Early Accounts of Alien Abductions

Notions of alien abductions were circulating long before the 1961 Betty and Barney Hill case, even before anyone had heard of flying saucers. Charles Fort’s 1919, The Book of the Damned discussed the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors, and he speculated that someone up there likes us - as in the way we taste.

“And I have data that, in this book, I can't take up at all — mysterious disappearances. I think we're fished for.”

The Fortean journal, Doubt # 13, 1945 had a short article that played off this notion, supposing that the missing crew of a German ship might have become a meal for Martians.

Doubt # 13, 1945

Science Fiction Kidnappers

“Earth Slaves to Space” by Richard Shaver, Amazing Stories Sept. 1946

Ray Palmer published the stories of Richard Shaver as nonfiction as in Amazing Stories, tales of an ancient extraterrestrials, the Atlans and Titans. Carrying a cover date of June 1947 but published at least a month earlier, Palmer put out a special all-Shaver Mystery issue, and his editorial stated:

“…Mr. Shaver declared that Titans, living far away in space, or other people like them, still visit earth in space ships, kidnap people, raid the caves for valuable equipment, and, in general, supply the basis for all the weird stories that are so numerous (see Charles Fort's books) of space ships, beings in the sky, etc.”

Science fiction and fantasy stories frequently featured stories of monsters or aliens abducting humans for examination or worse. When the flying saucers appeared, that sort of thing was mentioned, but only as a joke. On July 7, 1947, newspaper columnist Hal Boyle’s a silly piece about being abducted by a spaceman in a flying saucer was published. His alien abductor was a big green man, Balminston X-Ray O’Rune from Mars, “some eight feet tall, covered with thick green hair, with one eye like a hardboiled egg in the center of his forehead, and no visible mouth at all. He was naked, his hands were three-clawed.”

More seriously, John W. Campbell's editorial in the October 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction was titled, “Flying Somethings,” where he speculated that UFOs were extraterrestrial scout vehicles, and he discussed how they might abduct specimens for study. He wrote about it from flipped point of view, as if we were the explorers of another planet:

"For several months, our investigation would be conducted by noncontact observation; until we know much more about the people, we'll do well to stay clear of them. After some weeks though, a stealthy raid might kidnap a few inhabitants for general questioning and investigation. In this, we'd be very smart not to damage the kidnaped parties; the resentment of a technically civilized race can be distinctly unwelcome even to a more powerfully technical people. Investigation of local animals can give all the necessary basic biological science for preliminary understanding of the local race.”

(See pages 71-72 of this PDF for Campbell's full article: UFOs: A History, Supplemental Notes August 1—December 31 by Loren E. Gross.) 

Comics are often a good indicator of how a topic has penetrated the public’s consciousness, but occasionally they have been ahead of trends. An alien abduction kicked off the story in the Sunday Superman newspaper comic strip from May 2 to July 18, 1948. Superman and Lois Lane were captured by a scouting party for invaders from Mars and taken aboard their spherical Martian spaceship. 

The Martians wanted to conquer Earth to solve their water shortage, and the two were taken as test subjects to be taken to Mars and examined to see if earthlings could resist the Martians’ weapons.

(Reprinted in Superman: The Golden Age Sundays 1946–1949 by IDW Publishing, 2014.)

In the episodes that followed, it became a farce with the ugly Martian queen trying to marry Superman, but he solved their problem and helped her find a husband. Therefore, the invasion was prevented.

Into the 1950s...   

In October of 1952, the newspaper comic strip based on The Saint by Leslie Charteris featured a flying saucer storyline. A scientist wondered:

"Have you thought how many unsolved disappearances are explained by the 'specimens' of human beings that they have taken for study?"

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Oct. 4, 1952

Dennis Wheatley's 1952 book, Star of Ill-Omen, was a tale of Martians kidnapping people to learn humanity’s nuclear secrets, in order to use atomic bombs in warfare on their own planet.

The notion of flying saucer abductions came up now and then, but not in reputable places. The October 1953 issue of Man to Man magazine featured the article by Leroy Thorp, “Are the Flying Saucers Kidnapping Humans?” It was not based on contemporary accounts, just an undated recycling of a mysterious disappearance supposedly taken from one of Charles Fort’s books.

