Dr. Joseph Jeffers – UFO Expert

 The secrets of UFOs, space travel, reincarnation, the future – these were all parts of the religion taught by Dr. Joseph Jeffers, the prophet who knew what the Bible got wrong.

This is either the story of a man-god who was not subject to earthly laws, or the tale of a con man who would say or do almost anything. We’ll be focusing on his UFO-related parts of his career, but for a fuller biography, see the 2014 article, by Michael Marinacci, “Joe Jeffers and the Kingdom of Yahweh."

Joseph Davis Jeffers (1899-1988) was a charismatic speaker who had worked as a vaudeville performer before taking on the role of a traveling apocalyptic evangelist. In 1933 he stirred up some trouble in Arkansas known as the Jonesboro Church Wars. By 1934 he was building a large new following in Los Angeles, where he founded The Kingdom of Yahweh in 1935. Jeffers said that the Bible got things like the immaculate conception and resurrection all wrong, and he’d know, him being Jesus (Yahoshua) reincarnated. He claimed to be in mental contact with God, and one of his specialties was “Pyramidic Prophecies,” predictions often about war and the fate of the nation. He began publishing the newsletter, “The Kingdom Voice,” which ultimately outlived him. Along the way, he ran afoul of the law several times and served some time in prison.

There were controversies. One complaint that would follow Jeffers for most of his days was that of the many thousands he received in donations, the dollars seemed to primarily fund his lavish lifestyle. Simultaneously, he went through a series of ever-younger wives. Jeffers’ topics were often vitriolic, racist, and politically incorrect, even by the standards of the day.

Middlesboro Daily News, March 27, 1939, Under Cover by John Roy Carlson, 1943

Jeffers divorced his wife, then stole the car he’d lost in the settlement. He was convicted for the crime in early 1945 but managed to get out on parole. He took a new bride, Helene, who was suddenly transformed into Dr. Helene Jeffers and became his partner in the ministry.

1947 and the Coming of the Saucers

The Hollywood Citizen-News, June 2, 1947, reported: “The Rev. Joseph Jeffers self-styled reincarnation of Jesus, Joseph, and Solomon today announced the purchase of an atom-bomb refuge for followers of his Temple of Yahweh.” It was 16 miles from Palm Springs, an 823-acre ranch. Soon afterwards, Jeffers became one the first lecturers on flying saucers.

The Banning Livewire, July 3, 1947, carried two stories and an ad about Jeffers. “Dr. Joe Jeffers Speaks Here on Yahweh,” said that “the sect claims that the center of the Universe and the headquarters for the creator is on the constellation Orion, which is screened from scientific observation by peculiar nebulae.”

The ad was for Jeffer’s lectures at the women’s club, “Truth about the Flying Discs.” Also on the page was the story, “Jeffers Say the Flying Discs are Real.” Jeffers said the discs were the same as the ghost rockets previously reported over Sweden, “Washington knows what they are— I told them four years ago.”

Daily News, July 3, 1947

A week later, Jeffers held a press conference on the threat of flying saucers at a Los Angeles restaurant. The Daily News reported he said the saucers were flown by enemy nations, “sent by the Russians, with the aid of Germany, Japan, China ‘and others’.” He also discussed the crews that fly them, how they were propelled, and the weapons they carried.

Daily News, July 11, 1947

When taken to court for failure to pay alimony, Jeffers told the judge he was broke, but out in space, Yahweh had billions in diamonds and pearls waiting for him on Orion. Jeffers was sent to federal prison for parole violations but still got some press.

While he was in prison, Helene kept the franchise alive, lecturing in his place as Mrs. Joseph Jeffers. Some of the sermons included flying saucers.

1949 Los Angeles Mirror ads

Mexico Ledger, Oct. 30, 1950

After Jeffers was released, he and Helene set up operations in 1952 in Phoenix, Arizona.

Psychic Observer, Sept. 10, 1952 ad

The 1950s were turbulent. Jeffers’ marriage ended after he started dating Connie, Helene’s 18-year-old secretary. Helene’s career as a solo psychic lecturer in Denver was cut short in early 1957 by her murder (unsolved). Jeffers married Connie. So maybe during these years Jeffers was too busy to focus on saucers. Or maybe there was too much competition from Adamski and the others who claimed to meet spacemen and go on rides in their saucers. Or maybe Jeffers thought all that was unimportant since he was the reincarnation of the Son of God. For whatever reason, he was back in the saucer business in 1957.

