe. Lir is Parabrahm during the ‘Great Night’ that comes with Pralaya at the end of the Mahamanvantara, ‘enduring for seven eternities’ until the first thrill of the new manvantaric Dawn. So when Cuchulain is said to have received these gifts from Mananan, or when the King of Posseidon is identified with Mananan, it only means that they were both Initiates of the ‘Word’, and knew how to wield the powers of Sound, as taught by the Sun-Adepts, the true ‘children of Lir’.
Once again I feel a connection between Keely’s engine, the ‘Cars celestial’, levitation plates operated by ‘a song’, the Hindu engine plans seen by Churchward, the ‘mercury engines’ in the Samar Celtic iron steeds which obeyed words of command, and the tremendous objects seen daily in our skies, travelling silently, or musically, at great speeds. And a connection also between Indra’s Circled Bow, Kapilla’s Eye, Balor’s Eye, Mashmak and the hill forts of West Scotland and Ireland whose stones are fused and vitrified into melted lumps. And a connection between armies who swooned at Cuchulain’s weapons, the Indian Avidyastra (missile of illusionary powers), the Prasvapana (missile producing sleep), the Arrow of Sleep and the four weapons controlled by sound (Satyakirti, Kamarupaka, Kamaruci, Vajra), and the modern experiments in supersonics that have—so far—caused materials to ignite, metals to change their molecule, and houses to move off their foundations. There is also a connection between vimanas, flying saucers and the magic chariots of the gods, drawn by fiery steeds. (Surely the word ‘magic chariot’ is more descriptive than the ridiculous word ‘flying saucers’, coined by a race of tea-bibbers.) It was able to cross the sea or land with equal ease or to soar up in the air. It was drawn by ‘magic steeds‘ which bore no resemblance to horses. One of these machines is described as having ‘an iron skin and no bones in its body’. Because he had no bones, say the bards, he could not be slain in battle, for any weapon that managed to pierce his iron hide found nothing inside to damage.
Therefore, they admit that this particular steed or power unit was an empty hollow metal chest or cylinder. Now we’re getting nearer. A hollow metal cylinder, or a pair of hollow metal cylinders provided the power for the chariot. The word chariot only means car or a vehicle. So substitute vehicle for chariot and we get: ‘The Celtic heroes rode in vehicles which could cross the land, or sea, with equal ease, powered by a pair of hollow metal cylinders practically impervious to enemy fire.’ What hollow metal cylinders ? The Atlantean etheric motor or the ‘jet’ engine described in the Samarangana Sutradhara.
All these little fragments have the same underlying idea— and there is, in the ether, untapped sources of perpetual power which our technologists had until recently overlooked in their preoccupation with other forms of energy. 62 It is the power that made the ‘car celestial’ course along its airy way with a melodious sound, and made the Celtic ‘magic‘ steeds soar over land and sea without tiring and without food (i.e. fuel). The same power that lifted Keely’s model metal airship off the ground and made it fly around his laboratory while he plied his bow string.
62/ This power has been overlooked because it is right under our noses (or feet). It is the same power which silently turns the planet round the sun, and the sun round the galaxy and even the tiny atom round its nucleus. Upon its lines of force sail the great space ships we call planets, and the tiny artificial planets we call flying saucers As always, the answer is right on our own doorstep.
What the gods do man will always try to copy until he has learned and become a god himself. As long as the Mighty Ones go on building suns and planets in which to sow the life-crop, that same life-crop, when it becomes human, will start intelligently to mimic its betters, and so run up little planets of its own. Fifty years ago, flight was re-discovered (in a new form) by the Wright Brothers. Old lessons learned long ago are swiftly re-learned. In a brief half-century we have got as far as the drawing-board stage for an artificial satellite to circle the Earth —the first tiny man-made planet. www.universe-people.com www.cosmic-people.com
One last word before leaving this shining figure of Cuchulain in his Celtic Twilight. When the hero attacked the ‘King of Antioch‘ in his Enchanted Chariot he succeeded in splitting open the metal-plated sides of his rival’s vehicle, and ‘the two great white jewelled stones within it, large as millstones, fell out and were broken, so that the chariot fell to the ground with the noise of thunder, like ramparts falling.’
Whatever would two great white jewelled stones the size of millstones be doing in a practically constructed ordinary war chariot—if it was an ordinary war chariot—and why should their destruction, rather than the rending of the metal covering, cause it to fall to the ground, unless the millstones were our old friends the sonic disks, the levitation plates, that powered the ancient cars-celestial ? 63
63/ Many of the present-day ‘primitive ‘peoples have legends of flying saucers. An American professor of ancient tongues, George Hunt Williamson, d.sc, spent the closing months of 1952 with some tribes of Minnesotan and Canadian Indians, who spoke of them as ‘Earth Rumblers’. The Indians said that they travelled silently but sometimes shook the earth. They used to come in over the lakes like great shining whales, always in circular form. In olden days the saucer people used to come and give them help and wisdom right up to the time the colonies were being formed. But since the coming of white men they did not land any more. They had legends saying that one day they would land again but were reluctant to say too much, for ‘It was not good to talk of these things—except in closed circles and to oneself’’.
(18)
A Prophecy
In earlier chapters I have been harping continually on an idea which, for want of a better name, I called ‘The Vibrational Principle’. The conviction that such a principle exists came about by sheer weight of evidence from all over the ancient world. Wherever there is an inexplicable monolithic monument one will find, not far away, a curious legend concerning it. The legend may vary in detail, but, boiled down, it invariably amounts to this—that the builder produced a sound by his own voice (a mantram) or by a magic rod, or by means of an instrument, and that as a result the colossal stones flew through the air and moved into place apparently of their own accord.
If such a simple and economical building process exists, then impossible structures such as Tiahuanaco and Sacsahuaman now become possible; and boasts that certain Celtic ruins were ‘the work of one night’ become less exaggerated.
But if sound can be used for constructive work it can also be used for great destruction. In the story of Jericho the Bible gives a very clear account of what progressively built-up sound waves could do to fortifications. Recent excavations have shown this was no myth; the great walls, of colossal thickness, did in fact collapse after being violently torn asunder, and that there was probably seismic disturbance as a result.
Jericho is one of the best recorded examples of the sound working ‘in reverse’, and is the same principle as the high note that can split a mirror. In Dublin Airport they have had to substitute all the glasses in the bar for plastic, because the sound of the propellers was pitched in such a way that it would cut off the glasses clean through the middle, causing injury to unsuspecting passengers, followed by a brisk exchange of solicitors’ letters.
We had an actual demonstration of how a mere sound can move great weight on 22 November 1952, when a Hawker Hunter aircraft went into a supersonic dive near Tangmere Aerodrome, Sussex, and the wave set up by it piercing the ‘sound barrier’ caused the wall of a house, several thousand yards away, to move over an inch from its true position. Here is the first apparent proof of the sound itself achieving what was previously attributed to high explosives; opening our eyes to the interesting possibility that it may be the actual ‘sound’ rather than the physical impact that causes such destruction when bombs land. If so, it would explain many of the peculiar things that happen such as walls blown down in the opposite direction to the blast—a phenomenon attributed to ‘suction‘ or a vacuum caused by the blast.
Suppose the vacuum is the result of the sound, and not of the actual physical blast which may be only an incidental effect ? The Ancients said they knew how to produce this vacuum through sound for raising great weights. A study of their methods might produce some revolutionary scientific discoveries.
To us, all this is hypothetical, but to the Ancients, and those who still guard their secrets, it is concrete fact. Huge, uncontrolled explosions, they say, are wasteful, and quite unnecessary to obtain results; music such as Keely discovered in 1895 will do the work far better and more safely. The most interesting and definite statement on how this can be done was made in 1920 by the Mahatma Dhut Khul (known to students as ‘The Tibetan’) when writing in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, he says:
‘The laws governing the erection of large buildings and the handling of great weights will some day be understood in terms of sound. The cycle returns, and in days to come will be seen the reappearance of the faculty of the Lemurians and early Atlantean to raise great masses.... Mental comprehension of the method will be developed. They were raised through the ability of the early builders to create a vacuum through sound.’
Here, at last, we have a link between the great prehistoric megaliths and the alarming effects of our new planes on the property of peaceful citizens. In fully comprehending the latter we may also find a rational explanation for mysteries like the immovable 1,800-ton blocks at Balbeck.
‘The Tibetan‘ goes on to say that vibration in its manifestation as colour can be equally effective. In fact, vibrations of every kind will one day be used for creative and destructive purposes.
‘Destruction, it will be shown, can be brought about by the manipulation of certain colours and by the employment of united sound. In this way terrific effects will be achieved.... In these two thoughts lie hid the next step ahead for the science of the immediate future.’ (Ibid.)
He says ‘the immediate future’. How immediate does he mean ? Is a return to the pre-Deluvian methods something of the remote distance or shall we be here to observe it ?
‘Music will be largely employed in construction, and in one hundred years from now (a.d. 2020) it will be a feature in a certain work of a constructive nature. This sounds to you utterly impossible, but it will simply be a utilisation of ordered sound to achieve certain ends.’ (Ibid.)
There we have it. Legends that the builders played their lutes and made great stones move into position may soon be proved to be no idle superstition but a definite fact. And our grandchildren on the way home from school, who stop to watch men at work on a building site, will hear no screaming drills nor clanking derricks, but will be treated to a performance by a rather novel kind of orchestra. Building engineers will have to become composers.
Interesting experiments are now taking place in the ‘supersonic‘ laboratories. What Keely did; what the Egyptians did; what the.Chaldeans and priests of Atlantis did; what the Druids did with their huge moving stones, our experimenters may—if the signs be correct—already have done, but been afraid to say much as yet, for fear of ridicule and the overturning of theories dear to their hearts. For, like nearly all great discoveries, it was accidental—happening during some totally different experiment. As a result, it is overlooked, unnoticed, unbelieved until by repeated recurrence it forces men to give it attention. A few more jets will crash the ‘sound barrier’, more walls will move and ceilings fall. Soon an entire house will be raised and put down in another site. And authorities, faced with enormous bills for damages, will be obliged to set men to investigate the true causes of these phenomena.
But it may not be nearly so long before they have discovered the Negative Aspect—the wonderful possibilities of blasting their enemies (i.e. those whose abominable sin is to have been born on the wrong side of the planet) and their cities into dust, by the concentration of sound waves to a point where the pressure fractures the molecule, and causes disintegration. As ever, it is easier to produce darkness than to produce light, and modern science is well on the path to full-blown Adeptship in the Dark Arts.
(19)
Power and the Great Pyramid
I had intended to write a great deal upon this fascinating building, the largest, and possibly the most ancient, structure in the world, which stands today at Gizeh as the finest surviving proof that a race of scientific giants once passed this way, whose knowledge of astronomy, mathematics and geophysics appeared to equal our own, and whose mastery in building far surpassed us.
I had made copious notes on its original purpose; notes on the evidence that its date of erection long preceded the sinking of Atlantis; notes on its amazing magnetic properties (particularly their relationship to the Earth’s poles) as recently discovered by Professor R. Weissenbach of Bologna and by Dr. Pommeret, who proved that a pyramid of the Egyptian proportions, when orientated towards the North Pole, produced a magnetic condition in which small animals immediately died but did not decompose and that metals that normally deteriorate could be preserved indefinitely.
I had long notes showing the relationship of this phenomena to the conditions necessary at the great Initiation Ceremony that took place in its secret central chambers, and how Weissenbach’s findings on pyramidal inverted polarity gave us another strong clue to the methods of saucer propulsion.
I discussed at length its occult symbolism and the relationship of its proportions to certain cosmic forces. I showed how later Pharoahs found these peculiar ‘preserving qualities‘ ideal for the interment of mummies, and thus adopted the pyramidal shape for later tombs, long after the original sacred uses had been forgotten. In fact, I found that once one starts to write upon the pyramid one never stops. So this will have to wait for another book. All I shall discuss now is how the great stones were brought long distances and fitted together with great accuracy by use of sound.
The Great Pyramid was built, say some, by thousands of slaves hauling great stones up ramps—a method undoubtedly used in many of the later pyramids of inferior masonry long after the old methods had been lost and forgotten. But anyone who has examined the few remaining casing stones is in for a disagreeable shock. On the north face, near the base, some of the great 15-ton polished casing blocks that escaped the despoilers are still in situ. They are fitted together with an accuracy of one-hundredth of an inch—less than the thickness of an ordinary visiting card. A thin piece of paper can scarcely be inserted between the cracks.
To anyone not connected with the building trade this may seem quite ordinary, until inquiries disclose that modern masonry, using handy-sized blocks that can be manoeuvred into place, is very pleased with itself when it obtains an accuracy of one-tenth of an inch between the joints.
Yet the pyramid casing stones weigh 15 tons each. No matter what method was used to lay them—gangs of slaves, winches, even modern derricks, there is no conceivable way in which they could be fitted so that a visiting card would not pass between them. Once a 15-ton block is down, it is down for ever. There is no nice manoeuvring about; no tapping it into fine adjustment later. No modern builder would undertake such a contract. He would tell you it is not possible. Nor would he undertake that such a Vast and heavy structure would preserve its internal shape after several thousand years. Even stone bends in time. And the colossal mass, remorselessly squeezing the galleries and chambers, would eventually distort them. But the planes and angles inside the Pyramid still rank as one of the most—if not the most —accurate pieces of construction in the world. The more one studies it, the more one gets the distressing feeling that it was built by men whose power and scientific knowledge out-strips anything we may have to offer.
And all this for a tomb ? A tomb that was never used ? Used it was—but for a very different kind of ‘death‘ and ‘burial‘ than the interment of a mummified corpse. So how, in the name of everything-we-know-to-be-possible were the pyramids built ?
Arcane tradition asserts, quite calmly, that music was used to aid the construction—an expression that now means more to us than it did. Some graphical information is given in the legends handed down to the Arabs. The clearest of them says:
‘When the King built the pyramids the great stones were brought long distances from the quarries. The stones were laid upon pieces of papyrus inscribed with suitable symbols. Then they were struck by a rod, whereupon they would move through the air the distance of one bowshot. In this way they came eventually to the place where the pyramids were being built.’ 64
64/ Kingsland, The Great Pyramid in Fact and Theory.
The ‘magic rods‘ used by ancient scientists were cut to precise lengths corresponding to the wavelength of the vibration required. Whether the properly-pitched sound containing power was produced by the ‘Lyre of Orpheus‘ or by the lute that mechanised the construction of ‘The Work of One Night’ in County Louth, Ireland, 65 or by Keely drawing a bow across a bow string in New York, the results and the principle are exactly the same, as we may discover through costly laboratory equipment before this century has closed.
65/ In County Louth, near Dundalk, Ireland, there is a prehistoric mound of which legend says the great stones were moved by music. ‘The builder played his lute and the stones moved into place of their own accord.’ (See ‘Louthiana’). A fine example of the vibrationary principle used for building construction.
Walter Owen gives an interesting example in More Things In Heaven:
‘Sound is a power whose possibilities are unsuspected by the profane; and its use, known to the sages of antiquity, is a science lost or scoffed at by the incipient physical science of the present day. By the power of sound the frame and fabric of the cosmos is sustained, and by the power of sound it can be dissolved into nothingness.... The priests of Egypt knew it; and the words of power, the "maht-heru", opened for the initiate the successive portals of the regions of the dead. In the ante-room to the King’s Chamber, the Granite Leaf, now wedged immovably in the grooves of the wainscot as a result of the subsidence of the foundations, was originally lowered or raised by the sound of a spoken formula, and when the candidate stood beneath it, and the hierophant pronounced the word of loosing, only the knowledge of the master key-word prevented it from grinding him to powder.’ And in Chaldean Magic, Lenormant tells us:
‘Certain it is that in ancient times the priests of On... by means of magical words raised storms and carried stones for their temples through the air which a thousand men could no lift.’