Harold T. Wilkins wrote a book released in the U.S. as Flying Saucers on the Attack in July 1954. It included several stories about the unexplained loss of people, planes, and ships, and he suggested alien abduction as the solution:

“One wonders how many cases of mysterious disappearances of men and women in 1948 – 1952 might be explained as ‘TAKEN ABOARD A FLYING SAUCER IN A LONELY PLACE’?”

A Saucer-Related Disappearance Makes News

Two men took off in a plane searching for saucers, and they were never seen again. From the Los Angeles Mirror, Nov. 18, 1953, as reprinted in UFO Crash Secrets at Wright Patterson Air Force Base by James W. Moseley, 1992.

George Hunt Williamson’s summary from Other Tongues - Other Flesh, 1953:

“On November 18, 1953, the Los Angeles Mirror reported that two missing electricians may have been kidnapped by interplanetary invaders in a Flying Saucer. The two Saucer enthusiasts were Karl Hunrath and Wilbur J. Wilkinson. They had taken off in a rented airplane from Gardena Airport on November 11th with a three-hour gas supply. Despite widespread search, no trace of the plane or its occupants has been seen. The rumor that the plane was found dismantled on the top of a California mountain with no sign of the two men is unfounded. Officials claim that nothing has turned up in the case as yet.”

Vanished in Vermont

Rev. O. L. Jaggers had been lecturing on flying saucers since 1952, and asked, “From whence do they come? …Russia or some enemy nation? Are they interplanetary…?” Jaggers gave a lecture in San Francisco on August 22, 1954, on “How Flying Saucers are Kidnapping Human Beings from the Earth.” The lecture advertised that it would present: “Names and addresses of people kidnapped by Flying Saucers!”

Odessa American Sept. 9, 1955

From the looks of the article below in the New Castle News, September 2, 1954, one audience member tried to verify some of the details about the alleged flying saucer abductions. (Full text follows the blurry clipping.)

New Castle News, September 2, 1954

Missing Vermont Folk Not Whisked Off by Saucers

The town of Bennington, Vt., doesn't know what did happen to three persons who have vanished mysteriously in the last eight years but it is quite sure they were not picked up by a flying saucer and whisked off to Russia. It will so inform a San Francisco, Calif., clergyman who yesterday asked the Bennington Chamber of Commerce if that had really happened. Wrote Rev. Harold DeRoo, pastor of the Miraloma Community church in the west coast city:

"I am endeavoring to verify some information recently presented by an itinerant speaker who came to this city. His topic was flying saucers. In the course of the address he related the alleged fact that five men of Bennington, Vt., were literally drawn up from the face of the earth and have never been heard of. According to the accounts these saucers originated in Russia which has devised a magnet to draw people from this country. I should appreciate very much if you could either verify or nullify the account."

Bennington officials said they don't have the answer to the disappearance of Paula Weldon, Bennington college student who never returned from an off-campus stroll; Middie Rivers, a Bennington woodchopper who vanished a short time later, or a boy named Jepson who disappeared from his father's car at the town dump as the father was pouring food into a nearby pigsty. But they were sure there were no Soviet saucers involved in these cases and that there was no mass evanishment by a quintet of citizens.

The 1960s: Alien Abductions Become Mainstream

In 1966, the Betty and Barney Hill story was published in John Fuller’s bestselling book, The Interrupted Journey, and it had an enormous cultural impact. The book also led to the popularization and acceptance of the alien abduction concept.

The Des Moines Register Sept. 30,1966 and the Minneapolis Star Oct. 6, 1966

Jet magazine, Oct. 20, 1966. 

The Hills’ story was serialized in many newspapers and in Look magazine.

Part 1 

Part 2 

The Hill case became the industry standard, and the basis for comparison for all the many reports of alien abductions that have surfaced in the decades since.

. . .

We've just hit some highlights here. For more information on pre-saucer abductions, see:

Cultural Background of UFO Abduction Reports by Martin S. Kottmeyer.