The Arizona Republic, Aug. 24, 1957 Note: "Facts About The Shaver Mystery!"

Jeffers had an ad for his services and products in The Aberree, Sept. 1959, but there was no mention of flying saucers.

Skipping ahead to the 1960s, Jeffers ad in The Oregonian, Sept. 14, 1960, said: “Is there any evidence of Space Men or flying saucers on Mars, Venus and other planets? Facts of Astral World and Spiritual contacts.”

In 1966 there was more trouble when Joseph and Connie Jeffers were convicted “of thirteen counts of mail fraud and were each fined $500 on each count and were placed on three years' probation.” Their appeal was on the basis that “the bets were for the religious purposes of enhancing the Kingdom's treasury and furthering its 'religious' studies of [ESP], and that therefore the conviction infringes their free exercise of religion.” The verdict was overturned in 1968:  “The spectacle presented to the jury — of a 67 year old eccentric purporting to have psychic powers, and his attractive 27 year old wife betting contributors' funds at the dog races — was so highly prejudicial that we cannot conclude that [they received] a fair trial.”

Besides his newsletter, Jeffers’ produced pamphlets and books from his Kingdom Voice Publications, the first of which was Yahweh - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, 1969

Ad – Fate magazine April 1973 (ran at least Jan. – May issues)

Kansas Star, March 29, 1974 – hyping his appearance on Tomorrow with Tom Snyder.

Yahweh City, and the Pyramid Temple

By 1974, Jeffers was based in Missouri and built a compound, Yahweh City, in St. James for his followers. Jeffers, then in his mid-70s, wore fur-collar coats and hats decorated with feathers and drove a $25,000 Mercedes. When accused of being a fraud, he said, ‘I'm not a film flammer… I'm a jimjammer. They can call me anything they want as long as they call me for lunch.” Some of the faithful called him “King Yahoshua.” Jeffers had about 50 followers living in Yahweh City, some of them donors of many thousands of dollars. Disciples farmed the soil with hand tools and built the housing for the compound. Per Jeffers’ edit, they ate a vegetarian diet and received a ritual cleansing enema on Fridays.

Jeffers wrote and published a few books relating to extraterrestrial life and spaceships. One was, Mars and the Mystery of Creation, 1976. The blurb for Jeffers’ 1977 book, Lemuria, Atlantis History Rewritten, asked: “Who were the mysterious pyramid builders? What about the Bible and Noah's flood? Was Atlantis really the Garden of Eden? What are the spaceships and flying saucers? Read about the age of dinosaurs and giants.”

According to Jeffers, in the mid-1960s, Esther Wilson Price, an elderly and ailing Richmond, Virginia, heiress, began corresponding with him after seeing his advertisement in Fate magazine. In October 1975, she moved from the hospital to a one-room apartment at Yahweh City. With $200,000 of Esther's money, Jeffers had his followers construct their Pyramid Temple. It’d serve as shelter and a meeting place for their departure. “Unusual Riches Gained by an Unusual Religion,” by John McGuire in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 9, 1977, reported that Jeffers and his flock “expect that a space ship will one day take them to Orion when the world ends.”

Interviewed by Springfield Leader, Aug. 3, 1978, about material from his book, The Spaceships are Coming, “Jeffers says there are two types of flying saucers. One type is Russian and has been used for years to spy on Americans and the other is the real thing from outer space.” Apparently, he didn’t have info from Yahweh about it but, “experts say that the government has recovered bodies from crashed UFOs…”

In the Oct. 20, 1978, Associated Press story, Jeffers claimed his thousands of his followers would soon be saved and taken to “the prettiest little city in the universe,” Orion. He said, “our spaceships will come for us and we’ll say good-bye world.” There were goodbyes in their future.

Instead of Reagan, we could have had President Jeffers in 1980, but things didn’t work out. There was unbelievable drama for Jeffers in the late 1970s, including his aborted Presidential campaign, the controversial death of Esther Price who had a questionable will leaving him millions. Then there was Connie who left him taking some of the millions and Jeffers trying to have her murdered. Then there was his arrest on charges of statutory rape and sodomy of a 14-year-old girl. All this generated a lot of media attention including the national TV news, but somehow all the charges against him were dropped. Still, he dropped out of the Presidential race.