And when one looks at the 70-ton blocks of red granite roofing the so-called ‘King’s Chamber’ brought from quarries 600 miles away, it is difficult to imagine any other way of moving, and setting them, with such incredible precision.
A. P. Sinnett, who, in the 1880’s studied under one of the few Mahatmas ever to take Western pupils, wrote at some length on the Great Pyramid from information he received from his illustrious instructor, as to its true history and origin. Using the knowledge so gained, he and H. P. Blavatsky performed some remarkable experiments with the levitation and apportation of furniture as demonstrable proof that powers really existed. Later he wrote an interesting paper on Gizeh and its construction:
‘The manipulation of the enormous stones used in the construction of the Great Pyramid itself can only be explained by the application to the task of some knowledge of Nature which was later lost to mankind. The Adept custodians of that knowledge concerning the mysteries of nature can—and always have been able to—control the attraction of matter in such a way as to alter the whole effective weight of heavy bodies at will. That is the whole explanation of the marvels of megalithic architecture. 66
66/ A. P. Sinnett, The Pyramids and Stonehenge.
‘The great stones of which the pyramids are composed were treated in the same manner as at Stonehenge. The Adepts who directed their construction facilitated the process by the partial levitation of the stones used.’
Annie Besant, a remarkable woman with considerable knowledge of Arcane science, wrote:
‘Those (Egyptian) stones were not raised by mere bulk of muscle, nor by skilful apparatus, strong beyond modern making: they were raised by those who understood and could control the forces of terrestrial magnetism, so that the stone lost its weight and floated, guided by the touch of a finger, to rest on its appointed bed.’ 67
67/ Annie Besant, The Pedigree of Man.
And even to this day there is the huge boulder of ‘Tay Ninu’, Annam, in French Indo China. Reported to weigh over 300 tons, it hangs suspended in mid-air, with no visible means of support; a floating miracle of levitation. The natives believe that it is held in the air by means of sound, so every moment of the day and night somebody is humming a mantra to keep it from falling. Surely, if the reports on it are correct, it would be well worth while for a scientific expedition to visit Annam and investigate ?
Now one legend concerning the building of the pyramids goes on to tell how a rain of meteors struck the Earth causing great earthquakes and tidal waves but, it says, ‘great white birds’ descended to Earth and carried the people of the King up into the sky to safety. This legend occurs in two forms, both practically identical. One says that the people were carried off by huge white birds, the other says they were transported by ‘shining stars’ that fell to Earth. Another legend tells how the tidal wave that destroyed Atlantis swept on round the world, inundating Egypt. A terrifying account is given of the fear-crazed survivors trying vainly to scale the slippery polished slopes of the pyramids, slipping back into the flood until all had perished; only those who left in the ‘white birds‘ or ‘stars‘ were saved.
This may possibly refer to the ‘Old Commentary’ given on page 115 concerning the coming of the ‘Lords of the Dazzling Face’ in their vimanas to take the survivors of their doomed motherland to safety.
It does not matter which country you are in, or which of the esoteric schools you study, nor which of the ancient legends you interpret, you will always find the same basic fundamentals— that, not once but several times, civilisation was destroyed by a deluge or other planetary catastrophe, from which picked survivors were removed to form the nucleus of a new race and to preserve the ancient records and knowledge.
The Hindu ‘Puranas’ go further. Besides the ‘deluges’ and sinking of continents (which they say are rhythmic and cyclic and as predictable as the solar eclipse), they contain records, in allegorical form, of Universal Man’s ceaseless pilgrimage through space. These documents tell of the arrival of his ‘seeds’ on each new planet (Hymavat) as it condenses, and the growth of that tiny seed upwards through the mineral, vegetable, animal and human kingdom until it becomes Vishnu (God) Himself. When man at the end of a planetary cycle recognises his true Self, and the hidden God within him is no longer hidden, then, say the ‘Puranas’ and other ancient works, the seeds are gathered up and taken through space in immense shining ships to the next planet for development.
Besides this, many of the arcane traditions assert that in times of partial dissolution (Pralaya 68), either the pralaya of a continent, or the temporary annihilation of life on a planet, certain men, according to plan, proceed to a neighbouring globe, but not exactly as refugees. There is a strong tradition, particularly in the Rosicrucian Schools, that at certain times bands of Adepts and their disciples removed themselves physically from Earth to one of our neighbours, where they became most welcome guests.
68/ ’Pralaya’ is a term associated with ‘Siva, the Destroyer’. There can be the pralaya of a tribe, of a nation, a continent, a planet, even of a whole solar system by ‘supernova‘ or ‘Yuga Fire’. Mahapralaya is the great consummation of the whole galaxy, the returning of ‘the sons to the Father’ which occurs every 310,400,000,000,000,000 years, according to the Brahmin tables.
The full details of these migrations, particularly these that preceded the destruction of Atlantis, are kept in the secret books of these Orders and would scarcely be divulged to the non-Initiate, for obvious reasons. But it is safe to say that enough tradition is available for us to be certain that not one but several inter-planetary migrations from Earth have taken place in the past by means of the vimanas which, as you may recall, could go to the ‘solar‘ and even the ‘stellar’ regions, and that the site of the last departure was not the Atlantean mainland but Gizeh itself.
I am afraid I can give few references that would be of immediate help in confirming this statement. The esoteric writings are carefully veiled but may be understood by anyone capable of using his intuition, while the factual (manusa) accounts are the property of the White Lodges, and are written largely in the ancient language of the mysteries which only the hiero-phants can understand. However, a study of the legends, and the books of ‘Manu’, will reward the intuitive with much fascinating information. In a later work I hope to discuss them at length, but at the moment these few words must suffice.
The idea of inter-planetary ‘Noah’s Arks’ are not new, nor are they so very strange and fantastic to those who believe (as did every civilisation preceding our own) that the whole Universe is alive—is life itself.
Simply because we cannot raise a solid body much higher than 200 miles above the Earth’s surface, using the crude rockets and combustion fuel of the mid-twentieth century, we should not laugh at the idea of earlier humanities being able to do so by subtler means. Particularly when those humanities have left in their wake structures that have defied time, tempest and every attempt to reproduce them, or to solve their methods of construction.
A vimana propelled by sound or by magnetic force would require no colossal exhaust velocity to carry it beyond the Earth’s attraction; in fact, as soon as it left the ground, it would have annihilated that attraction for ever. Sailing ships do not require huge guns to fire them across the sea. They merely spread their canvas and sail. And flying saucers are only sailing ships of a different kind; fuel-less, silent and incredibly simple —once you know how to ‘sail’.
Food and air will be another objection raised against the success of an Atlantean space-flight. Why ?
These great scientists of the previous cycle, as their name, ‘Lords of the Dazzling Face’, implies, had reached that stage of mastery over Nature where the chemical requirements of the physical form were of very minor importance. When a man has attained to the full degree of ‘Master’ he becomes liberated; he is independent of the pull of solid matter, so that he can live almost entirely on solar energy in its direct form. The whole long process of training given in the Ancient Wisdom, and its ultimate aim, is to make a man awake his spiritual centres to full activity, at which stage he can, if he wishes, remain in a prolonged trance-like condition, or function without a physical body at all. This is plainly seen, even with men on the first rungs to attainment. A genuinely holy man has several times the energy and endurance of the ordinary mortal, sleeps little, eats practically nothing and seems to live entirely on some mysterious inner source of energy. This energy was clearly understood by the ancients—by all true scientists for that matter —and is known as ‘Kundalini’, or the great positive electricity —an aspect of fohat—the primal, cosmic energy. Now in case anyone should think 1 have invented all these ideas, I hasten to point out that everything I am saying is based on the oldest science in the world. The greatest civilisations of pre-history flourished and reached stupendous heights in their cycles, by experiment and knowledge in this realm of science that we have forgotten, through pre-occupation with its physical and mechanical aspects. So it would be very unwise to say that because the Atlanteans and Egyptians knew nothing of modern rocket fuels and alloys, they did not know of other metals and other modes of propulsion equally effective and less complicated to make
So if, without bloodshed or envy we could kindly allow them the power we covet—the power to leave our Earth—we could surely allow, also, that their mastery over their human forms could solve the food and air problems ?
All very well, but what about the rest of the crowd (humble mortals like ourselves) who may have travelled into space in the retinue of the ‘Lords of the Dazzling Face’; their problem is more serious ?
Serious, but not impossible. Today, the ordinary fakir, barely versed in the anterooms of Yoga arts, can put his body into a cataleptic trance, or state of suspended animation, for weeks on end. Many such demonstrations have been given and recorded.
So to place their followers in a state of suspended life, requiring lungs, heart, every organ silent, would be no great feat for those who could raise the pyramids, or make silent, fuel-less flying-saucer-vimanas. Whether it took their vehicle a month, a year, or a century to reach its destination, the ‘living dead’ within it would be awakened on arrival none the worse for the experience, and completely without sense of the time involved; as we awaken from a ten-hour, dreamless sleep as from a gap —a void in time.
So if, as all Arcania insists, this communication has existed all along, then it is quite in order to suppose that at certain times of great crisis, physical communication is effected in great inter-planetary vehicles for the sake of those not advanced enough to travel alone, and that in this exciting century of our own (whatever else one may call it, it has never been dull) we are convinced we shall be able to fly to the planets using purely physical-mechanical means—the most difficult. And provided we don’t collide with an asteroid, or run into something quite outside our present comprehension, there is no reason—save a mortal one—why we should not succeed. In order to become perfect, say the arcane books, man must become perfect on every plane. So at this, the densest point in our planetary evolution, we are naturally concerned with things of the dense, or physical, plane. Knowing all material things, learning all its secrets, must be part of this perfecting process; and presumably inter-planetary travel by these means is another part of the lesson. In every cycle and sub-cycle, there must come a time for loosening the bonds of gravity and hopping off the parent globe in search of new adventures. We are not the first nor are we the last to do it. But to us it is an experience entirely new and exciting, as unique and thrilling to us as a child’s first ride on a bicycle, which to it seems the first time in history anyone has accomplished such a marvel.
(20)
The First Space Ship on Record
Venussis is the ‘home of the gods’. from venus in the year B.C. 18,617,841 came the first vehicle out of space to alight on our planet. I suppose I had better repeat that date. It is B.C. eighteen million, six hundred and seventeen thousand, eight hundred and forty-one, to be precise. 69
69/ According to the Brahmin Tables.
Venus, according to those who peer at it through telescopes, is surrounded by thick hot clouds of carbon dioxide, in which they say life, as we know it, would be impossible. Conversely, the Venusian Sage peering at us through his telescope, or something better, might justly say that Earth is surrounded by a sea of nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen-monoxide in which life, as he knows it, is impossible.
But, then, what is life ? Looking to the centre of the solar system, where one would expect to learn the answer, one finds the sun, where life in any conceivable form would be instantly annihilated. And yet that glorious orb must be and is the source, the cause and the sustainer of all life in our system; even the LIFE itself of which we humans are pale and microscopic shadows.
The ancient teaching suggests all the planets of this system are inhabited by men, in different degrees of attainment, and the name given to them is ‘The Schools of Life’. Using this allegory, the smaller, inner planets may correspond to the first schools, and the large outer globes to the senior, or latter spheres of education. The great outer worlds are called ‘synthesising planets‘ to which comes life from all over the system for its final enlightenment and perfection.
There is an arcane tradition which I find more acceptable to reason than anything modern speculation can offer. Concerning the inner group, of which we are the third planet, Venus is held to be more advanced than its neighbour, owing to particularly favourable circumstances at the outset of its career. The popular mythologies, and the less obscure inner temple teachings, all make Venus ‘The Home of the Gods’, from whence help has frequently been sent to its impoverished neighbour and brother, the ‘Planet of Painful Endeavour‘ or ‘Earth’.
Orthodox Christians need have no trouble with their beliefs in accepting the idea of extra-terrestrial humanities, more advanced than our own. They can, if they wish to put it in simple theological terms, say that there was ‘no fall of man’ on Venus. 70 In this they are only echoing the archaic stanzas which tell us that right at the outset of Earth’s inception certain difficulties and setbacks took place that put our planet a whole cycle behind its neighbour, and that we are still feeling the effects to our pain and cost To put it more crudely—Earth is the tough school; it is a kind of solar commando course whose successful graduates may surpass all other solar humans in strength and powers of resistance—a prodigal son whose eventual return will bring more joy to the Father’s heart than all the successes of the more fortunate sons.
70/ The Vatican has announced that it finds nothing ‘contrary to faith or morals’ in the idea of planetary neighbours who escaped falling into ‘original sin’.
Nor need flying saucers cause them alarm for, if they turn to the Bible, they will find a record of Christ telling us of a very great future event which would be preceded by ‘signs and wonders in the sky’. 71
71/ Luke 21 (v. 9-11).
The arcane teaching holds that our more fortunate members of the family were so distressed by the conditions existing on Earth and the tremendous difficulties experienced by life in attaining to human consciousness, that they intervened actively at great cost to themselves.
These difficulties are expressed in the old stanzas: ‘After three hundred million years, Earth turned round. She lay on her back, on her side. She created from her own bosom. She evolved water-creatures, terrible and bad.’ (Book of Dzyan, Stanza II.) The same idea is expressed in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and in the ‘Cuthca Tablets’. These and the following stanza refer not only to the difficulties of evolution but also to one of the huge cataclysms caused by a sudden shift of the poles, which happened many times. ‘She shook them off her back whenever they over-ran the mother.’ (Ibid.) The Popul Vuh also tells how a series of unsuccessful attempts to produce men failed and were destroyed.
A point was reached about eighteen million years ago, say the old teachings, when something resembling a man had evolved; but it was mindless, for it was born from Earth alone. This may have been the ‘Missing Link‘ between the human and animal kingdoms that still eludes anthropologists.
‘The Life needed a form. The ancestors gave it. The Life needed a physical body; the Earth moulded it. The Life needed a spirit of life; solar powers moulded it into its form. The Life needed a mirror of its body (etheric double). "We gave it our own ", said the gods. The Life needed a vehicle of desire (astral body). "It has it," said the Drainer of the Waters. But Life needed a mind to embrace the Universe. "We cannot give it that," said the ancestors. "I never had it", said the Spirit of the Earth. "The form would be consumed if I gave it mine", said the Great Fire. Man remained an empty senseless bhuta.’ (Book of Dzyan. Stanza V.)
In other words, evolution had gone so far but could go no farther until it received some tremendous stimulus outside the ordinary powers of the Earth. And so from our nearest neighbour came the greatest of Venus, ‘The Sanat Kumara’, ‘The Lord of the Flame’, the Spirit of the Venusian Logos Itself, whose memory is revered and held sacred in every ancient religion. From Venus, say the old teachings, came the elder brothers, the ‘Lords of the Flame’, the highly perfected humans from an older branch of the planetary family. Of their free will they came; out of love and compassion for the groping, mindless things in the steaming primal jungles.
Earth, Mars and Venus were in ideal conjunction for their great vehicle to travel the immense physical distance separating the two planets. Thus to Earth came the Lord of the Flame, or Sanat Kumara, with his Four Great Lords and one hundred assistants.
‘Then with the mighty roar of swift descent from incalculable heights, surrounded by blazing masses of fire which filled the sky with shooting tongues of flame, the vessel of the Lords of the Flame flashed through the aerial spaces. It halted over the White Island which lay in the Gobi Sea. Green it was, and radiant with the fairest blossoms as Earth offered her faintest and best to welcome her King.’ 72
72/ Besant-Leadbeater, Man, Where, Whence and Whither.
In this fragment we have the first account of the landing of a great space ship or flying saucer, eighteen million years ago according to the Brahmin tablets. Incredible as it seems, there can be no other meaning to this passage. The blazing masses of fire and shooting tongues of flame might have been phrased by any modern writer describing an inter-planetary space ship.