UFO Witness and Author: DeWitt S. Copp

From 1954 to 1960, there were three UFO teleplays by the same author, Dewitt Copp, a flying saucer witness himself, a pilot and author with an interesting career path. The bio of DeWitt S. Copp, 1916-1999 from his book, Frank M. Andrews: Marshall’s Airman, 2003:

"The name DeWitt Copp is known within the Air Force community primarily as the author of the widely acclaimed two volume series on the development of air power before and during World War II, A Few Great Captains and Forged in Fire, first published in the early 1980s by the Air Force Historical Foundation. Earlier, Mr. Copp, known as “Pete” to his friends, had served as a pilot in the Army Air Forces during World War II and afterwards wrote a number of books and films on military and civilian aviation. A onetime history teacher and global newsman, he worked in Europe and the Far East as a correspondent for the Washington weekly Human Events, and for the North American Newspaper Alliance. His novels Radius of Action and The Far Side won wide acclaim here and abroad, and his drama, The Long Flight, was featured on NBC television. He also served for several years as a member of the former Air Force Historical Advisory Committee. He lived in Manchester Center, Vermont, with his wife Susan, until his death in 1999."

Some additional information from Psychological Operations Principles and Case Studies, edited by Editor Frank L. Goldstein, Col, USAF, 1996, where Copp contributed the chapter, “Soviet Active Measures.”

“Copp has served on the staff of "Voice of America" as a writer-editor and with the United States Information Agency as policy officer on Soviet disinformation.”

  

Copp’s obituary in the New York Times provided many additional details of interest:

"Mr. Copp wrote more than 30 books, fiction and nonfiction, and many articles about the cold war and espionage, as well as another passion, aviation. A flight instructor and pilot, he served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Later as the international marketing director of the Weather Engineering Corporation, he helped develop equipment that created artificial rain by using airplanes that dropped silver-iodide crystals into clouds."

After discussing some of his non-fiction works, there’s a casual mention of some of his other jobs:

"Mr. Copp also taught history and civics at St. Luke's School in Wilton, Conn., and worked for the Central Intelligence Agency."

Exactly when the CIA work began they did not say. In the early 1950s, Copp was having a good run selling teleplays to the networks. He also did volunteer work with the Ground Observer Corps. Due to the Soviet menace, once again civilians were asked to watch the skies:

Ground Observer Corps was reformed during the Cold War as an arm of the United States Air Force Civil Defense network which provided aircraft tracking with over 200,000 civilian volunteers... established in early 1950... By 1952 the program was expanded in Operation Skywatch with over 750,000 volunteers... The program ended in 1958 with the advent of the automated 1959 USAF radar network...

(From the description of the Civil Defense Ground Observer Corps film, “The Sky is Your Target,” by PeriscopeFilm.)

Illustrations from LIFE magazine, Feb 8, 1943.

New Canaan, Connecticut, is a residential suburb just forty miles from downtown Manhattan, and it housed a Ground Observer Corps tower, with a glass enclosed platform from which volunteers could operate. On Dec. 30, 1955, DeWitt Copp was on watch there when he spotted something spectacular:

 The Kokomo Tribune, June 20, 1956

“TV-Radio Highlights” by Margaret Burhman

U.F.O.

Perhaps by chance, Copp had written an episode of a television crime show featuring a flying saucer that was broadcast the year before. It was a fictional story, with a premise similar to his own sighting, a volunteer skywatcher who’d seen a flying saucer.

“Man Against Crime” (later syndicated as “Follow That Man”) was a half-hour crime drama featuring the adventures of hard-boiled detective, Mike Barnett. Copp’s episode aired in early 1954, and was titled, “U.F.O.”

The Honolulu Advertiser March 14, 1954

'Man Against Crime’ Concerns Flying Saucer

Mike Barnett, played by Ralph Bellamy, becomes involved with a flying saucer and other unidentified flying objects during “U.F.O.” episode on the NBC-TV “Man Against Crime” series tonight on KONA Channel 11. at 9:30.A high school professor reports a flying saucer during his turn as an airplane spotter, but is ridiculed by the townsfolk. Barnett is asked to investigate.The search starts with the finding of mysterious footprints and a dead man. Barnett solves the death in a surprising finish, but still wonders about flying saucers.

The episode itself is rare, but the best later description of it seems to be from The Early Shows: by Richard Irvin, 2018: “Mike Barnett and journalist Ed Butler investigate a reported sighting of an unidentified flying object. They find that two men — Phil Rice (Phil Lipson) and Tom Gorman (Jim Boles) were attempting to prank a professor into thinking he witnessed a UFO.”