For more on this turbulent period, see The Washington Post, December 27, 1978, “Cult Stirs Controversy” by Ted Gup.

The Lakeland Ledger July 8, 1979

Apparently, Yahweh changed his mind; the world didn’t end. Things were still hot for Jeffers in Missouri, so he abandoned Yahweh City and moved his cult, purchasing a quarter-million-dollar estate just South of San Benito, Texas.

Jeffers in an interview in The Atlanta Voice, Dec. 1, 1979, professed knowledge and visions revealing the truth about the future, the Bermuda Triangle, and Mars which had plant and insect life. “Jeffers also contends that ‘flying saucers are not out of this world.’ He says they fly all over the world especially over America and photograph all United States military bases, power plants and secret hiding places. ‘These flying saucers can outfly anything America has,’ Dr. Jeffers said.”

 The Evening Independent, Jan. 9, 1980

Tampa Bay Times, Jan. 10, 1980 - Tallahassee Democrat, April 11, 1980

Jeffers resided in Arizona for his final years, and he continued to lecture and publish. In an interview for The Gold Leaf Farmer (Wendell, NC) Feb. 19, 1981, Jeffers told them about Atlantis, the sunken Pyramid at the Bermuda Triangle, and more. “Bigfoot… is the result of a genetic experiment by Atlanteans, according to Jeffers.”

A variation of the ad below ran from 1982 to 1986, later modified to include his 1983 book: Bermuda Triangle and Pyramid.

The Arizona Republic, Jan. 25, 1982

Jeffers’ associate in the Kingdom of Yahweh, Robert Graeter, sent out announcements in the early 1980s warning that:

 “Russia will use her Flying Saucers…to detonate…atomic bombs” on the U.S., “possibly on December 25, 1984.”

Yet, it would not be the end of the world.; another piece explained how the people were to be saved from that: “YAHWEH left His headquarters on Orion by spaceship. He will land on a high mountain near Phoenix, Arizona. He will pick up his son, Dr. Joseph ‘Yahoshua’ Jeffers…”

 (2008 Reddit post that includes several of the documents: My late Grandpa’s Dad was a chairman for a cult.

Scripture stated that, “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven,” but Jeffers insisted it would be in a spaceship.  Interviewed for The Arizona Daily Star, May 25, 1985, Jeffers said his “work is two-fold: to teach people to ‘Praise Yahweh,’ and to prepare for his/her coming from Orion (heaven) with an entourage in spaceships.”

Picture from The Arizona Daily Star, May 25, 1985

The last lecture advertised by Jeffers was in early 1986, but he continued to write for the newsletter. Joseph Jeffers died on July 11, 1988, just a month away from his 89th birthday. Followers kept the faith and lectured in his place. Carl Herman said, “We’ve received messages from the other side that Yahweh’s spaceship is five miles long and a mile wide.”

The Jackson Hole Guide, July 5, 1989

. . .

Exactly one year after Joe Jeffers died, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was released, featuring a good question from Captain Kirk:

Another cult who believed that they’d be saved and taken to heaven by a spaceship made the news on March 26, 1997. In Rancho Santa Fe, California, Marshall Herff Applewhite and 38 of his Heaven’s Gate followers were found dead from a mass suicide.

A Lost UFO Book Discovered

The Venusians, text and images © Harold J. Berney Estate, 1960 and 2023.

The first person convicted to prison for UFO-related crimes was the subject of an in-depth April 9, 2020, article at The Saucers That Time Forgot, “Harold J. Berney: The FBI's Flying Saucer Fugitive.” There’s been a new development, but first, for those who need it, a recap of the UFO-related part of his story. 

In the mid-1950s, Harold Jesse Berney approached a few individuals and confided that he was working on a top-secret project based on alien technology. Once a prototype was manufactured, the U.S. government contract would guarantee any early investors an enormous return. Hal was an interesting character, charismatic, an inventor, a talented artist, but all of that was overshadowed by his lifelong penchant for fraud. He’s remembered chiefly as a sign painter and swindler. The key thing that led to his downfall and conviction was a book he had written about flying saucers and aliens.