Turning to the Stanzas, of Dzyan (second series), we find a more detailed account of the journey in Stanza V.
‘The Lords of the Flame arose and prepared themselves. It was decision’s hour... The Great Lord of the Fourth Sphere (the Earth) awaiting their oncoming. The lower (Earth) was prepared. The upper (Venus) was resigned....’
Then comes an interesting hint on the method of propulsion: ‘The foundation note ascended. Deep answered unto deep. The fivefold chord awaited response.’ (Ibid.)
Once again we have the harmonic principle, par excellence: ‘Dark grew the space between the spheres. Radiant the two worlds became.’ (Ibid.)
In other words, the magnetic currents between Earth and Venus increased to the maximum, owing to the peculiar conjunction. This enabled the journey to commence.
‘The threefold thirty-five (The Sanat Kumara, The Four Lords, with their hundred assistants, one hundred and five in all), finding the distance just, flashed like a sheet of intermittent flame, and lo, it was done.... The Sacrifice of the Flame arrived and for aeons hath endured. The Watchers began their task (human souls now incarnate in physical bodies), and lo, the work proceeds.’ (Ibid.)
The ‘Lord of the Flame’ can be found under many names. He is the ‘Ancient One’, ‘The Mighty Lord of Fire’, ‘The Youth of Timeless Aeons’, ‘The Eternal Virgin’, ‘The Point of Blue within the Hidden Diamond’. And in our own Bible He is ‘The Ancient of Days’. With His Lords and helpers He ‘projected the Spark’, 73 stimulated men to rationality, and lived among them in physical form for countless millenia, teaching and guiding the huge black creatures who worshipped Him as the ‘Holy of Heaven’. Great was their simple love for these shining beings who, to them, were the original Immortal Gods on which later pantheons are based. Every legend, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, South American, Indian or Persian, of the gods coming to Earth can be traced back as a race memory of this one tremendous event. But, like all legends, they became distorted and overlaid, or confused under sexual allegories until the doings of Zeus, Wotan, Quetzcoatl and the rest would hardly pass the censor.
73/ Dzyan.
But the work of the Kumaras was not easy. As early man developed mind, he also changed slowly from the bi-sexual androgyne into male and female, in two separate bodies. Apparently the sex-change came too quickly for some creatures, still on the borderline of human consciousness.
‘The animals separated first. They began to breed. The twofold man separated also. He said "Let us be as they", "let us unite and make creatures", and they did.
‘And those which had no spark took huge she-animals unto themselves. They begat upon them the dumb races. Dumb they were themselves. Monsters they bred. A race of crooked red-hair-covered monsters, going on all fours.’ 74 (Stanza VIII. 31.)
74/ With the result that in many oriental countries the monkey is held sacred, in the belief that he is the descendant of the crooked, hairy race that was produced by the ‘Sin of the Mindless’; and that had it not been for this mistake, the poor creature would be human today as ourselves. Man owes him a debt; the monkey bodies cannot become human until the end of the cycle.
It is very hard, I know, to credit any previous civilisation with knowing more than ourselves. Not until the production of large telescopes had we any idea that we lived in our own solar system revolving inside an even greater system called the nebula. And we are still very uncertain about the way the host of nebulas are moving. According to the red shift in the spectroscope, they appear to be rushing away from one another with ever increasing velocities, whereas by analogy one would expect them to rotate around an even greater system. How much the ancients knew of galaxy motion can be guessed from an old occult commentary written originally in Sensar: 75
75/ As translated in Cosmic Fire.
‘The one wheel turns. One turn alone is made and every sphere, and suns of all degrees, follow its course. The night of time is lost in it and aeons measure less than seconds in the little day of man.
‘Ten million million aeons pass, and twice ten million million Brahmic Cycles [311,400,000,000,000,000 years equals one Brahmic Cycle, or Great Aeon], and yet one hour of cosmic time is not completed Within the Wheel forming that Wheel are the lesser wheels from the first to the tenth dimension.
‘These in their cyclic turn hold in their spheres of force other and lesser wheels (planets, etc.). Yet many suns compose the cosmic one.’
Reading ‘system‘ for ‘wheel’ makes this acceptable to the best brains in Mount Palomar. Another drily stated tenet of modern astronomy is phrased a little more poetically in the continuation of the same commentary:
‘Wheels within wheels, spheres within spheres. Each pursues his course and repels or rejects his brother, arid yet none can escape from the circling arms of the mother.’
Then it says something concerning the eventual dissolution and reappearance of a Universe, which appears to be stating in a definite form what is now held to take place when a system. ‘blows up’, becoming a super-nova, or refers to events when an entire nebula reaches the hour of trial. I feel it is worth quoting and pondering:
‘When the wheels of the fourth dimension, of which our own sun is one, and all that is of lesser force and higher number, such as the eighth and ninth degrees, turn upon themselves, devour each other, and turn and rend their mother (nebula), then will the Cosmic Wheel be ready for a swifter revolution.’
So if the pre-Deluvians knew this much of astronomy, it is very possible that what they have written concerning Venus and the awakening of animal-man into true man is not without foundation. And if the coming of the Lords of Venus is no mere fable, then we have in our possession a definite record of the first great space ship to land on Earth, and the date given in the Brahmin Tables is 18,618,793 years ago.
The thought had often occurred to me that if all the teachings about Venusian-Kumaras were something more than myth, could we not expect that others from that bright planet would follow in their footsteps and come to Earth, the poor neighbour, at times when help was needed ? The Egyptians wrote of the gods coming down from heaven in their shining vehicles bringing many gifts for men, gifts of food and gifts of teaching. The Red Indians have traditions that up till the coming of white men, the elder brothers used to fly down in their circular shining ships to teach them and to help them at times of need. All the Celtic countries tell of the immortals coming down in flaming chariots from their shining palaces in the heavens to dwell on Earth amidst us. And it does not take much poetic imagination to call the bright planets ‘shining palaces in the heavens’, nor their space craft ‘Flaming Chariots’.
Now that science has run amok and is threatening us with atomic annihilation it does seem reasonable to expect that if ever another intervention was needed, the time would be now. We have enough evidence to assume that some, or many, intelli-gents outside the Earth are watching our progress with interest. And if the whole solar system is inhabited by members of the same solar family, why should not a few of our two billion Earthmen again have an experience which the ancient books seem to think was once quite common—that of speaking with visitors from space ? I can see nothing against it whatsoever except prejudice.
So for the unprejudiced I now hand over the tale to George Adamski, who is the first to be able to give us a documentary record of his experiences and impressions on coming face to face with a man from another planet. Adamski was not afraid when he saw the shining vehicle come down, nor when the tremendous realisation burst upon him that he was standing face to face with a living spiritual being, a man like ourselves, a human brother from another globe of existence.
And so we who are of the same flesh and mould as Adamski can look up with joy, rather than with fear, when from time to time other fragments; other people; Sparks from the same flame, flash for a moment into the orbit of our perception, knowing that, like ourselves, they are working out the full lesson of their worlds in the slow, aeonic. struggling ascent towards union in the Central Mystic Sun, known to sages and philosophers of all time as the goal and achievement, not only of man, but of Cosmic Man himself, whom we shall re-become.
Pic. 12
George Adamski with his six-inch telescope, and the camera which took the photographs
BOOK TWO
(21)
George Adamski
I am George Adamski, philosopher, student, teacher, saucer researcher. My home is Palomar Gardens, on the southern slopes of Mount Palomar, California, eleven miles from the big Hale Observatory, home of the 200-inch telescope—the world’s largest. And to correct a widespread error let me say here, I am not and never have been associated with the staff of the Observatory. I am friendly with some of the staff members, but I do not work at the Observatory.
At Palomar Gardens I have my own two telescopes. Both are Newtonian reflectors. One, a 15-inch, is housed under a dome, while the other, a 6-inch professional type made by the Tinsley Laboratory, is mounted out in the open. Thus it is easily and quickly turned in any direction. Also it is easily removed from its stationary mounting and capable of being taken wherever I desire. For such occasions I have a tripod on which I mount it. Also for this little telescope I have a camera which I can quickly attach over the eyepiece. Prior to my photographing the saucers I used this arrangement for celestial photography. However, I am not a professional photographer.
This little telescope was given to me about twenty years ago by a friend and student. And skywatching and telescopic photography then became a fascinating pastime. Then came the saucers. Since then it has become a full-time—and somewhat costly—occupation.
For the greater part of my life I have believed that other planets are inhabited. And I have pictured them as ‘class rooms‘ for our experience and development; as the ‘many mansions‘ of the vast universe. However, I had never given too much thought to the idea of inter-planetary travel in man-made ships. This subject had never entered my mind until late in 1946. I, too believed the distances between planets to be too great for spanning by mechanical constructions. But during the meteoric shower on 9 October 1946 I actually saw with my naked eyes a gigantic space craft hovering high above the mountain ridge to the south of Mount Palomar, toward San Diego. Yet I did not realise at the time what I was seeing. As many of us will remember, people everywhere were asked to watch the heavens that night and count the numbers of meteors falling per minute.
This we were doing at Palomar Gardens. When, suddenly, after the most intense part of the shower was over and we were about to go indoors, we all noticed high in the sky a large black object, similar in shape to a gigantic dirigible, and apparently motionless.
Pic. 10
The scene of the meeting with the Venusian. The Venusian ship is visible between the hills
Pic. 11
Adamski's photographic plate returned on December 13, 1952, by the Venusian, covered with strange writing
I noticed that no cabin compartment or external appendages were visible, but I figured that during the war some new types of aircraft had been developed and that this was one of them. My calculation was that it was up there to study the falling meteors at that high altitude, so I gave no further thought to it, except to wonder why it was so totally dark. While we were still watching, it pointed its nose upward and quickly shot up into space, leaving a fiery trail behind it which remained visible for a good five minutes.
Still thinking nothing of it, we all returned into the house and turned on the radio to a San Diego station where a newscast was being given. All of us were surprised and incredulous as we listened to the announcer say that a large cigar-shaped space ship had hovered over San Diego during the shower and that hundreds of people had seen and reported it. The description tallied with what we had seen.
Even then it was hard to accept, or to believe that we had actually seen a ship from another world. In fact, I refused to accept it fully until a few weeks later when in the cafe one Sunday a group of people from San Diego were telling me of the big space ship they had seen during the meteoric shower. I was trying very hard to discredit the whole thing, basing it on recognised distances between Earth and other planets, and speeds as known by us. I brought up the time element and pressures which a human body can endure. From all known figures, inter-planetary travel was impossible in any human life span.
During this discussion six military officers who were sitting at another table listened intently to all points brought up. Then one of them spoke up and said, ‘It is not as fantastic as it sounds. We know something about this.’ I immediately asked what knowledge they had, but they would not reveal it. Yet they assured us all that the ship we had seen and were discussing was not of this world. Naturally this made me take more stock in the situation, since my one desire at all times has always been to know the truth. Consequently, I began to observe the skies more closely, hoping that, since it had happened before, this amazing sight might come again. During the summer of 1947 there began to be much discussion of flying saucers, but it was not until August of that year that I finally was rewarded for my steady watching.
One Friday evening I sat by myself out in the yard swing, watching the sky in all directions. Suddenly a bright light object appeared, moving through the sky from east to west above the mountain ridge to the south. And then another ! and another ! !
Not realising that this was what I had been waiting and hoping for for so long, I sat watching and wondering. I quickly discarded the idea of these lights being a beacon light. There was no light beam visible with these light objects, and they were moving differently from any beacon I had ever seen. And I have seen a lot of beacons. Suddenly one of the objects stopped in mid-space and reversed its path of travel, and I said to myself, ‘This must be what they call a flying saucer’.
I then called to the four persons indoors to come out and see what was going on. We began to count. Our total count was 184. The objects were passing in single file, but appeared to be moving in squadrons of thirty-two. We noticed this definitely, since the leader of each group would travel half the way, or better, then reverse almost to the eastern horizon as if in a signal, and thirty-two more—one by one—would pass, as if in review. They seemed to follow a rather definite path, except that some disappeared in the west, while others banked and turned toward the south. As they banked, we noticed the objects appeared to have a ring around a central body, or dome.
As the last one passed, it stopped for several seconds in mid-space and shot out two powerful beams of light—one towards the South and San Diego, the other north toward Mount Palomar. Then it continued on its way, and we didn’t see any more.
At that time a young Soil Conservation employee, one Tony Belmonte, was living in his trailer on the property here. He was rabidly sceptical on the subject of space ships or any such craft moving through our atmosphere. Many times he had expressed his opinion that anyone believing in such things should have his head examined. So we seldom discussed the subject. But on the following morning—Saturday—he came in and asked me if I had seen any flying saucers the night before.
Knowing his attitude on the subject, I asked him what he was up to.
He replied, ‘No, George. I mean it ! I am serious ! Did you see any of them last night ?’
I answered, ‘If that is the way you feel about it, yes ! We here all saw them."
‘How many did you see ?" was his next question.
‘We counted 184,’ I said, ‘although I know there were more because we didn’t start counting at the beginning.’
Then he told me that at the Dempsey Ranch in Pauma Valley, on the west side of Palomar, a group of men were sitting outdoors discussing business matters. He was one of them. And all of these men watched this phenomenon in the sky. They had counted 204 of the objects.
From then on Tony Belmonte was a believer in flying saucers. But he was not fully convinced of their other-world origin since he thought they might have been some government experimental craft.
Shortly after he left, two scientists on their way to the big Observatory on top of Mount Palomar came in and asked me the same question Mr. Belmonte had asked. I told them the number we had counted. They said the number was not right, as though they knew the exact number. When I told them of the other number reported by Belmonte, they said that was more nearly correct. Then I knew that they, too, had observed what had taken place the night before. They would divulge little more than to assure me that all indications pointed to them being inter-planetary, because they did not belong to our government. This spurred me on to more continuous watching than ever, but without much success.
Then late in 1949 four men came into the cafe at Palomar Gardens. Two of them had been in before and we had talked a little about the flying saucers. This day it was around noon, and raining—really pouring. They ordered some lunch and we began talking about flying saucers again. One of these men was Mr. J. P. Maxfield, and another was his partner, Mr. G. L. Bloom, both of the Point Loma Navy Electronics Laboratory near San Diego. The other two men were from a similar setup in Pasadena. One was in officer’s uniform.
They asked me if I would co-operate with them in trying to get photographs of strange craft moving through space, since I had smaller instruments than those at the big Observatory. I could manoeuvre mine more easily than those on top could be moved, especially my 6-incher, which was without a dome. I could point it much as pointing a gun at ducks.
My 15-incher under a dome would not be of so much help since the ships moved fairly fast through space and there usually was not time to move both dome and telescope.
They said they were going up to the top and ask for the same co-operation from the men at the big Observatory.
I asked them then where I should look to be most likely to see the strange objects which they were asking me to try to photograph. We discussed the pros and cons of the possibility of bases being on the moon for inter-planetary craft. And finally the moon was decided upon as a good spot for careful observation.
By now the idea of space craft was not fantastic to me. For during the thirty years I have been a teacher as well as a student of philosophy, seeking an ever-greater understanding of the Laws of the Universe, I have become convinced that it was only logical that other planets throughout the universe should be inhabited by beings very much like ourselves—probably different mostly in stages of development only. And my personal observations— though few—combined with logic made me realise that with a more scientifically-advanced people on other planets, interplanetary travelling was definitely within the realms of possibility.
Thus, when the military requested my co-operation in trying to photograph strange objects moving through space, with the aid of my 6-inch telescope, I was more than willing.
So I bought some new film and got all of my equipment in readiness to comply with their request And it was not too long after this meeting that I succeeded in getting what I deemed at ‘the time to be two good pictures of an object moving through space. I first saw it as I was observing the moon.