The Kinross Incident

DeWitt Copp had his own UFO sighting in Dec. of 1955, but the same month an important book was released. In it, Donald E. Keyhoe introduced the Kinross incident as a UFO case in The Flying Saucer Conspiracy:

"It was the evening of November 23, (1953) and wintry darkness had settled over Michigan. At an isolated radar station Air Defense operators were watching their scope in a routine guard against possible enemy attack. Suddenly the "blip" of an unknown machine appeared on the glass screen... In less than two minutes an F-89 from Kimross (sic) Field was streaking toward the locks. At the jet's controls was Lieutenant Felix Moncla, Jr., a veteran at 26. Behind him was Lieutenant R. R. Wilson, 22-year-old Oklahoman, acting as radar observer. ... the strange craft changed course... The UFO, flying as fast as a jet airliner, was heading toward Lake Superior... the F-89 raced after it... Nine more minutes ticked by... The two blips had suddenly merged into one... locked together, as if in a smashing collision...  boats joined the hunt as American and Canadian flyers crisscrossed a hundred-mile area. But no trace was ever found of the missing men, the F-89--or the unknown machine..."

The Air Force did not consider the missing plane a UFO case, and had no file for it in Project Blue Book. There’s brief mention of it in another case file, though.

PBB: The Kinross Incident

Donald Keyhoe made the incident famous, a staple of  UFO literature, and there’s no doubt that Dewitt Copp was influenced by it. Fran Ridge’s NICAP site hosts a page with an excellent collection of links to coverage of the controversy: UFO Intercept/Missing F-89 Case, November 23, 1953, Kinross AFB, Michigan

Keyhoe’s book also introduced many to “angel hair,” supposedly dropped by UFOs. “A mass of a strange white substance... Apparently the ‘angel's hair’ was some kind of a fuel exhaust confined specifically to the cigar-shaped saucers.” He described how in one case, the witnesses reported a saucer that “left a 3-mile trail of milky-white asbestos-like strands which settled over trees, bushes, and telephone lines.” They recovered a sample. “When they pulled one strand into a thread... it could hardly be broken. But a few moments after they had touched it, the substance disappeared.”

Flying Object At Three O'Clock High

After his own sighting in 1955, Copp was driven to write a teleplay about UFOs. To do so, he conducted some research and worked some UFO cases and terminology into the script.   Besides Keyhoe’s book, he was reading ORBIT,  the monthly newsletter by Leonard Stringfield of Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects (CRIFO)

Instead of appearing in a science fiction program, Copp’s story reached a mainstream audience on a well-respected NBC program. Kraft Television Theatre was an anthology, broadcast live, presenting a different teleplay each week. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is that NBC chose to highlight the author in the promotion of the episode, particularly in regards to the fact that he was an experienced aviator - but especially the part about Copp being a UFO witness himself.

The Indianapolis Star June 20, 1956

The Pittsburgh Press June 20, 1956

From a period newspaper listing for the show, which neglected to mention the role played by actor George Peppard, who also appeared in it, one of his earliest screen roles:

"Kraft TV Theatre — Everett Sloane, Biff McGuire, Robert Simon in 'Flying Object At Three O'clock High,' story of an Air Force investigation of a collision between an unidentified flying object and a plane carrying secret data to Washington, WRCA-TV (4), 9 p.m."

The story opened with two radar operatives watching in horror as a UFO swallowed up an F-101 on their screen. Jets were scrambled to pursue the UFO, but were unable to catch it. Biff McGuire played the reporter trying to cover the story, while Everett Sloane played the Colonel protecting the Air Force’s deep secrets about flying saucers. The episode was well-received, and both the UFO community and the Air Force had something to say about it. The New York-based Civilian Saucer Intelligence wrote in CSI News Letter, June 24, 1956:

"UFO Fiction on TV: On Wednesday, June 20, at P.M., Kraft Theatre (Channel 4) presented drama called 'Flying Object at 3 O'clock High', by DeWitt Copp. The plot concerned the "kidnapping" of an Air Force jet by UFO, and the Air Force's attempts to hush up the affair. Although the play went off the deep end during the last act, showing the pilot returned by the UFO in dying condition, up to that point it was outstanding in its adherence to reality. The Kinross case and the angel-hair phenomenon were referred to. The Air Force was depicted (following Keyhoe) as knowing all about the extraterrestrial nature of the saucers, but paternalistically keeping it from the public's knowledge. The acting was on decidedly more convincing level than that in (Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story of Flying Saucers) the Greene-Rouse film. Mr. Copp and Kraft deserve our thanks for well-done job showing knowledge and taste. Probably its qualities were lost on the public at large, if we may judge by Jack O'Brian's review (N.Y, Journal-American): he found it 'an extended Space Cadet caper.'"

Project Blue Book mentioned the show in passing in a report from Colonel H.K. Gilbert, dated 16 October 1956, “ Subject Analysis of Material Allegedly from Flying Saucer.” He notes that:

“In August of this year, the Kraft TV hour, among others, gave this so called “angels – hair” nationwide attention in a science fiction drama whereby this gossamer-like substance is shown vanishing without leaving any residue before the eyes of ATIC chiefs.

https://www.fold3.com/image/1/7071206

Encounter

Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond was a half-hour ABC anthology series, and its specialty was stories of the occult or the paranormal. UFOs were a bit out of their range, but Copp wrote an atmospheric piece that fit well with the mood of the series.

Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond  “Encounter” April 12, 1960

From the newspaper description of the episode:

"An airplane pilot is mysteriously abducted out of the sky, disappears for days, then suddenly reappears minus his plane 1,000 miles from his last known position in "Encounter." The pilot had taken that 'one step beyond.' Robert Douglas, a fine character actor, lends his talent to this strange tale. He has the role of the pilot's boss."

Fortunately, this broadcast is much more readily available than Copp’s other UFO shows, and can even be found on YouTube. 

All the UFO action takes place offscreen, but there’s a discussion of flying saucers, the Kinross case, in particular, and once again, “angel hair” is a big part of the story. When the missing pilot somehow reappears days later a thousand miles away, the team flies to pick him up. On the way, Blake, the pilot, muses about flying saucers, “We’re on the verge of space exploration ourselves. Why is it so hard to believe that others may have beaten us to it?”

Copp's plot sounds like it was another take on his earlier story for Kraft, the abduction of a pilot by a UFO, but minus the military cover-up angle. It also bears a a great similarity to Graham Doar’s “The Outer Limit,” but as if it were told solely from the point of view of the people on the ground, not from the pilot. The mystery that “proves” the involvement of aliens is the same, though; the return of a vanished pilot long after he should have perished due to his plane running out of fuel.

“Encounter” seems to be Copp’s last UFO story, though. He wrote one other TV show in 1963, but otherwise focused on his books which were chiefly about aviation, espionage and war. about the closest thing to UFOs would be his 1978 book, A Different Kind of Rain, which was fiction, but based on Copp’s own experience of weaponizing weather by seeding clouds.

DeWitt Copp, died at the age of 80 in Burlington, Vermont on Nov. 29, 1999.

Postscript

Maybe this is one for the weird coincidences department, but Dewitt Copp had an interesting association with a notable government figure with ties to the intelligence community and to UFO studies. When Captain Edward J. Ruppelt was preparing his 1956 book, The Report On Unidentified Flying Objects, he made notes on the significant players, including the ones behind the scenes. One of them was Dr. Stefan T. Possony:

"Steve Possony was the acting chief of the D/I (Directorate of Intelligence) special study group and he had a direct channel to (General John A.) Samford. Steve was pretty much sold on the whole thing. He did a lot of investigating on his own hook and he had Father Hayden (Francis J. Heyden), the astronomer, as his special consultant. Steve and his crew used to cruise all over the U.S. and Europe and during these travels they picked up a lot. Steve was behind (Dewey) Fournet 100% and tended to push him. He was smart enough to know that the UFO situation was hot so he used Fournet, who was a reserve and didn’t plan to stay in the Air Force any longer than he had to, to try out his ideas. Possony didn’t much care what he said, however, and he used to go to battle with any or all of the more vocal skeptics. He really got teed off at (Dr. Donald Menzel)  and went to all ends to find out everything about the man. It turned out to be very interesting. Possony had a good reputation in the Air Force. Besides being a fairly sharp intelligence man, he is a professor at Georgetown University and he has written quite a bit on strategy and concepts of airpower."