Berney’s story was the same thing he was telling investors, that he’d been hired by the U.S. government to study the technology of a captured flying saucer. Shortly after setting foot on the craft, he was contacted by an alien and accepted the invitation to go to Venus to learn about their technology. Upon his return, he worked with a major government contractor to build the powerful Magnetic Flux Modulator for the defense of the United States

In 1956, Berney worked with Pauline E. Goebel, a major investor, a legal secretary by profession. She typed up his story into a 118-page manuscript, Two Weeks on Venus, saved until the Modulator project was no longer secret. When she got word that Berney had died on another trip to Venus, Pauline tried to recoup the investment of her life savings by taking the manuscript to a publisher. After hearing her story, they suggested she call the police because she’d been swindled. From there, the FBI took over, and when they caught Berney, he claimed to be innocent of fraud, the book “just fiction.” To avoid the maximum penalty, on October 3, 1957, Berney agreed to a guilty plea for lesser crimes, two charges of fraud. He spent about three years in prison, and after his release he went back to work as a sign painter in Silver Spring MD, until his death in 1967. Hal’s name stayed out of the papers, and as far as the world knew, he had no other UFO-related activity.   

Other than a patent application, none of his drawings, paintings or writings are known to have survived. The sole manuscript for Berney’s Two Weeks on Venus was never published, taken by the FBI as evidence in Berney’s trial, afterwards filed with case records. UFO historians have never gotten to examine the text to see if it was merely derivative of early 1950 Contactee tales or was an original science fiction story. Depending on years of waiting for a FOIA response seemed the only hope of seeing it. It came as a delightful surprise to learn, "No, there is another." 

A Warehouse Find

In August of 2023, The Saucers That Time Forgot received an unexpected message in reply to our 2020 article on Berney. It stated, “I have a copy of the actual draft The Venusians by Hal J Berney… with hand painted art…” I texted the number provided, and the following conversation revealed that the book had been found in a Virginia warehouse (over 100 miles from Berney’s last home) and the owner knew nothing about it, or how it got there. Pictures were also sent, about a dozen photographs of a massive manuscript bound in a scrapbook. 

The scrapbook has a hand painted cover of the title, The Venusians, and the book itself is about 525 (single-sided) pages long, including hand-painted illustrations. The author is listed as Hal J. Bernéy, emphasizing that his last name was pronounced not like burn-ee, but like burr-nay.

Examining the photos of the text and illustrations, it indicates that this was Berney’s second attempt at a book. It was made after his conviction, and some of the paintings were made while he was incarcerated. One of the illustrations includes the year 1960 next to Berney’s signature.

An introductory page stated:

“The Venusians

A web of uncontrollable circumstances

This book is the culmination of the controversial manuscript… though at the time was called ‘Two Weeks on Venus’ was merely the outline basis for the now completed book named ‘The Venusians’.

A Fiction Novel by Hal J. Berney”

A following page emphasized the story as presented as a work of fiction:

“There are no true names of persons used in this book. Any similarity to names of persons living or dead is coincidental and not intended as such. The use of names of hotels, corporations, laboratories, Army and Navy personnel, Governments or courts are used fictionally, and do not imply their true connection in any actuality; while the laws in court procedures are correctly stated in a degree in their use, and then surrounded by fiction. The book is written in ambiguous obscureness, and is endowed with intricate, scientific facts. It is felt compulsory by the author to so state here, for his welfare, that the contents of this book are fiction.

Author: Hal J. Berney

Edited by:  Lorene D. Wells”

The Venusians was greatly expanded from the tale begun in Berney’s unpublished Two Weeks on Venus, and the second half of the book continued the story far beyond the events of including his trial for “Conspiring to Defraud through False Pretense.” Harold J.  Berney’s character is called “Albert J. Carlton,” and his company, “The Venusian Corporation of America.” 

Here are a few pages and illustrations from the manuscript that were sent as examples:

Double-page fold out: “Milky Way and our Galaxy Map.”

Figures approaching to examine a landed flying saucer.

“The ship had a flat concaved circular orbit-like band around the center of its ball shape.”

A scene discussing the scientists who would manufacture the Venusian technology on earth.

In Berney’s fictionalized trial, The Grand Jury charged Al Carlton of perpetrating:

“a scheme that disrupted and stagnated the Corporation and its investors and the deliveries of the necessary ships to the United States Government, thus not only depriving the Government, but his investors, and leaving the entire Nation unprotected by the lack of the Venusian ships, and at the mercy of other foreign powers who might obtain the invention from the Defendant.”