I cannot remember the exact day except that it was during the time radio reports were being broadcast of a flying saucer landing in Mexico City. I had just tuned in the 4 p.m. news from KMPC, Beverly Hills, California, when Mr. Bloom stepped into the place. He sat down beside me, next to the radio, and told me to be quiet and listen. After it was over, he made an odd remark. ‘They did not give all of the truth. There was more than that to it.’
Then I knew that he knew more about it, but he would not talk. We visited for a few minutes and just before he left, 1 handed him the two photographs which I had taken. I asked him to pass them on to Mr. Maxfield for examination and for the records. He said he would.
The story of the Mexican landing was squashed. But in 1951 I met some government men from Mexico and I asked them about that incident. They told me that a space ship had landed as reported. It was all true, but when the incident became known, the Mexican people were so superstitious they feared that the end of the world was coming. Then the government had to do something to reverse the panic that was rising. And the story as given to me was that they reported to their people that it was an American guided missile which ran out of control and fell there. That quieted them.
On 21 March 1950, some time after I had given these first two pictures to Mr. Bloom, I gave a lecture on flying saucers to the Everyman’s Club in La Mesa, California. Sanford Jarrell, of the then daily San Diego Journal, was a reporter on the scene. Incidentally, he gave this lecture a front-page report in his paper the next day. Before the lecture he discussed the subject with me and asked many questions. But nothing was said or was later published about the two pictures of mine at the Electronics Laboratory. Yet on the 22nd, after the Journal carried the story of my lecture, the San Diego Union and Tribune contacted me to what I had caught.
Naturally they were putting me ‘on the spot’, so I had to admit that I had sent such pictures to the Laboratory for analysis as to what I had caught.
The paper tried to get information from the Naval Laboratory, but the personnel there staunchly denied ever receiving any such photographs. And for a week the papers carried articles about my pictures which I claimed to have sent to the Laboratory, and which allegedly had never reached there. But I was not worried about all this confusion at the time, for I had the negatives. I had sent only prints. So I sat down and waited. The newspaper men were persistent and finally asked information from the Pentagon.
On 29 March, by way of the Copley Press Leased Wire from Washington, the Air Force denied knowledge of the pictures and stated that they were a ‘little sceptical’ since they had not received the pictures nor any word of them, and that they did not ‘subscribe to the theory that flying saucers are interplanetary missiles’. They went on to say that ‘all such reports of "phenomena" are channelled to the Air Force‘... for... ‘the Air Force still investigates reports of "aerial phenomena".’
This statement by them—three months after Project Saucer was supposed to have been discontinued !
Yet on 4 April the San Diego Tribune-Sun carried the following:
‘A picture George Adamski, amateur astronomer, sent to the Naval Electronics Laboratory for an opinion on whether it bore the image of a space ship has been found and the opinion is "No !"—or is it ?’ And a long article followed.
After this, of course, I really set to work watching and photographing. But no longer did I turn over any of my pictures to the Laboratory. And they did not stop in for them any more. But nearly all of my pictures, including the very last ones, are in the hands of the Air Force, since they have asked all citizens to report any sightings made. Thus I am co-operating, as are others throughout the nation. But they never reply in any way.
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. I have always felt that if the pilot within one of these ships would come out and we could meet, there would be a way for us to understand one another, even though our words might be different. And I have thought, too, that it would be interesting to take a ride in one of these craft. It would not matter too much where they took me, nor even whether they brought me back to Earth. I have become very much interested in learning more about them and their ways of living.
As a result of these years of constant watching for space craft, I have developed the habit of always looking up—for it is there I see the ships from other worlds. And I wouldn’t even guess at the number of them I have seen during this time.
A number of my friends have also developed the same habit and they, too, see the space craft—sometimes singly, sometimes in groups. These ships are there and they can be seen by those who look up whenever they are out of doors—not always, but sooner or later the searcher will be rewarded. Naturally, open country districts afford best viewing for sky watching, but they have been seen over large cities and over all the U.S.A., as well as over other nations.
But taking pictures of these objects is not an easy task. No matter how good a camera one has, with the fastest film obtainable, unless the craft is orbiting or hovering one cannot be sure that one will get anything at all on his negative.
During the year of 1950 and until the spring of 1951 the rewards for constant watching were slim and somewhat unconvincing to anyone who did not want to believe in such things. For during this whole time I was able to photograph only white spots far out in space. I did not get even one picture with any definite form. Although as I watched steadily I saw endless numbers of strange flashes that looked to me to be very far out from the Earth. My eyes became accustomed to them and I learned to recognise them even when I saw them in the daytime. During this time I took a couple hundred or more shots of these flashes, especially when I noticed them to be close to the moon, or, as oft-times happened, right ‘on’ the moon.
However, most of these were failures with only four or five that I felt were good enough to save. On the other hand, these pictures, even though I discarded them, were sufficient to prove to me that something was moving out there—intelligently controlled, yet not of Nature’s making.
And I knew nothing had been developed on Earth to go out that far—at least not in the numbers I was seeing. This alone was sufficient to urge my perseverance in watching, always in the hope that they would come closer and I then would be able to get some good photos of them.
Night after night I stayed outdoors watching the heavens. The stars sparkled in friendly brilliance during the long winter nights and the winds roared over the mountain tops, sounding like heavy freight trains rolling down a steep incline, or like the clatter of an approaching street car on metal rails in the city. Then as nearby trees bowed before them, the cold winds wrapped me round and seemed to penetrate to the very marrow of my bones. And steaming cups of hot coffee were incapable of warming me. Once I caught such a cold that it took me many weeks to recover, but still I persisted. The saucers were a challenge and I could not stop.
But there were wonderful nights, too, when the air was warm, and summer skies sparkled overhead. The breezes in the treetops whispered melodies and an occasional bird asleep on some branch would waken, twitter a moment and return again to the silence of slumber. Often during the spring and summer nights an owl would break the spell of still beauty with its hoot—and then an answering hoot—sometimes close by, sometimes far away.
Coyotes, too, added their sharp barks, especially during the nights of the full moon, and almost instantly the night air was filled with answering barks and bays of the mountain dogs, who will not be quieted until the yaps of the coyotes have ceased.
Yes... there have been nights of magic to recompense for those of discomfort as I continued my watch for the mysterious saucers.
The summer and fall of 1951 and the year 1952 were much more satisfying in the number of photographs I was able to get. The space craft seemed to be moving in closer to Earth, and in increasing numbers. As a result I got a number of good photographs showing well outlined forms—but not much detail.
As I continued watching steadily day and night, I found that cloudy weather was better for getting close-up pictures than clear weather. And I reasoned that the personnel was able to observe the Earth as well as they desired from a far distance in clear weather, but in foggy or stormy weather they had to come closer, and often, maybe by accident, they dropped below the clouds as they moved above the Earth. Maybe they were studying the consistency of the clouds and analysing pressures and other atmospheric conditions at those times. I do not know.
During this time I took something like 500 photographs. But barely a dozen of them turned out good enough to preserve as proofs that these craft were different from recognised Earth craft. While their numbers and frequencies of appearance took them out of my military experimental category
Moreover, reports of sightings of these strange craft came from almost every nation on the Earth, and no government would send its experimental aircraft over another nation’s territory. That, for many reasons, is a recognised fact.
On the other hand, if these were secret experimental military developments, I would not have been allowed to copyright my photographs and send them so publicly through the mails. And I sent a set of them to the Wright-Paterson Air Force Base. In the interest of national security they would have stopped me, if I was photographing our own secret craft. They never have.
Ever since I became convinced of the reality of space craft moving through outer space and through our atmosphere, observing movements on Earth, I have discussed the subject with all who were interested. There have always been a few people who have believed such phenomena to be within the realm of logic and possibility. But, too, there have been many scoffers. And here I want to discuss this phase.
Although I have lived in America since I was one year old, I still have an accent. And I have no college degrees. Then, too, there is much manual labour to be done around Palomar Gardens, and I do it. Some people cannot associate such things with a scientific atmosphere, nor see that the practical can make a very steady basis for scientific and philosophical outreaching. So they try to discredit me. But I have never been deterred.
In 1949 I began being asked to talk before Service Clubs and other groups. I accepted these invitations because they afforded me an opportunity to tell more people about our visitors from other worlds. I have continued this lecturing ever since.
These trips involved me in travelling expenses, but I learned that most Service Clubs have no speaker fund and more often than not I was not paid for these lectures. A few gave me five or ten dollars, and one or two gave 25 dollars, but there has not been a year yet that such payments have covered the expenses of my lecture trips.
Yet I continued because I felt that the people must be told about these space craft that were moving through our atmosphere in ever-increasing numbers.
As I began to get good photographs, I had enlargements made and used them in support of my lectures. They were visible and actual proof of my declarations as to the reality of craft other than our own moving above us.
Not even half of the people believed me. Yet these lectures were serving their purpose. They were getting the people to talking and thinking about space craft. And they were getting people to look up more than they had ever done before. So, I continued.
An article in Fate helped me financially, and it too reached many people who otherwise might not have become interested in the saucers, I am still getting letters from people who first heard of me through that article in July, 1951.
People wanted prints of the pictures I had taken, so I had some made up and set a nominal price on them. Here was the first opportunity I had to let the saucers at least help to pay some of the large expense I had been put to in trying to photograph them and prove their reality.
So, I was then charged with ‘commercialising’.
I realise that it is hard for the average person who has given little or no thought to such things to believe that a man can go and photograph space ships from other worlds.
‘He must be fooling the people ! Such things just don’t happen that way !’
However, my negatives have always been available for examination by responsible persons and have often been examined. Without exception, examination has proved the genuineness of my pictures. The photographer who does my finishing is Mr. D. J. Detwiler, who lives in Carlsbad, California, about 40 miles from Palomar Gardens, and he is available for questioning.
Yet all kinds of discrediting stories have seeped back to me, coming from scientists and others. Apparently it was presumptious of me to even expect people to believe that my pictures were genuine. Some duplicate defects in the background of more than one picture would be pointed out and supposedly this proved that superimposing was being done. I was ‘making these pictures up !’
But why ? Everyone must have some motive !
Well, it would help our restaurant business and draw many curious patrons there. They did not stop to reason that if this were the purpose how much more sensible it would have been for me to spend all that time, and all that money, in legitimate advertising and promoting work !
This is a sample of some of the discrediting arguments used by minds who could not be dislodged from old ways of thinking, despite the fact that sightings were being reported from all over the world and other photographs than mine were frequently in the press.
When I innocently made statements that out of ‘700 tries’ I had obtained only about 18 good photographs it would get around that’ Adamski claims he has taken over 700 photographs of saucers and how can he get so many when it is all anybody else can do if he ever gets one ?’ These are samples of some of the distortions.
But some of this is perhaps to be expected considering the fact that we are dealing with the unprecedented and with things that truly stagger the imagination. And such, in general, is the normal lot of the pioneer.
While I am far from being the only person who has photographed space craft, I am told that it is doubtful if any other single individual has spent as much time, effort and money as I have in such attempts. Most other photographs of this phenomena have been caught on the fly, or as it were, by accident.
Then, too, Mount Paloma r is undoubtedly an exceptionally good location for making sightings. Situated on the southern slopes of this beautiful mountain as Palomar Gardens is, at an elevation of 3,000 feet, I have clear viewing in all directions. A number of mountain peaks rise to the east and the south, while toward the south-west beyond the mountains and the valleys the Pacific Ocean stretches for many miles, clearly perceptible without aid of telescope or glasses whenever the coast is free of fog or haze. It is over these mountains and the coast that I have seen most of the space craft during the past two years. But there is a definite reason for this, and anyone desiring to do so can investigate this fact for himself.
If these craft are moving on natural magnetic force, and I believe they are, and if the vortexes of Earth are natural re-chargers, for them as has been stated many times, the district in which I am located is in their path of travel, just as our airplanes have definite travel lines between airports. For there is a strong natural vortex at Calexio, California, and another in Santa Monica Bay on the California coast. A ruler laid crossing these two points shows the mountains just south of Mount Palomar almost in exact centre of this line.
Considering this fact and my continuous watching, it is not strange that I have perhaps seen more space craft than other people. But there are others here at Palomar Gardens who, interested in these visitors, and working with me, and watching regularly many hours every week, have also seen a large percentage of those I have seen.
Had I been in this thing for money I could have made it—lots of it—at the times the papers were carrying me on their front pages, for I was one of the first to ‘stick my neck out’ by publicly discussing it. But I had no desire to prostitute so profound a subject nor make a mockery out of so unprecedented a happening. And this easily could be the reason why I have been made the target by certain people who have had such things in mind themselves.
And further—regarding the incredibility of the whole saucer subject, all students of the phenomena know that there is confusion ‘at the top’. And that a lot of this is purposeful, to damp down the public’s curiosity.
National security has many facets and the powers that be are themselves pushing out in the direction of space and of antigravity. Also, they know they have an enemy. And they do not know how far the enemy may have gone in this general field of a new form of power and propulsion. They do know that at the close of the war all the German scientists with knowledge did not come to this country ! Add to this the mystery of something from outer space and not yet defined by anybody and you can understand that Wright Patterson Field and the Pentagon have something to think about. Especially when they recall to what degree Orson Welles of the ‘Men-from-Mars‘ fiasco was able to manipulate people’s minds at short notice.
In addition to all this, another angle, usually discussed in whispers, is the hint that if our world discovers the saucers’ source of power what will this do to the whole economic structure upon which our civilisation operates ? Some claim there is already certain outward evidence that we are beginning to acquire this knowledge. Some claim there are entrenched interests that will fight to the death before allowing this to happen.
Realising all this, it has been easy to be charitable toward those who chose to discredit me. All saucer researchers are looking forward to the time when the bulging files of the Air Force may be opened. Until then the layman is left to use his own perspicacity. He is left to make his judgments in line with what he believes to be the motives and the honesty of those who make claims.
It is for this reason I have tried to be completely frank in every detail. I have nothing to hide. I have no subtle motives. I have tried to cover every question which I could foresee that might be asked regarding the factual side of my experiences.
With a subject that probably adds another dimension to our thinking it can be readily be seen that vast new scientific and philosophical implications rear their heads. Some of these are staggering and they will necessarily rock former foundations. I do not propose to discuss those angles at this time since I am keeping strictly to outward facts. But I have my theories regarding these implications, yes, and my deep and well-reasoned convictions and I propose to share them in a future book.
By 1951 and 1952 I began receiving reports of saucers apparently landing in various desert areas not a great drive from Mount Palomar. I have always worked independently of any other group or organisation and so, hoping to make personal contact and to learn just what these space people looked like and what their purpose was in coming Earthward, I made a number of trips to chosen spots. But without success.
However, there is a saying that ‘The secret of success is constancy of purpose’. And so the day finally came when my long watching was to be rewarded.
(22)
The Memorable November Twentieth
It was about 12.30 in the noon hour on thursday, 20 November 1952, that I first made personal contact with a man from another world. He came to Earth in his space craft, a flying saucer. He called it a Scout Ship.
This took place on the California desert 10.2 miles from Desert Center toward Parker, Arizona.
During the year of 1952, along with my photographing attempts I had made a number of trips to the desert areas where I had been told the flying saucers were seen and were apparently landing. Every trip had been unsuccessful, but I kept hoping that one day success would be mine.
It was late in August 1952 that Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Bailey, of Winslow, Arizona, first came to Palomar Gardens and asked to talk with me privately. I had never heard of them prior to that time. During the conversation, they told me about Dr. and Mrs. George H. Williamson, of Prescott, Arizona. These four people were as interested in the flying saucers as I. They had read everything available on the subject They, too, had seen these strange objects flash through the skies, sometimes low, sometimes high. And they, too, had made trips to a number of desert places in the hope of seeing one land. Then they heard about me and the Baileys drove up to see me and tell me some of their experiences.