Here’s a clipping showing Copp and Possony together on the staff of the American Security Council: Washington Report, a right-wing anti-communist organization.

In the introduction to his article, “The Invisible Hand of Strategy. A Brief Introduction to Psychology Strategy”, Defence and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy. No. 1, January 31, 1996, they described him in this way:

"DR STEFAN T. POSSONY, one of the founders of both Defense & Foreign Affairs publications and the International Strategic Studies Association, was called "the greatest strategic philosopher of the 20th Century". But he was also one of the very few people who looked at the overall discipline of "psychological strategy", and all of its component parts, including propaganda, disinformation, psychological warfare, psychological operations: however they are defined."

It's interesting that two saucer buffs like Dr. Possony and Dewitt Copp wound up working together, but then, it's a small world. 

1950s UFO Abductions with Dr. O.L. Jaggers

The coming of the flying saucers in 1947 were seen by some as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy of the end times, “fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven...  in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars”  - Luke 21, King James Version. The thought was reflected in a song,  (When You See) Those Flying Saucers performed by The Buchanan Brothers, Oct. 27, 1947:

...those flying saucers may be just a sign...

So repent today, you’re running out of time

When you see a saucer fly like a comet through the sky

You should realize the price you’ll have to pay

You’d better pray to the Lord when you see those flying saucers

It may be the coming of the Judgment Day"

The previous STTF article, Signs: Ezekiel, the Bible and UFOs, recounted some early examples of the intersection of religion and saucers. This piece will examine how UFOs became a core part of the World Church led by Reverend Orval L. Jaggers

The Los Angeles Times April 19, 1952

Reverend O. L. Jaggers

Reverend Orval Lee Jaggers (1916 - 2004) was a contemporary of Billy Graham of Oral Roberts, and began his ministry as a successful traveling revival evangelist, complete with tent shows and healing the sick. In 1952 he opened the World Church in Los Angeles, which by 1956 boasted a membership over 10,000, and reached an even wider audience by via radio, television and occasional speaking tours. Jaggers also wrote over 300 short books on a number of modern concerns, from the threat of Communism to the Atomic bomb, immortality and flying saucers.

Rev. Jaggers was an associate editor to The Voice of Healing, the monthly inter-evangelical magazine of the Last-Day Sign-Gift Ministries. Their July 1950 issue featured an article “Prophetic Significance of The Flying Saucer” by editor Gordon Lindsay, and it’s very much in line with the message Jaggers incorporated into his ministry.

"God is determined to punish a race that has rejected Him and given themselves over so completely to evil and depravity. It would appear that the matter of the Flying Saucers is one more warning to the sinner to repent and get right with God before the horror of irremediable judgment strikes the earth."

It's valuable snapshot of how the public viewed the UFO phenomenon at the time, as a pervasive mystery seen by many people, the origin unknown. Lindsay and Jaggers leveraged that and turned the belief of the seen, saucers, into a tool for managing belief of the unseen, God and Heavenly matters.

UFOs became part of Rev. Jaggers’ sermons, as seen in the clipping above from the Los Angeles Times, May 3, 1952, on his sermon, “Flying Saucers.”

PDF of book at http://www.universalworldchurch.org/w/images/6/68/Flying_saucers.pdf

In 1952, Rev. Jaggers expanded the sermon into a 48-page book,  Flying Saucers!   In the book, Jaggers said:

Documentary evidence both from government sources and otherwise; prove beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the so-called FLYING SAUCERS ARE REAL.” He goes on to say that UFOs were described in several passages in the Bible, and that Ezekiel’s Wheel was a description of flying saucers.

There are two types of angelic beings one is the CHERUBIM or the “LIVING CREATURES” and the other is the SERAPHIM.

Jaggers explained that their appearance is a warning to the USA due to the moral decay of the nation:

BECAUSE OF AMERICA’S SINS… FLYING SAUCERS… THE CHERUBIM OR WHEEL IN THE MIDDLE OF A WHEEL, WITH SUPERSONIC AND SUPERNATURAL SPEED AND POWER, ARE FLYING OVER AMERICA AS A WARNING THAT THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD ARE ABOUT TO FALL ON THIS UNRIGHTEOUS NATION!