The “North American Nebula”

There wasn’t enough shown to reveal the entire story, but it seems the existence of the Venusians visitors were revealed in some kind of public disclosure. There was a scene of a crowd of people gathered under a phenomenal night sky.

“As they sat huddled together, the air seemed filled with soft strange music, as if some great choir of thousands of people were singing heavenly praises."

I AM

Part of the story involved an ill-fated interplanetary romance. Al Carlton had fallen in love with a Venusian princess, but they were separated by her untimely death. Somehow, after his trial, Berney’s character traveled back to Venus. At the end, Al died in an accident and was buried beside the princess. The closing page describes their bittersweet reunion with a religious acknowledgment of “the great ‘I AM’.”

There’s been no documentation found, but there seems to be some overlap between Berney and the spiritual Contactees and the I AM followers, even if they were only among his prey in his investment schemes.

Lost and Found

Prior to this discovery, no one had a clue that the book existed. So far, no further information has been found about it, or Lorene D. Wells, the woman who helped Berney produce it. What will happen to The Venusians? The people who found the manuscript contacted me to get information on the author for the purpose of selling it. I gave them the background on Berney and put them in touch with his surviving relatives. Ideally, the manuscript will find a home with Berney’s family, and that scans of the document are made and made available to researchers. As of this writing, the final fate of the book has yet to be determined. 

. . .

Connections? Two Flying Saucer Corporations

I've been unable to connect Hal Berney to any saucer club, but there was a lot of UFO-related activity nearby. Berney lived in Washington, D.C., but conducted business in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Flying saucer inventor Otis T. Carr's home and office was in Baltimore, Maryland, and there’s some interesting similarities between the two. They both had studied art, but neither of them had a formal education beyond the eighth grade. In the early 1950s, both started developing flying saucer technology, were granted patents for inventions, and incorporated businesses.

Harold J. Berney’s Telewand Corp. sought investors for his “Magnetic Flux Modulator.”
Otis T. Carr’s OTC Enterprises Inc. sought investors for his “Utron Electric Accumulator.”

Berney’s Modulator was a box unit that produced "its own power by drawing energy from the atmosphere.” Carr’s Utron produced “free energy” to power “a fourth dimensional space vehicle... the OTC-X1 circular-foil spacecraft.”

Carr holding Utron Electric Accumulator, 1957.

Both attracted believers in Contactee lore, but Carr was far more public in recruiting investors. Carr employed a publicist, Margaret Storm (author of Return of the Dove - a Theosophical biography of Nikola Tesla as a Venusian). Alice Beulah Schutz as a stenographer, and as A.D.K. Luk, she wrote Law of Life, a book for the “I AM” saucer-related religious cult. Whether through her or another source, Berney was aware of the religion and prominently featured a mention of “I AM” in the closing line of his book.

A Distinctive Saucer Design

The typical UFO of the day was pictured like a saucer or an automobile hubcap. Another distinctive saucer design debuted around 1957, a windowless elliptical fuselage ringed by an orbit-like band around its center. In Carr’s colorful spiral-bound pamphlet, published in October 1957, “OTC Enterprises, Inc, Brings You Atoms For Peace,” there was a spectacular illustration of his concept for a “Fourth Dimensional Space Vehicle.” The original art hung in his office and replicas and 17 x22 inch lithographs of the picture were offered to the public.

1957 Carr publicity photo.

The photo of Carr in front of the picture seems to show the artist’s signature in the bottom right corner, but it was cropped out of the published versions. While the identity of the artist is unknown, his space scene and the distinctive flying saucer design look very much like the work of Hal Berney, and an identical design appears on the cover of The Venusians. Berney and Carr’s flying saucers looked like they all came from the same factory on Venus.

Berney was arrested in March 1957 and was sentenced to prison in Oct. (about the time Carr printed the brochure). The book and art apparently began during or after his prison sentence, one picture is dated 1960. Without documentation, all we can say is that it’s possible Berney saw Carr’s saucer and copied it for his book cover. They are too similar in style and design to ascribe to coincidence.

Similar Fates

Both Berney and Carr were charged with crimes related to their flying saucer investment schemes.

Berney and Carr share the rare distinction of being among the few Saucer Swindlers to ever serve time behind bars in punishment for their crimes.