Later, the Baileys and Williamsons came up together. After spending several days at Palomar Gardens as our guests, they asked me to telephone them before my next attempt to establish a contact. During their stay we had met a great deal and had become better acquainted and they wanted to be with me if things could be so arranged.
I promised to call them as they requested, but warned them that I seldom planned such trips more than a day or two in advance. Thus, on the evening of 18 November I telephoned Dr. Williamson that I was leaving about midnight the next night for a destination near Blythe, California, and asked him if they would be able to meet me there early on Thursday morning, the 20th.
They could. So could the Baileys with whom Dr. Williamson kept in contact. Thus the arrangements were made and hopes were high, as they always were for these trips.
It was close to 1 a.m. on the morning of the 20th when at the risk of waking the wild life I left Palomar Gardens and rumbled down the mountain road on my way to meet the Baileys and Williamsons on the highway just west of Blythe, California. Accompanying me on this trip were Mrs. Alice K. Wells, owner of Palomar Gardens and operator of the cafe there, and Mrs. Lucy McKinnis, my secretary. The two women had agreed to take turns driving the long distance, since I never drive a car on the highway.
We reached our destination shortly after 8 a.m. after a two-hour delay caused by picking up a nail in one of our rear tyres. We found that we had ruined it by running on it, so finally I had to buy another tyre.
The four from Arizona were waiting for us just a few miles out from Blythe, and together we all drove into the town where we had a leisurely breakfast. Afterwards, we stood on the sidewalk for a few minutes discussing where to go from there. Al. Bailey, in whose car the others were riding, was perfectly willing to abide by any of my suggestions. So they said they would follow us.
Finally we decided to turn back on the highway over which we had just driven. There was no particular reason for this except that I have developed the habit of following my hunches or feelings and this seemed to be the way to go.
Perhaps one reason was, that in first driving into Blythe I had noticed what appeared to be a one-time military training centre and also a very large airport. These both seemed to have been abandoned. Beyond them I had noticed a road which I thought would take us close to the base of a ridge of mountains far in the distance. Only I had not noticed how far we had driven past that highway before reaching Blythe, and driving back, looking for it seemed twice as far as I remembered.
When we reached Desert Center, there to the right was the road for which we were looking, the highway leading to Parker, Arizona.
About 11 miles down this Parker Highway I suggested that we stop the cars along the side of the road and get out to look around for a while. And I would figure out what to do from thereon.
The ground here was not as sandy as one usually expects on deserts. Instead, strange and interesting rocks in varying small sizes covered the earth. Dr. Williamson said they were volcanic. They were sharp and jagged and varied in their shapes.
Small bushes of silver-white desert Holly, some with their tiny blood-red berries, doted the earth here and there. And a few other desert scrub growths with which we were unfamiliar attracted our attention. But all plant life was conspicuously sparse in this area.
It was about 11 a.m. when we arrived at this spot, and for the next half hour we just roamed over the ground noticing the interesting rocks; picking up one here and there for closer examination and discussion. A strong gusty wind was blowing, and it was quite cold compared with the heat of the sun’s rays when the wind temporarily subsided. We found it more comfortable to turn our back to the wind.
A short distance beyond where the cars were parked we noticed a shallow dry ‘wash’ bed which seemed to come from the end of the mountain ridge at its base. This crossed the highway in a ‘dip’ at what I would estimate to be about a 35 degree angle, and continued to wind its way between risings on the side of the road where we roamed.
Curiosity overcame Al. Bailey and myself. Leaving the others, we walked across to the base of this ridge to see what was on the other side of the mountains and how the ground lay there. As far as we could see it was similar in every respect to the land on the side where we were, except for the highway. And it extended thus for many, many miles.
About half an hour was spent in this manner when someone suggested it would be a good idea to eat. This was heartily approved by all.
Not knowing what we might encounter before the day was over, Alice had brought along a light lunch—hard-boiled eggs, sandwiches, cookies, candy and a few bottled drinks, beside a couple of gallon jars of water for drinking. This was now unpacked and passed around.
Some of us sat on the narrow shoulder that skirted the road beside our cars, but the rocks were sharp and sitting was not too comfortable. The others stood nearby, shelling their eggs or eating, as we discussed what to do or where to go from there.
The sky was beautiful and clear with little wispy clouds forming here and there, only to float away into nothingness. And although we knew most of the mountains in the background were miles away, they appeared quite close in the deceptive atmosphere of the desert.
Each of us was alert, scanning the broad expanse of sky visible in all directions, and hoping steadfastly for a bright flash somewhere out there that would indicate the presence of a space craft. At the same time we noticed that passing cars invariably slowed their speed to observe what we were doing.
Then Betty Bailey said, ‘Let’s take some pictures’.
The Baileys had brought a movie camera, which they had rented and with which they were not too familiar, and some extra film. The Williamsons had a still camera.
It was shortly after 12 noon. Both Betty Bailey and Betty Williamson were still taking pictures when the sound of a plane’s motors was heard approaching from behind the ridge of mountains across the road from us.
Although I speak of these mountains being ‘across the road’, the closest part in their base was probably about the length of two city blocks beyond the far edge of the highway. Yet in the stillness of the desert air sounds carry far and we heard the plane a good minute before it came into sight, crossing low over the mountain ridge. It was a conventional two-motor plane and apparently on a routine flight.
We watched this plane as it passed almost over our heads, continued its line of travel and became a diminishing speck in the distance.
Suddenly and simultaneously we all turned as one, looking again toward the closest mountain ridge where just a few minutes before the first plane had crossed. Riding high, and without sound, there was a gigantic cigar-shaped silvery ship, without wings or appendages of any kind. Slowly, almost as if it was drifting, it came in our direction; then seemed to stop, hovering motionless.
Excitedly Dr. Williamson exclaimed, ‘Is that a space ship ?’
At first glance it looked like a fuselage of a very large ship with the sun’s rays reflecting brightly from its unpainted sides, at an altitude and angle where wings might not be noticeable.
Schooled in caution against over-excitement and quick conclusions, especially in regard to aircraft, Lucy replied, ‘No. George, I don’t believe it is.’
‘But that baby’s high ! And see how big it is !’ exclaimed Al.
‘And, Lucy ! It doesn’t have wings or any other appendages like our planes do !’ persisted George. And turning to me, ‘What do you think, Adamski ?’
Before I could answer, Lucy interrupted. ‘You’re right, George ! Look ! It’s orange on top—the whole length !’
Excitement filled the air as the truth was quickly realised, and everybody began talking at once. Alice wanted me to get my telescope out of the car and take a picture of this beautiful ship close by. Al. Bailey wanted his Betty to take a movie of it while it was hovering. But she was so excited that she could not set the camera correctly. By the time she got herself calmed, the ship was already moving again.
The two pairs of binoculars which had been brought along were being passed rapidly from one to the other so all could get a good look. And it was with the binoculars that George noted a black, or dark, marking on the side as though an insignia of some kind was there. This marking was entirely different from any he had ever seen before, although he was unable to make it out in detail. A member of the Air Force during the last war, Dr. George Williamson is well acquainted with the insignias of planes of other nations as well as our own.
A never-to-be-forgotten sight. It could easily have been seen by any passing motorist. But comparatively few people have ever learned to look up. Especially is this true, and rightfully so, of car drivers travelling down an open highway. Their attention is focused on the road ahead.
Had any one of us been pointing upward, as people often do, chances are that some passing car might have stopped, and those within it could have seen this gigantic space visitor as easily as we were seeing it. But we were all cautious not to attract such attention.
And in spite of all the excitement, I knew this was not the place; maybe not even the ship with which contact was to be made, if that was in the plan. But I did feel this ship had a definite ‘something‘ to do with it all.
Fully aware of the curiosity created by our party here in the desert where no one would normally picnic, I did not want to be more conspicuous by setting up my telescope and camera in such an open spot. Above all else, I didn’t want to make the slightest mistake that might prevent a landing and personal contact being made, if such a possibility existed. And now I felt certain that it did.
I said, ‘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.’
Don’t ask me why I said this or how I knew. I have already said that I have a habit of following my feelings, and that is the way I felt. But I cannot tell you why. For those who have an understanding of the subtler working of the mind, no explanation is necessary. For others, an explanation might necessarily be long and difficult.
Lucy quickly got into our car and started the motor. Al. asked if he might go too, and climbed in beside her. Telling the others to stay where they were and to watch closely all that took place, 1 got into the back seat of the car.
As Lucy turned the car around and started down the highway, Al. looked up and I looked out the back window and both of us saw the big ship turn also, silently moving along with the car, but high in the sky and what looked like about half-way between the highway and the mountain ridge. We both watched it closely as we rode along for about half a mile.
Here I asked Lucy if she could safely turn to the right for a short distance to get me closer to a spot I saw and felt would be ideal for setting up my telescope.
There were tracks of some vehicle clearly visible, and it looked as though a road might be on the ground directly under the big ship. Al. and I had noticed this apparent road at the base and running the entire length of this mountain ridge when we had walked over to the other end of the ridge shortly after our arrival. At the time we discussed it, we decided this was an old abandoned target range and this road had been worn there by jeeps at one time.
The rocks here were small but extremely sharp and hard on tyres. Then there had been bottles broken and glass strewn around, so I questioned the wisdom of driving across it. But much time and effort could be saved if we could drive instead of having to carry all my equipment by hand to the spot I had chosen, a good half mile in from the highway at the base of a flat-top, low, hill-like formation.
My equipment consisted of my six-inch telescope, a tripod and a cardboard case box containing the camera and attachments for the telescope, the film holders, seven in all, loaded with super-fast film, and a Kodak Brownie.
We decided to try driving in closer and succeeded in making it safely, stopping within about 200 feet of my chosen spot. Here the large ship appeared to be almost directly over the car, and as the car stopped, it stopped !
Al. helped me unload my equipment, set up the tripod and fasten the telescope on it as firmly as possible.
This was difficult since the gusts of wind were blowing quite strong and in spite of all we could do it would shake the telescope. And an unfirm foundation is never conducive to good picture taking.
But I did not want to waste too much time with these preparations because I did not know how much time I was being given. I felt a definite need for haste, but as I think back over my experiences, I am not sure whether this feeling was coming from those in the big ship, or being created by my own excitement.
I told Al. and Lucy to get back to the others as quickly as possible and for all of them to watch closely for anything that might take place.
As I have said before, I had many times entertained dreams of actually meeting the personnel of some of the craft I had been clicking my camera at for several years. I have expressed myself a number of times as being not only willing but decidedly anxious to take a trip in a saucer. This, despite the fact that I have heard a number of rumours of people disappearing, with the only explanation seeming to be that they were taken up in a space craft of some kind. Most of such rumours seemed well founded as the facts were given to me, and none of these ‘kidnapped‘ persons had, to my knowledge, returned.
Faced with the fact that if there were a landing at this time, and if I were permitted a personal contact with the crew that landed, there was also a possibility that I, too, might be privileged to take a trip somewhere with them, even to the place from wherever ‘they’ came. Consequently, I wanted to be sure that those with me should witness my going.
That was why I had cautioned all of my companions to watch very carefully to see whatever it might be possible for them to see at the distance they were from me. This distance was something between half a mile and a mile.
Asked how long they should wait before returning for me, yet to be sure their presence would not interrupt anything that might be going on, I told Lucy to return for me in an hour, unless I signalled to them before that time. I explained that when the saucer left, if one did come in as I was hoping, I would walk to the highway and wave my hat. But in all cases, to return at the end of an hour because I was certain everything would be finished by that time.
As the car was turned to obey my instructions, the big space ship turned its nose in the opposite direction. Silently, but quickly, it crossed above the crest of the mountains and was lost to my sight, but not before a number of our planes roared overhead in an apparent effort to circle this gigantic stranger.
Al. and Lucy were able to keep it in sight longer than I because on the highway they were farther from the mountains. Not until they had joined the others did it disappear from their sight as it turned its nose upward and shot out into space, leaving our planes circling—nothing.
Alone with my telescope and my thoughts, I busied myself attaching the camera to the telescope and making adjustments with the eyepiece. This adjustment had become slightly distorted in the moving and setting up. All the time thoughts kept racing through my mind, possibilities of what could take place; fears that nothing would; wondering if the big ship would return, or if the planes had chased it away for good; if a strange craft did come close, would I get the kind of picture I wanted— one which would be convincing beyond all question to the general public—and a thousand other thoughts along this same line.
And while I had long hoped for a personal contact with a man from a flying saucer, expectation that such would actually take place at this time was far from my mind, I was hoping for a good picture, a possible closeup of some space craft that would show more detail than I had ever before succeeded in getting. But from previous experiences, I would not have been too disappointed if nothing further had occurred.
Not more than five minutes had elapsed after the car had left me when my attention was attracted by a flash in the sky and almost instantly a beautiful small craft appeared to be drifting through a saddle between two of the mountain peaks and settling silently into one of the coves about half a mile from me. It did now lower itself entirely below the crest of the mountain. Only the lowest portion settled below the crest, while the upper, or dome section, remained above the crest and in full sight of the rest of my party who were back there watching. Yet it was in such a position that I could see the entire ship as it hovered in the cove ahead of me. At the same time, many miles of the highway and surrounding terrain were in full view of the crew within the saucer.
Quickly I spotted it in the finder on my telescope, and as rapidly as possible I snapped the seven loaded films, without taking time to focus through the ground glass in the back of the camera. But I was hoping and praying all of the time that Lady Luck was with me and that the pictures would turn out well.
As I removed each film holder with its exposed negative from the camera—an old Hagee-Dresden Grafles type—I put it in the right-hand pocket of the jacket I was wearing. Here, I was sure, these films would be safe from any accident.
I took the camera off and replaced it in the box in which I had brought it. I then decided to see what I could get with the Brownie. As I snapped the first picture I noticed the saucer flash brightly as it moved away and disappeared over the same saddle through which it had first come, just as a couple more of our planes roared overhead.
I stood watching them as they circled a couple of times and then continued on their way. I was sure the saucer had again evaded them and was on its way to its mother ship.
Then I decided to take a couple more pictures with the Brownie just to show the general terrain in this section in case my space craft pictures turned out well. I still questioned whether or not they would. But this is always the case and I never know until the finishing work is completed. I have never grown to the state of complete assurance of having a good picture, as expert photographers usually have when they take one.
After taking three pictures with the Brownie, I just stood there for a few minutes looking around and with the Kodak still in my hand. I was somewhat awed by being so close to a saucer and I wondered if whatever or whoever was in it knew I was photographing it. I had a feeling that they did. I only wished I could have seen the one who was operating that beautiful craft and could have had a chance to talk with him.... Maybe he would let me look inside.
Suddenly my reverie was broken as my attention was called to a man standing at the entrance of a ravine between two low hills, about a quarter of a mile away. He was motioning to me to come to him, and I wondered who he was and where he had come from. I was sure he had not been there before. Nor had he walked past me from the road. He could not have come from the side of the mountains on which we were. And I wondered how he had crossed over and descended any part of them without me having noticed him.
A prospector perhaps ? Or someone living among these mountains ? I had thought no one would be within miles of this spot when I chose it. Or could he be a rock hound, stranded way out here ? But why was he motioning to me unless he needed help ? So I started toward him, mentally questioning in a minor way, but still feeling the exaltation of my recent experience.
As I approached him a strange feeling came upon me and I became cautious. At the same time I looked round to reassure myself that we were both in full sight of my companions. Outwardly there was no reason for this feeling, for the man looked like any other man, and I could see he was somewhat smaller than I and considerably younger. There were only two outstanding differences that I noticed as I neared him.
1. His trousers were not like mine. They were in style, much like ski trousers and with a passing thought I wondered why he wore such out here on the desert.
2. His hair was long; reaching to his shoulders, and was blowing in the wind as was mine. But this was not too strange for I have seen a number of men who wore their hair almost that long.