Later in 1952, Jaggers' sermon answers the question:

“Who Are the Little Men in the Flying Saucers?”

The Los Angeles Times Aug. 16, 1952

There was nothing in Rev. Jaggers'  book about abductions, but kidnappings by flying saucers became an important topic in his sermons in 1953.

Los Angeles Times Dec. 12, 1953

The article by Tony Breeden at the site Christian Exotheology, “The Preacher Who Believed That Flying Saucers Were Kidnapping Human Beings – in 1953,” suggests that Jaggers was inspired by reading the article by Leroy Thorpe, “Are the Flying Saucers Kidnapping Humans?” in the October 1953 issue of Man to Man magazine. The article was not based on contemporary accounts, just an undated recycling of a mysterious disappearance taken from one of Charles Fort’s books.

Winnipeg Free Press, June 12 1954

Flying saucers kidnapping humans didn’t fit well with Jaggers’ angel explanation, so he eventually revised his point of view to say that some saucers had little men - or even giants - inside.

Odessa American Sept. 9, 1955

"Irrefutable proof that flying saucers and little men in flying saucers do exist!"

Press-Courier (Oxnard, CA) Aug. 31, 1957

Flying Saucers were an integral part of Rev. Jaggers' teachings an in 1974, he reissued his 1952 book under a new title, revised to include modern UFO news clippings, U.F.O.s and the Creatures That Fly Them! Those teachings along with some other extreme departures from Biblical teachings caused a divide between the World Church and more conventional evangelists. 

Somewhere along the line, Rev. Jaggers picked up an impressive collection of degrees, Doctor of Science, Doctor of Biology and Divine Physics, Doctor of Literature, Doctor of Divinity, Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Nuclear Biology, Ph.D. Professor of Human Genetics - all  apparently granted by his University of the World Church.

1957, Miss Velma and Beyond

At the top: The Los Angeles Times June 30, 1956

The San Bernardino County July 22, 1957

In an epic ceremony in 1957, Jaggers married his cousin, known as “Miss Velma,” and the church performances became more theatrical and often featured her "soaring above the congregation" on horseback, in a chariot, spaceship, or dressed as an angel. Rev. Jaggers’ teachings were controversial and he had an adversarial relationship with the Pentecostal church and it was said that “his imagination went wild.” They couldn’t accept his claims that miracle healing oil flowed from his hands - or that his believers could attain physical immortality.

According to the biography of Jaggers at the site Healing and Revival, things took a turn for the worse in 1957. Miss Velma joined the ministry and “participated in all of his increasingly weird teachings and found her niche in odd theatrical productions.” ... (A financial fiasco) caused the church to decline and it never recovered. Jaggers was no longer a daily news item and his teachings became increasingly unbiblical and weird. He taught that God was created by space aliens.” 

The Universal World Church hosts a site devoted to the memory of  Rev. Dr. O. L. Jaggers, Dr. Miss Velma Jaggers, and it includes much valuable information from articles to videos of the Jaggers in lectures and television performances.

. . .

Other Sources and Further Reading

All Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America

by David Edwin Harrell, Jr, 1979 (At Google Books)

Biography of O.L. Jaggers: "Healing As A Means To An End"

http://healingandrevival.com/BioOLJaggers.htm

“O. L. Jaggers: January 8, 1916 - January 10, 2004,” The Voice of Healing

http://www.voiceofhealing.info/05otherministries/jaggers.html

“Prophetic Significance of The Flying Saucer” by Gordon Lindsay, The Voice of Healing, July 1950

http://endtime.is/TVH/1950_JULY.pdf

“What is the Mystery of the Flying Saucers?” by Gordon Lindsay The Voice of Healing, Oct. 1952

http://endtime.is/TVH/1952_OCTOBER.pdf

“The Mystery of the Flying Saucers” by Gordon Lindsay The Voice of Healing, April 1954

http://endtime.is/TVH/1954_APRIL.pdf

“Further Developments On the Flying Saucers” by Gordon Lindsay The Voice of Healing, June 1954

http://endtime.is/TVH/1954_JUNE.pdf