Although I did not understand the strange feeling that persisted, it was however a friendly feeling toward the smiling young man standing there waiting for me to reach him. And I continued walking toward him without the slightest fear.
Suddenly, as though a veil was removed from my mind, the feeling of caution left me so completely that I was no longer aware of my friends or whether they were observing me as they had been told to do. By this time we were quite close. He took four steps toward me, bringing us within arm’s length of each other.
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 ! I had not seen his ship as I was walking toward him, nor did I look round for it now. I did not even think of his ship, and I was so stunned by this sudden realisation that I was speechless. My mind seemed to temporarily stop functioning.
The beauty of his form surpassed anything I had ever seen. And the pleasantness of his face freed me of all thought of my personal self.
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.
To break this spell that had so overtaken me—and I am sure he recognised it for what it was—he extended his hand in a gesture toward shaking hands.
I responded in our customary manner.
But he rejected this with a smile and a slight shake of his head. Instead of grasping hands as we on Earth do, he placed the palm of his hand against the palm of my hand, just touching it but not too firmly. I took this to be the sign of friendship.
The flesh of his hand to the touch of mine was like a baby’s, very delicate in texture, but firm and warm. His hands were slender, with long tapering fingers like the beautiful hands of an artistic woman. In fact, in different clothing he could easily have passed for an unusually beautiful woman; yet he definitely was a man.
He was about five feet, six inches in height and weighed— according to our standards—about 135 pounds. 77 And I would estimate him to be about 28 years of age, although he could have been much older.
77/ As Venusian gravity is less than ours, a Venusian would ‘weigh’ more when on our planet.
He was round faced with an extremely high forehead; large, but calm, grey-green eyes, slightly aslant at the outer corners; with slightly higher cheek bones than an Occidental, but not so high as an Indian or an Oriental; a finely chiselled nose, not conspicuously large; and an average size mouth with beautiful white teeth that shone when he smiled or spoke.
As nearly as I can describe his skin the colouring would be an even, medium-coloured suntan. And it did not look to me as though he had ever had to shave, for there was no more hair on his face than on a child’s.
His hair was sandy in colour and hung in beautiful waves to his shoulders, glistening more beautifully than any woman’s I have ever seen. And I remember a passing thought of how Earth women would enjoy having such beautiful hair as this man had. As I said before, he wore no protection over it and it was being blown by the winds.
His clothing was a one-piece garment which I had a feeling was a uniform worn by spacemen as they travel, like Earth men in various types of work wear uniforms to indicate their occupations.
Its colour was chocolate brown and it was made with a rather full blouse, close-fitting high collar much like a turtle neck, only it did not turn down. The sleeves were long, slightly full and similar to a Raglan sleeve, with close-fitting bands around the wrists.
A band about eight inches in width circled his waist. And the only break in colouring of the entire garment was a strip about an inch and a half in width at the top and bottom of this waistband. This was brighter and more of a golden brown.
The trousers were rather full and held in at the ankles with bands like those on the sleeves at the wrists, in style much like a ski pant.
Actually it is very difficult to describe this garment in colouring for I know of no descriptive word in our language that would suit it perfectly.
It was definitely a woven material, very fine, and the weave was different from any of our materials. There was a sheen about the whole garment, but I could not tell whether or not this was due to a finishing process or whether it might be the kind of substance of which its thread was made. It was not like our satin, silk, or rayon, for it had more of a radiance than a sheen.
I saw no zippers, buttons, buckles, fasteners or pockets of any kind, nor did I notice seams as our garments show. It is still a mystery to me how this garment was made.
He wore no ring, watch, or other ornament of any kind. And I saw nothing to indicate, nor did I have a feeling, that he had a weapon of any kind on his person.
His shoes were ox-blood in colour. They too were made of some apparently woven material but different from his suit because these looked much like leather. It was soft and flexible because I could see the movement of his feet within them as we stood talking.
High like a man’s oxford, they fitted closely around his feet, which I would say were about size 9 or 9.5 However, the opening was on the outer side about half way back on the heel between the arch and the back of the heel. Two narrow straps were here, but I saw no buckles or fasteners, and I reasoned that these straps must have the quality of stretching similar to the woven inserts in some women’s shoes.
The heels were slightly lower than on Earth men’s shoes, and the toes were blunt. I noticed his shoes particularly because during our conversation he made it very plain to me that his shoe prints were most important. But more about that later.
Suddenly realising that time was passing and I was getting no information by just looking at him, I asked him where he came from.
He did not seem to understand my words, so I asked him again.
But his only response was a slight shake of the head and an almost apologetic expression on his face, which indicated to me that he was not understanding either my words or the meaning behind them.
I am a firm believer that people who desire to convey messages to one another can do so, even though they neither speak nor understand the other’s language. This can be done through feelings, signs, and above all, by means of telepathy. I had been teaching this as fact for 30 years and now I concluded I would have to use this method if information of any kind was to pass between us. And there were a lot of things I wanted to know, if I could only think of them.
So, to convey the meaning of my first question to him, I began forming, to the best of my ability, a picture of a planet in my mind. At the same time I pointed to the sun, high in the sky.
He understood this, and his expression so indicated.
Then I circled the sun with my finger, indicating the orbit of the planet closest to the sun, and said, ‘Mercury’. I circled it again for the second orbit, and said, ‘Venus’. The third circle I spoke, ‘Earth,’ and indicated the earth upon which we were standing.
I repeated this procedure a second time, all the while keeping as clear a picture of a planet in my mind as I was able to perceive, and this time pointing to myself as belonging to the Earth. Then I indicated him, with a question in my eyes and my mind.
Now he understood perfectly, and smiling broadly he pointed to the sun; made one orbit, made the second, then touching himself with his left hand, he gestured several times with his right index finger toward the second orbit.
I took this to mean that the second planet was his home, so I asked, ‘You mean you come from Venus ?’
This was the third time I had spoken the word ‘Venus ‘in relation to the second planet, and he nodded his head in the affirmative. Then he, too, spoke the word ‘Venus’.
His voice was slightly higher pitched than an adult man’s. Its tonal quality was more that of a young man before his voice completes the change from childhood to maturity. And although he had spoken but one word, there was music in his voice and I wanted to hear more of it.
Next I asked, ‘Why are you coming to Earth ?’
This question too was accompanied with gestures and facial expressions as well as mental pictures, as were all the questions I asked of him. I repeated each question at least twice to be sure that he understood the meaning of the words I was speaking. The expressions of his face and his eyes told me clearly when he understood, or when there was still any uncertainty in his mind as to what I was trying to ask. I also repeated the answers he gave me to be sure that I was understanding him correctly.
He made me understand that their coming was friendly. Also, as he gestured, that they were concerned with radiations going out from Earth.
This I got clearly since there was a considerable amount of radiation of heat waves rising from the desert, as is often the case. Such as the waves that are often seen rising from pavements, and highways on hot days.
He pointed to them and then gestured through space.
I asked if this concern was due to the explosions of our bombs with their resultant vast radio-active clouds ?
He understood this readily and nodded his head in the affirmative.
My next question was whether this was dangerous, and I pictured in my mind a scene of destruction.
To this, too, he nodded his head in the affirmative, but on his face there was no trace of resentment or judgment. His expression was one of understanding, and great compassion; as one would have toward a much loved child who had erred through ignorance and lack of understanding. This feeling appeared to remain with him during the rest of my questions on this subject.
I wanted to know if this was affecting outer space ?
Again a nod of affirmation.
In this respect let me say here, it has long been known by scientists of Earth that the cosmic ray, as it is called, is more powerful in outer space than it is in the Earth’s atmosphere. And if this be true, is it not just as logical to assume that the radioactive force from the bombs being tested by nations of Earth could also become more powerful in space, once leaving the Earth’s atmosphere ? Logical deduction supports the statement of this space man.
But I persisted and wanted to know if it was dangerous to us on Earth as well as affecting things in space ?
He made me understand—by gesturing with his hands to indicate cloud formations from explosions—that after too many such explosions. Yes ! His affirmative nod of the head was very positive and he even spoke the word ‘Yes’ in this instance. The cloud formations were easy to imply with the movement of his hands and arms, but to express the explosions he said, ‘Boom ! Boom !’ Then, further to explain himself, he touched me, then as a little weed growing close by, and next pointed to the Earth itself, and with ,a wide sweep of his hands and other gestures that too many ‘Booms !’ would destroy all of this.
This seemed sufficiently clear, so I changed the subject and asked him if he had come directly from Venus in the ship I had photographed ?
Here he turned around and pointed up behind the nearby low hill.
There, hovering just above the Earth, was the saucer I had seen earlier and thought had left. I had been so engrossed in the man that I had failed to look beyond him into the recesses of the cove to where the small craft had apparently returned and remained hovering all this time.
He was amused at my surprise and laughed a most hearty laugh. But I didn’t feel that he was laughing at me, and consequently I felt no embarrassment,
I laughed with him, and then asked if he had come directly from Venus to Earth in that ?
He shook his head in the negative and made me understand that this craft had been brought into Earth’s atmosphere in a larger ship.
Recalling to mind the large ship we had first seen, I asked if that was the one ?
A nod of affirmation was his reply.
Now in my mind’s picture I put a number of smaller craft— like this one at which I was looking—inside the big ship. I could tell by his expression that he was receiving my mental pictures, and I compared this big craft with our own naval plane carriers.
A nod of his head told me this was right.
So I asked if the large craft might be called a ‘Mother‘ ship ?
He seemed to understand the word ‘mother ‘for now his nod of affirmation was accompanied by an understanding smile.
Next I asked if our ships which had appeared around the ‘Mother’ ship, and those that came down close and observed me as I was photographing his smaller craft had bothered them any ?
To this he answered ‘yes‘ with a nod of his head.
Then I asked, ‘How does your ship operate ? By what power ?’
Although he was very expert in mental telepathy, I had some difficulty in getting a picture of this question in my mind. Even though I gestured with my hands as well as I could, it took me several minutes before I succeeded in getting him to understand the meaning of my question. But I did finally succeed.
He made me understand that it was being operated by the law of attraction and repulsion, by picking up a little pebble or rock and dropping it; then picking it up again and then showing motion.
I in turn, to make sure I understood, picked up two pebbles and placed them close to each other as though one was magnetic, pulling on the other, illustrating it that way as I spoke the word ‘magnetic’. After a short time of doing this, he answered me; even repeating the word ‘magnetic’ which I had already spoken a number of times.
Then he replied ‘yes’.
Here I remembered about the little disks that had so often been reported. This was easy, for I indicated with my hands a small circle, then I pointed to his hovering craft and to him, while in my mind I was wondering if these little disks were piloted.
He quickly understood and shook his head in the negative. Then also making a small circle with his two hands, he raised it to his eyes and then pointed to his ship, followed by a gesture toward space, and I received his thought of the big ship.
I understood this to mean that the little disks often reported sighted were really eyes of larger craft—either the saucers or the mother ships—remotely controlled and not piloted. As I reviewed this in my mind, he assured me J was right.
Then in my mind I saw an explosion in space with a bright flash.
As this picture formed in my mind, he laughed and made me understand that in such cases something had gone wrong with the little disks so they could not be brought back to the ship that had sent them out. Then the control had caused a crosscurrent, or short circuit, to take place. And an explosion resulted. But he assured me that this was always done out far enough so that there was no danger to men on Earth.
Pic. 9
The affidavits vouching for Adamski's meeting with the Venusian, November 20, 1952
Suddenly the thought came to me to ask if he believed in God ?
This he did not understand, for he was not familiar with the word ‘God’. But I finally succeeded in getting the thought in my mind—he was watching me closely—of creating something, and then with the motion of my hand, symbolising the vast sky, the earth and all, and speaking the words ‘Creator of All’.
After a few repetitions of this he understood my thoughts, for I am sure my gestures were not too good.
And he said, ‘yes’.
I realised fully that he naturally wouldn’t understand our names for things and to him God probably would be represented by some other word or name.
But he made me understand, by elaborating a little longer with his gestures and mental pictures, that we on Earth really know very little about this Creator. In other words, our understanding is shallow. Theirs is much broader, and they adhere to the Laws of the Creator instead of laws of materialism as Earth men do. Pointing to himself, then up into space—which I understood meant the planet on which he lived—he conveyed the thought to me that there they live according to the Will of the Creator, not by their own personal will, as we do here on Earth.
I then asked if there were any more landings forthcoming like this one.
He answered me, saying there had been many landings before, and there will be many more.
Are space people coming only from Venus ? Or are there other planets or systems from which they come ? I asked, and here again I had a little difficulty in conveying my thoughts. But I finally succeeded.
To this he made me understand that people are coming Earthwards from other planets in our system, and from planets of other systems beyond ours. I had suspected this for a long time, so his reply was no surprise to me. But now I wanted to know, ‘Is space travelling a common practice with the people of other worlds ? And is it easy ?’
He spoke the word ‘yes’ in answer to both of these questions.
I remembered reports of men being found dead in some saucers that have been found on Earth—saucers that had apparently crashed. So I asked if any of their men had ever died on coming to Earth ?
He nodded his head in the affirmative, and made me understand that things had on occasion gone wrong within their ships.
I could understand this because I knew that both the big ship We had all seen first and the smaller one I had photographed were mechanical craft. And things can go wrong with any mechanical device.
But I wasn’t satisfied. I had a feeling that he was trying to save my feelings, but I wanted the whole truth. So I persisted, and asked whether men of this world had been responsible for any of these deaths ?
His reply to this was ‘yes’, and by holding up his hands several times, as well as with other gestures, he tried to tell me how many.
But I could not get the numbers. I could not be sure whether he was indicating actual numbers, or whether his indications should be multiplied by tens or hundreds, or by what number according to our method of counting.
Remembering a question that had often been asked of me by people with whom I had talked, I asked why they never land in populated places ?
To this he made me understand that there would be a tremendous amount of fear on the part of the people, and probably the visitors would be torn to pieces by the Earth people, if such public landings were attempted.
I understood how right he was, and within my mind wondered if there ever would be a time when such a landing would be safe. I was wondering, too, if such a time ever arrived, would they then attempt public landings.
He read my thoughts as they were passing through my mind, and assured me that such a time would arrive. And when it did, they would make landings in populated territories. But he made me understand clearly that it would not be soon.
In the beginning of our conversation, when I realised that I would have to use my hands for gestures to get this man from Venus to understand my questions, I had set my Kodak on the ground. Now I picked it up and asked him if I could take a picture of him ?
I am sure that he understood my desire, since he was so good at reading my mind. Also I am positive that he knew I would do him no harm because he showed no signs of fear when I picked up the Kodak. Nevertheless, he did object to having his picture taken, and I did not insist.
I have heard many times that men from other worlds are walking the streets of Earth. And if this be true, I could easily understand his desire not to be photographed, because there were a few distinguishing points about his facial features. Normally these would not be noticed. But in a photograph they would be conspicuous and serve as points of identification for his brothers who have come to Earth. However, I respected his desires and felt it unwise to question further on this subject.
But I did ask him if any Earth people had been taken away in space craft.
He smiled broadly, and in half-way manner nodded his head in the affirmative, although I felt that he was not too willing to give that information.
One more question persisted—that of a particular case I knew.
He answered this question for me, but warned me not to mention it further. In fact, I might add right here that he told me a number of things which I must not reveal at this time.
So, changing the subject again, I asked how many other planets are inhabited ?
He indicated that large numbers of them throughout the universe are inhabited by human beings like us.
Then more specifically, I inquired how many in our system ?
He made a large circle with his hand and covered it with a sweeping motion, as if meaning that all of them were.
I wondered whether I understood him correctly, and he made me realise quite firmly that I did.
Naturally my next attempt was to learn if people everywhere are all of the same form as we on Earth.
His response to this question was emphatic, as if he knew exactly what he was talking about, and I understood clearly that the form is very much universal. He tried to explain further, but I could not understand too clearly whether they vary in size, colouring and flesh textures on various planets, or whether there is a mixture on each planet as on Earth. Logical analysis would indicate the likelihood of the latter.
Despite the conclusions of most ‘orthodox‘ scientists it has always seemed to me a fallacy to believe that other planets are not the home of intelligent beings even as is our Earth.
All planets are apparently made out of similar substances. All revolve in the same space. Some are larger, some smaller than others, and all are in varying degrees of development—changing ceaselessly. This is true of all forms, whatever they are, wherever they be.
Reflecting telescopes will never give the full answer. For just as they reflect the light from a planet, they reflect also the particles moving in our atmosphere, and throughout space, and in the atmosphere surrounding the body they are studying.
Until finer devices are developed to filter out all the reflections from the countless moving particles everywhere present, a correct reading of any other body in space will be impossible with a reflecting telescope.
On the other hand, if and when the much-talked-of space platform becomes a reality, I believe actual facts about space will be revealed to our ever-searching scientists, and this will cause the reversal of many theories that today are accepted as facts.
Presence of space craft in our atmosphere, and personal contacts such as the one I have made, prove the old astronomical theories to be wrong. As completely wrong as man’s sailing around the world proved the ancient theory of the Earth being square to be incorrect.
Since there are people on other planets, I wanted to know if they die, as Earth men die ?
He smiled, and remembered a question I had asked earlier, if any of his people had died in coming to Earth ?
So to clear the subject for me, he pointed to his body and nodded in the affirmative—that bodies do die. But pointing to his head, which I assumed to mean his mind, or intelligence, he shook his head in negation, this does not die. And with a motion of his hand, he gave me the impression that this—the intelligence—goes on evolving. Then pointing to himself, he indicated that once he lived here on this Earth: then pointing up into space—but now he is living out there.
I tried to learn the time involved in this type of transition but did not succeed in getting an answer from him. I did receive an impression but cannot say definitely that it is correct since so many thoughts were going through my mind. I could have allowed a slight confusion to enter.
An awareness of time began pressing upon me and there were so many questions I still had not asked him. I was trying to remember them and decide which ones were most important.
One question I wanted very much to ask him was, ‘Is the moon inhabited ?’ I believe it is, and that the people of other planets who indulge in inter-planetary travelling have bases there. My theory about other planets and the atmosphere surrounding them includes the moon. 76
76/ Professor Shapley at Harvard announced the presence of lunar atmosphere in March, 1953.
But I forgot this one. Should I ever get another chance to talk with an inter-planetary traveller, I hope I remember to ask this question.
Nor did I ask him his name. But in a time like this, names and personalities are entirely forgotten. They mean so little and are very unimportant. Perhaps, if I should be privileged to meet him a number of times in the future I might remember to ask his name. Nor would I ask the name of any other inter-planetary traveller I should ever be permitted to contact, if it was in any way similar to this contact. In fact, I didn’t even think of this point until someone later asked me about it.
He, too, must have received an impression that our visit was drawing to a close and that he must return to his waiting ship. For he kept pointing to his feet and talking in a language I surely had never before heard. It sounded like a mixture of Chinese with a tongue that I felt could have sounded like one of the ancient languages spoken here on Earth. I have no way of knowing this as fact. It was only my reaction as I listened, and his voice was indeed musical to listen to.
From his talk and his pointing to his feet, I felt there must be something very important there for me. And as he stepped to one side from the spot where he had been standing, I noticed strange markings from the print of his shoe left in the earth. He looked intently at me to see that I was understanding what he wanted me to do. And as I indicated that I did, and would comply, he stepped carefully on to another and another spot. Thus he made three sets of deep and distinct footmarkings. I believe his shoes must have been especially made for this trip and the markings heavily embossed on the soles to leave such deep imprints.
Then motioning for me to come with him, we turned and walked side-by-side toward the waiting ship.
It was a beautiful small craft, shaped more like a heavy glass bell than a saucer. Yet I could not see through it any more than one can see through the glass bricks that are popular in some of the newer office buildings and homes, which permit more light to enter than would solid walls.
It was translucent and of exquisite colour.
As we approached it, I suddenly became aware of a shadowy form moving within the ship, but there were no definite outlines and I could not say whether it was a man or a woman.
However, that no mistake may be given here, let me say that I definitely do not believe this ship was made of glass such as we know it. It was a specially processed metal. Let me explain it in this way.
Carbon is a soft, opaque, elementary substance. Diamond is a clear, hard stone which radiates prismatic colours in the presence of light—and is almost indestructible. Yet basically a diamond is carbon. Through natural processes of heat and pressure, Nature has transmuted the soft carbon into the hard diamond.
Earth scientists are working with this same principle and are having success to a limited degree.
It is my belief that the men on other planets—more versed in universal laws—have learned and are using these laws for practical purposes. I believe they know how to bring their primary elements from the opaque stage to a translucent stage, yet practically indestructible in hardness, as is the diamond. And it was of such a material that this space craft was made.
And after being so close to one of their small craft as I was to this Scout Ship, it is my firm conviction that it is this quality that makes them so elusive to our eyes and even to cameras, yet showing them on radar screens which require a density of some kind to show up. For I am told by radar operators that lights alone, or light reflections on clouds, do not show on radar screens. Neither do clouds, with the exception of rain clouds and ionised clouds.
Also it is this translucent quality, along with the power they use, that makes them often appear as different coloured lights without definite form.
The ship was hovering above the ground, about a foot or two at the far side from me, and very near to the bank of the hill. But the slope of the hill was such that the front, or that part of it closest to me, was a good six feet above the earth. The three-ball landing gear was half lowered below the edge of the flange that covered them, and I had a feeling this was a precautionary act just in case they had definitely to land. Some of the gusts of wind were pretty strong and caused the ship to wobble at times. When this took place, the sun reflecting on the surface of the ship caused beautiful prismatic rays of light to reflect out from it, as from a smoky diamond.
This was observed, too, by the six others who maintained a steady watch from a distance.
The splendour as it flashed its prismatic colours in the sunlight surpassed every idea I had ever had about space craft. A beautiful vision in actuality. The answer to many questions. A long-cherished hope realised... for here before me, silent in the desert stillness and hovering as if poised for flight, this ship of unearthly construction waited our approach !
The very realisation of the experience I was having overwhelmed me... and I found myself speechless. No longer was I concerned with Earth alone. Rather, it was more like living in two worlds at the same time, and though I should live to be a hundred years of age, or more, I shall never forget the joy and the thrill of my first close approach to a Scout Ship from planet Venus—a sister to Earth.
Nearing the ship, I noticed a round ball at the very top that looked like a heavy lens of some kind. And it glowed. I wondered if this could be used as one end of a magnetic pole to draw their power from space as they were moving through it. In the photographs this ball looks like a large ring, and I have been asked if it was used to hold the smaller craft in place in the mother ship. I doubt this, unless it is suspended in its place in the larger ship through the force of magnetism. This could easily be.
The top of the craft was dome shaped, with a ring of gears or heavy coil built into and encircling the side wall at the base of this domed top. This, too, glowed as though power was going through it.
There were round portholes in the side wall, but not all the way round, because immediately above one of the balls of landing gear I noticed that the wall was solid. Whether this was true over the other two balls I cannot say because I did not walk around the ship. The covered portholes must have been made of a different quality or thickness of material for they were clear and transparent.
And once, for a fleeting second, I saw a beautiful face appear and look out. I felt that whoever was inside was looking for the one who was still out with me, but no word was spoken. The face disappeared so quickly that I caught only a glimpse of it, but I did notice that this person, too, had long hair like the man I had been talking with.
The lower outside portion of the saucer was made like a flange, very shiny yet not smooth as a single piece of metal would appear. It seemed to have layers of a fashion, but they couldn’t be used as steps because they were in reverse to what steps should be. I have no idea of the reason for such construction, but it must have had a purpose.
I was absorbed in observing every detail of this strange and beautiful craft as we neared it, and I wondered just how they were managing to keep it in the hovering state as I saw it.
My space-man companion warned me not to get too close to it and he himself stopped a good foot away from it. But I must have stepped just a little closer than he, for as I turned to speak to him, my right shoulder came slightly under the outer edge of the flange and instantly my arm was jerked up, and almost at the same instant thrown back down against my body. The force was so strong that, although I could still move the arm, I had no feeling in it as I stepped clear of the ship.
My companion was quite distressed about this accident, but he had warned me and I alone was to blame. However, he did assure me that in time it would be all right. Three months later, his words have been proved true for feeling has returned and only an occasional shooting pain as of a deeply-bruised bone returns to remind me of the incident. 78
78/ When Adamski hurt his arm the visitor tried to grab it to save him. In so doing he slightly grazed his own hand on the flange and drew blood—red blood like our own, which seems to discredit any idea that he may have had a different organic system to that of earth men.
At the time I was not so concerned about my arm as I was about the exposed negatives still in the pocket of my jacket on that side. Immediately I reached in and removed them to put them in my other pocket.
As I held them in my hand, this visitor from Venus reached out and indicated that he would like one. Whether or not he realised that the power from his ship might have neutralised the film to a certain extent, I have no way of knowing.
However, at his request, I held the entire stack out to him and he took the top one. This he placed in the front of his blouse, but I still didn’t see any opening or pocket of any kind.
As he did this, he made me understand that he would return the holder to me, but I did not understand how, when, or where.
I asked him if I could take a ride in his ship ?
He shook his head.
Then I asked if I could just go inside to see what it looked like in there.
But, smiling very cordially, he made me understand that would be impossible at this time for he must be going.
I was a little disappointed, but at the same time it gave me, hope that there would be another time and another opportunity.
Since I was not permitted inside the ship I cannot answer all the questions I have been asked about its construction, air conditioning, etc. However, it is my theory that they have solved their space craft construction problems as we have learned to build submarines for underwater travel. I believe space problems and water problems are very similar in respect to travelling through them. Both are fluid. Water is but gases in liquid form. Space is composed of gases in free state.
With a few graceful steps he reached the bank at the back of the ship and stepped up on to the flange. At least that is the way it looked to me. Where the entrance was, or how he went into the ship, I do not know for sure, but as it silently rose and moved away, it turned a little and I saw a small opening about the centre of the flange being closed by what looked like a sliding door.
Also I heard the two occupants talking together, and their voices were as music, but their words I could not understand.
Pic. 13
One of the witnesses, Alice Wells, made this sketch of the visitor while watching the interview through binoculars. It conveys the broad features of his appearance but is far short of doing him justice.
As the ship started moving, I noticed two rings under the flange and a third around the centre disk, this inner ring and the outer one appeared to be revolving clockwise, while the ring between these two moved in a counter clockwise motion.
As I stood in this mountainous recess—a solitary man watching the beautiful Scout Ship glide silently over the crest of the mountains and disappear into space—I felt that a part of me was going with it. For, strange as it may sound, the presence of this inhabitant of Venus was like the warm embrace of great love and understanding wisdom, and with his departure I felt an absence of this warm embrace.
There was an emptiness such as can be compared only with the feelings experienced when a very dear one departs; yet a longing remains for his presence. And to this very day I feel the same emptiness and longing whenever I think of this visitor from another world.
Yet there was and is an inexpressible joy for the privilege I had been given of glimpsing friends from a world beyond this Earth—and the ecstacy of a visit with one of them.
After this small craft had completely disappeared from sight, I hurriedly returned to the footprints my friend had impressed so strongly upon my mind.
As I was walking back to them I noticed that both his footprints and mine were visible as we had walked together toward the hovering ship. But his were deeper in every instance than mine. 77 When I reached the place where he had so deliberately impressed the markings, I picked up some rocks and laid a border around the prints until I could call the others to come and see them, and Dr. Williamson could make casts of them.
77/ As Venusian gravity is less than ours, a Venusian would ‘weigh’ more when on our planet.
I knew he could do this because, being an anthropologist, he was well experienced in such things. And on this trip we had tried to be prepared for any eventuality, even to having along a small package of plaster of Paris.
On my way to the highway to signal the others as we had agreed, I paused momentarily by my telescope to put the Kodak Brownie in the box with the camera belonging to the telescope.
All of them, as they were watching, had seen the small craft as it flashed through the sky on its take-off. But if they had not they would have known something had taken place because of the number of planes circling over the vicinity. And one large B-36 had appeared right over the scene. The noise of these planes was much in contrast to the silent movement of the two types of space craft which we had all just seen.79
79/ The first recorded instance of one of the big mother ships being seen to discharge a formation of ‘Scout Ships‘ was just over two centuries ago at Augermannland, when glowing disks, or balls, or saucers were seen to emerge from a bright tube, or cigar-shaped object high in the sky.
And M. Trecul of L’Academic Francaise observed a small saucer, with a long fiery wake, leave a huge ‘aerial cigar with pointed ends‘ on 20 August 1880.
‘The Disks having been launched from a huge mother ship’. So reads a two-page headline in a lengthy article entitled ‘Flying Saucers from Outer Space’ in look magazine of the first week in October 1953, describing how saucer launchings from the big cigar ships have been clearly observed by radar.
‘At the same time (5.31 a.m., December 6 1952, on a B29 crossing the Gulf of Mexico) Harter caught sight of a huge blip—a half-inch spot on the scope. Amazed, he saw the most fantastic thing of all. Still moving at more that 5,000 miles an hour, the smaller craft merged with the larger machine. Instantly the huge blip began to accelerate. It flashed acrossed Harter’s scope and was gone. The meaning of what they had seen was inescapable. The disks had been launched from a huge mother ship for some type of reconnaissance mission. After the B29 was sighted, one group had been’ diverted for a brief observation. Then, flying at 5,000 m.p.h., they had been taken back aboard the mother ship. It was almost unbelievable. But the radar set had been working perfectly, and the visual confirmation, as Bailey and Ferris saw the machines flash by, was final, absolute proof. Three separate times, saucers had been seen visually where the three radarscopes showed them.’
Excitedly checking their watches, my friends were preparing to start on their way to me when they saw me waving my hat in the prearranged signal. It had been exactly 60 minutes from the time we had separated. And I had told them to wait one hour before coming after me, whether they saw me signalling or not.
Waiting by the roadside until they reached me, I suggested they leave the cars there instead of again driving over those sharp rocks.
I was so excited—although I had not realised it—that I could scarcely talk. They, too, were excited and all began asking questions at the same time. I told them I had talked with the man and he had left footprints. ‘Come on—look at them !’ And that was all I needed to say.
George took the plaster of Paris, a couple of mixing pans and a gallon jug of water out of the car, and together we all walked back up to the footmarkings.
In spite of the rough walking, questions were fired at me from all sides, but I seemed to be in another world. I felt as though I was only moving bodily here on Earth, and my answers to the questions were given in a daze. This feeling of being in two worlds at the same time continued with me for a couple of weeks, and even now when a strong memory of the experience overtakes me, this feeling returns.
Arriving at the spot where the visitor and I had stood talking, and where the footprints were purposely embedded in the earth, everybody gathered around, with various exclamations as all noted the strange markings. Truly, here was a message that would take much work to interpret.
Both the Bettys took photographs of the prints, while Alice, a splendid artist, sketched them, for each print contained different markings. After photographing them, Betty Bailey also made quick sketches of them. To my knowledge, none of these photographs turned out good enough to show anything distinctly.
There was not sufficient plaster of Paris to make casts of all of the prints—there were more than a dozen good ones of the visitor’s steps as he walked from the ship to where we stood talking, and then returned to his ship. So George was able to make only good complete set and two partial sets.
The one good set he took home with him for preservation treatment and careful study. One of the other sets he gave to me, and the third set he took home with him in the hope that some of the symbols would show up plainer in the partial casts, and together he could get more detailed symbols to study.
Since then he has done excellent work on interpreting these symbols from astronomical charts and ancient symbology. So we now have a partial message.
Others, too, have worked independently in an effort to learn the message of the symbols. And while much has been learned, there is still a great deal of work to be done before the full message is known.
I have been asked in this connection, how symbols of another planet could be interpreted here on Earth. The reasoning on which these people have worked has been twofold:
1. That ancient civilisations have lived on Earth whose development and understanding of the Universe in which they lived was far superior to that of man today. Thus their symbols—records of their wisdom—would be of a Universal nature. If, through careful comparison, the symbols in the foot-markings were found to be like those left on Earth by ancient civilisations, a comprehensible message could be worked out.
Pic. 14
Left Foot. Right Foot.
2. Astronomy has its symbols. If any of these were found in the footmarkings, they could be understood as guide posts in space, presently being used by men of other worlds in interplanetary travel. And thus a helpful hand is extended to Earth-men as they turn their thoughts and efforts outwardly toward space travelling.
During all the while the footprints were being photographed, sketched and casts made of them, planes were circling overhead as if trying to see what was going on down there on the ground, narrowing their circling, widening it, and banking as they turned.
I was aware of their presence because their motors resounded in the still desert air, and sometimes a shadow crossed the ground. But I was not interested enough to try to keep count of how many there were at any one time, or during the entire time. My thoughts were more with my recent visitor and his craft.
Several hours were consumed before the excitement had subsided a little and the casts were made and sufficiently dried to wrap and pack for carrying without danger of crumbling or breaking.
George and Al. asked permission to give a report to an Arizona paper and I granted it. They decided to drive to Phoenix since that was the closest large city whose papers would probably have the greatest coverage. They asked me a number of questions to help them in their report, one of which was— ‘How large was the saucer ?’
I answered ‘about 20 feet’ but I was still in that ‘daze’ and did not recall actually noticing how large it was. I had noted the details and not the overall. But to substantiate their report, I gave them a couple of the holders with exposed film in them for the paper to finish and use, if they so desired.
We carried the telescope and other equipment to the highway and packed everything safely in the cars.
After everything was packed and checked for safe riding, and while we were all taking a last long look around this, to us, historical spot, Al. made a marker of rocks and an empty bottle to locate the place again if anyane wanted to come out in the near future to investigate and see the footprints. I made a different type of marking in a bush nearby.
Then we drove to Desert Center for dinner. Probably we appeared as a detached and ‘big-eyed’ group in the little restaurant that evening as we tried to associate such a mundane thing as bodily nourishment with the veritable ‘other-worldly’ experience from which we had just come.
Al. took the speedometer reading on his car and it was exactly 10.2 miles from the place on the highway to the intersection at Desert Center. This was the only accurate mileage reading made that day. Other distances and times were approximations, with two exceptions—the time the large cigar-shaped ship was first sighted, and the sixty minutes I was away from the others, taking photographs and talking with the man from space.
On 24 November the Phoenix Gazette published the report of my contact with the Venusian, along with photographs of the four witnesses who had given them the story. A picture of sketches made of the footmarkings and a very poor photograph of the saucer—the best of those taken at the time and which were in my pocket when I was caught in the power of the craft —accompanied the story.
That report published was true fact, with two exceptions. I am not associated with the staff of the big observatory on top of Mt. Palomar, nor do I own the business at Palomar Gardens. These mistakes have been made many times in the past and I am doing my best to correct them.
Since there were a number of good footprints left in the ground when we left, the two men, Al. and George, suggested that the reporters drive out with them to see the prints for themselves.
This was not done, because the story was accepted as given, and the sketches were proof of their reality. However, let me say here, according to the report given me, the newspaper men did not accept the story as a matter of course. They were first incredulous and tried in every way to break it down and to get some of the witnesses to change their story. One man reminded the women folks of the dangers they were all submitting themselves to if their story was false But all four remained firm on what they had personally seen and the facts as I had told them.
Then excitement gripped the newspaper folks (although caution remained uppermost), and fear that a competitor might get a scoop on them resulted in a truncated version of the story being accepted and published in the Gazette.
Readers were so interested in the story of this contact that every copy of that issue of the paper was quickly snapped up and for some time afterwards the Phoenix Gazette had to turn down requests from people all over the country, who had their money refunded to them.
At home I told a few people of my contact just to get their reaction, but since the photographs I had taken had not turned out well, I had nothing tangible with which to support myself, because I did not want to risk displaying the casts and having them broken. But since I have a number of earlier pictures, and since I have been talking and lecturing on this subject for more than three years, most of the people with whom I discussed the episode did believe my report of this personal contact.
Some expressed fear, some dismay, and others wanted to know when another contact might take place so they could be present and maybe be taken for a trip. These still remain the reactions of the people as I tell them of my experience, even though now I have good photographs and good drawings of the footmarkings with several preliminary but far from complete interpretations of the message contained therein.
Also a story of the contact with pictures of the ship was carried in series by the Oceanside, California, Blade Tribune, a daily paper. This story was written by one of their reporters who made a special trip up to see and interview me. This paper also quickly ran out of all copies of the issue carrying the story.
* * * * * *
Certain students of this subject have asked me if I thought saucers and their occupants might normally be ‘etheric’ in nature or texture, but be able to ‘condense’ and so take on ‘solidarity’ and ‘visibility‘ in Earth’s environment.
This is an involved subject. There are, of course, more things in heaven and earth than we have dreamed of and it never pays to be too arbitrary about those things which as yet we ‘see through a glass darkly’. But for now I am confining myself to a factual accounting of what I actually saw and heard on that memorable 20 November and the texture and substance of both this man and his ship were far from being anything through which you could stick your finger. It was ‘solid’ in the way anything else is solid in our three-dimension world.
‘And if they can live and breathe in our atmosphere, how do they maintain existence in space ?’
These are things they have worked out, just as our own interplanetary societies are now endeavouring to work them out. I believe that later on all these things will be made plain to us. Their mother ships could naturally be the answer to much of this problem, but further comments, discussion and opinion on this technical phase of the phenomena will be reserved for a later and forthcoming book.
(23)
December Thirteenth The Return Visit
Because of the visitor’s promise to return my plate, I was now keeping myself in a state of constant alertness. I set my telescope up on the property of Palomar Gardens in a spot where I could have an unobstructed view of the far distance, including a long expanse of the ocean, this being the type of scenery afforded from these acres on the slopes of Palomar mountain.
On the morning of 13 December 1952 I was alerted by something in the vicinity by jets roaring overhead. Far out I saw a flash, and then it disappeared. I remarked to others present that something was out there and it might be the ship I had met on the desert trying to return my holder.
I wondered if the jets had succeeded in chasing it away, or if it would wait until they had left, and try again.
About 9 o’clock I again saw a flash in the sky and tried to set my telescope on it. The sky was now clear of our planes and I was in hopes the saucer I saw out there would be able to make it safely in, if that was their plan.
Sure enough, as I watched steadily I was able to observe it gliding noiselessly in my direction—an iridescent glass-like craft flashing its brilliant colours in the morning sun ! Spellbound I watched. With an empty spot where my stomach should have been and chills of anticipation running up and down my spine. On it came ! It was as if the pilot of this craft knew I was there and was waiting ! A warm glow of hope filled my being and I thought ‘That’s my friend. I’m going to see him again ! Maybe he will land here. Maybe...’
But it was too much to hope for. As it came over the nearby valley, about 2,000 to 3,000 feet from me and approximately 300 to 500 feet above the valley, it seemed to stop and hover motionlessly.
With utmost will power I restrained my excitement in an effort to get a really good picture this time. Quickly I took two shots. Then realising that the ship was too near to get the whole of it in the picture with the camera in that position, I turned the camera on the eyepiece and took another shot while it was still hovering. I shot the fourth picture just as the ship was beginning to move again.
Later, upon being finished, the first three of these pictures proved to show good detail, while the fourth—taken in motion —turned out fuzzy, but is still good.
While changing the position of the camera on the eyepiece, I took careful note of the size of this saucer by making mental calculations and comparisons with known distances. Instead of being 20 feet in diameter as I had guessed it to be while on the desert, I found it was approximately 35 to 36 feet in diameter. 80 And as far as I could judge, it was between 15 to 20 in height.
80/ On 9 February 1953 a small fleet of ‘Scout Ships’, identical in appearance to the one that landed at Desert Center, were seen over Franklin, Va. They were reported as being 35-38 ft. in diameter, and of silvery material that occasionally threw off a red glow. Their cabins had round windows that cast a bluish colour. They were chased by jet planes which were soon outdistanced and left to chase empty air.
As it approached probably within 100 feet of me, and to one side, one of the portholes was opened slightly, a hand was extended and the selfsame holder which my space-man friend had carried away with him on November 20 was dropped to the ground. As the holder was released, the hand appeared to wave slightly just before the craft passed beyond me.
I watched the holder drop and strike a rock as it hit the ground. Walking over and picking it up, I noticed it had been dented a little on the corner where it had struck the rock. Carefully I picked it up with a handkerchief from my pocket, and wrapped it so that if there was anything inside, or if there were fingerprints on the outside, I would not damage them.
The plate identified the craft as being the same one I had seen on the desert, and the waving hand indicated to me that the one who dropped the holder was the man whom I had met.
My elation can be imagined. Again I was raised in consciousness and forced to sense the awareness of being in two worlds at the same time.
Passing beyond me, the craft crossed a small ravine on the property as it moved towards the base of the mountains to the north. Dropping below the treetops, its path of travel took it very close to the well and one cabin on the upper part of the property, and there it was seen and photographed by others whom I had previously alerted.
It took me only a few seconds to cross the ravine to see in which direction the craft was going, if it were still visible. It had already passed over our property; but beyond, low above the treetops and close to the base of the mountains in the background, I could clearly see the saucer as it moved rapidly toward the east, disappearing in the blue haze of the morning.
Enraptured with the realisation that my friend from outer space had made a return visit, my only thought now was to get to the photographer’s to see what I had been successful in capturing. So even though it was Saturday and normally a busy day for us, I asked to be taken to Carlsbad, 40 miles away, to have the film developed. But I did not take the holder which had been dropped. I put it stealthily away. I wanted to keep it until I decided exactly what I wanted to do with it.
My intense curiosity regarding the exposed films was not to be satisfied that day. The photographer was out. And he would not be back for hours ! But his wife promised that he would finish the pictures that night and that if anything of interest was there, they would bring them up the next day.
True to this promise, Mr. and Mrs. D. J. Detwiler, the photographer and his wife, came up about noon on Sunday to show us what I had succeeded in getting. All of the pictures were extremely good, with the finest detail I have ever seen in any saucer photographs.
For a few days I kept the holder as I had picked it up. I was questioning whether to offer it to the papers for finishing, or to have M. Detwiler do it. Also I was trying to decide fully whether or not to have fingerprints taken off it, if there were any. Finally I decided against letting them remain since they would have been as identifying as the photographs. And since the Venusian had not wanted his picture taken, I would not try to betray him by having his fingerprints made.
After coming to this decision, I took the holder, still as I had wrapped it when picking it up, to my regular photographer. Neither of us was sure there was anything in the holder, but just to be safe, he suggested that we open it in the dark room, and if anything was there, he would put it through the usual finishing process. His reason was that if the film had been developed, this process would not hurt it. But if it had not been finished, it would thus be protected.
When the finishing was done, and with witnesses present, and a print was made, there were indications of the original photo — which I had taken before the space visitor took the holder— being washed off; and this was replaced by a strange photograph and a symbolic message, which to this day has not been fully deciphered. Several scientists are working on it. They are also still working on deciphering the markings of the footprints. It may be some time before they all feel that either of these messages is decoded to a satisfactory degree.
At my request, representatives of two Governmental agencies came up to see me. These men listened intently to my detailed description of all that had taken place, but they registered no surprise. Nor did they express any doubt regarding the truthfulness of my statements. They did not even question me. These men were highly intelligent men and well poised and it may be part of their jobs to display no reaction toward anything reported to them. But my reaction toward their attitude was that they realised I was giving them just another report of a type of happening not unfamiliar to them.
They did take a couple of my photographs of the craft, as well as a print from the dropped negative, which I gave to them.
And now as I conclude this earnest and serious recounting of what was truly the greatest experience that ever happened to me in my 62 years of Earthly life I realise that it may strain the credulity of many a reader, particularly those readers who have given little serious thought to the subject of flying saucers. I realise, too, that this whole subject has for certain oblique reasons not here discussed been beset by much ‘double talk‘ and because of this the subject has become, publicly speaking, a major mystery.
However, the truth about flying saucers does exist. There are space visitors in our midst. And they are here for a purpose. We may as well search out and acquaint ourselves with this truth and address ourselves to its challenges and ultimatums.
Surface-thinkers might like to conclude that I had had a very original dream. Or that I may be out to make money for myself in the field of science fiction. I can assure such persons that nothing is farther from the truth.
In the first place, consider that the sky is a tremendous expanse and those on the ground with minds also ‘grounded’ by earthly urgencies are necessarily little aware of what goes on up there. Visibility itself is short-ranged and fleeting. How much does the average person know of the comings and goings of even our Air Force, or of civilian air transportation ? Who, then, is to deny the reports of saucer sightings that over the years are piling up into the thousands ? Or who dares deny the authenticity of saucer photographs that are also piling up ? These sightings are world-wide.
But my word alone is not all that backs the foregoing story. There are those witnesses who solemnly stand to corroborate it. In addition, I have the tangible returned film bearing its strange message; and the cast of the footprints bearing also their enigmatical message. I relayed to my companions the promise of the spaceman that he would return the borrowed film and twenty-three days later one of them saw him return it and so keep that promise. And I have photographs to substantiate the fact that this promised return visit did take place. I cannot see where very much more substantiation can be needed nor expected unless it were merely numerical in nature. And by no stretch of the imagination can the craft in the photographs be called Earth craft
Now I am hoping that the spaceman will return again, and that then I will be granted more time to visit with him. Believe me, I am saving up questions. And many of my friends are also accumulating questions. Couldn’t it be possible that he might actually let me have a ride in his ship of the Great Ethers ? 81 He would not have to invite me twice.
81/ ‘Ether’ in its metaphysical meaning rather than that connoted by modern physics.
* * * * * *
A deep analysis of events of the past makes me firmly believe that these people from other planets are our friends. I am convinced that their desire and their object is to help us and perhaps to protect us from even ourselves, as well as that they mean to ensure the safety and balance of the other planets in our system.
But if we continue on the path of hostility between nations of Earth, and if we continue to show an attitude of indifference, ridicule and even aggression toward our fellow-men in space, I am firmly convinced they could take powerful action against us, not with weapons of any kind, but by manipulation of the natural force of the universe which they understand and know how to use. I barely brushed against this force as it was being used in a subdued degree, yet I felt the effects of it for several weeks after the encounter.
I have but one sincere purpose in narrating the foregoing experience: my most urgent message and plea to every person who reads it is:
Let us be friendly. Let us recognise and welcome the men from other worlds ! THEY ARE HERE AMONG US. Let us be wise enough to learn from those who can teach us much — who will be our friends if we will but let them !
(24)
TABLE OF CONTENS
BOOK ONE
(1)
(2)
(3)
The Phenomena of Dr. Menzel
(4)
The Flying Saucer Review
(5)
Flying Saucers and Politics
(6)
Flying Saucers and Sound
(7)
The Vimanas
(8)
Flying Saucers Before The Flood
(9)
Saucers in Sanskrit
(10)
Saucers For a Song
(11)
Saucers in Atlantis
(12)
Are Vimanas Flying Saucers ?
(13)
The Solar System
(14)
The Findings of Dr. Meade Layne
(15)
Waste Products
(16)
One That Came Down
(17)
Saucers in Celtic Prehistory
(18)
A Prophecy
(19)
Power and the Great Pyramid
(20)
(21)
(22)
(23)
December Thirteenth The Return Visit
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(24)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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