Flying saucers and aliens... Some people feared
these strange visitors from other planets, while others embraced them as
saviors. Xenophobia is defined by Merriam-Webster as “fear and hatred of
strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign.” Fewer
people are familiar with the term for its opposite, xenolatria. Xenolatry is
veneration, love, or worship of the foreign.
Armando Simón’s 1979 essay, “The Zeitgeist of
the UFO Phenomenon.” Simón’s essay focuses on the portrayal of aliens in science
fiction movies:
“Some films have presented the antithesis of the
invasion theme. Innocent and peaceful aliens in this case were attacked by an
unreasoning, bigoted, and warring human race... The aliens, therefore, served
as a convenient point of view for the screenwriter's xenolatric flagellations
of humanity.”
That’s from UFO Phenomena and the Behavioral
Scientist, edited by Richard Haines, and
Simón defined xenolatric in a footnote:
"This term, recently coined by Isaac Asimov (1976), means hatred for one's
own culture combined with idolization of other cultures while remaining blind
to any shortcomings in the latter.” Xenolatry is an important underlying premise
behind the strain of UFO belief embraced by the Contactees. To them, mankind is
a primitive warlike people - we are unworthy, and need to be saved by the
wisdom from our benevolent big brothers from outer space. In the age of atomic
fear, a lot of people were desperate for salvation from above, whatever the
source. As with virtually anything, opportunists pounced to exploit these
beliefs.
It seems incredible to us today that in the
1950s people could have been so gullible to fall for swindlers' claims about
flying saucers, such as meeting the people who flew them, or having the secrets
of their technology. What we have to appreciate is that at the time some kind
of unidentified flying objects were actually being seen by many people,
and many more were hearing about them secondhand from supposedly trustworthy
sources - coverage in the papers, radio and television news shows. UFOs were
frequently a serious topic of discussion, in part because of the news generated
by the investigation of flying saucers by the US Air Force.
Due to the constant media publicity, many people
accepted to some degree that flying saucers were real. The main
questions were about: what are they, why are they here, and where did they come
from? The first saucer generation had seen the impossible happen, the invention
and detonation of the atomic bomb, the launches of rockets, and then satellites
like Sputnik. However, most people’s understanding was limited to what they’d
picked up from newspaper headlines and entertainment, and it seemed that all
that “Buck Rogers stuff” was coming true. It was the dawn of the space age, and
anything seemed possible.
Exploiting the Possibilities
Mankind’s speculation about life on other worlds
did not begin in the 1940s with the flying saucer era. It preceded science
fiction too and is probably as old as the development of language. With the
flying saucers, it provided charlatans a golden opportunity to capitalize on
the public’s interest, and they exploited it to package everything, from fringe
religious teachings to confidence schemes.
Among those interested in the reports of flying
saucers were the spiritualists and students of the occult. The spiritualists
already claimed mental contact with other worlds and used saucers to make
people believe that any wonders in the sky - past or present - were evidence of
something from beyond our meager planet. In 1888, Helena Blavatsky used the
idea of civilizations on other planets in The Secret Doctrine, but in a
mystical or religious way, saying that they held knowledge and wisdom far
superior to our primitive understanding. She co-founded the Theosophical
Society, and Theosophy was a huge influence on fantasy and science fiction
literature. The occult was also part of the foundation for folks like Meade
Layne’s Borderland Sciences Research Associates (BSRA) beliefs about aliens visiting
in spaceships - long before saucers.
BSRA director Riley Crabb wrote in a 1961 article that mysticism "is distasteful to many
people who have been brought face to face with metaphysics by their interest in
the Saucer phenomenon. This means that old material, the Ancient Wisdom, is
going to have to be rewritten for them, dressed up in modern, Space Age,
terminology, before they'll study it..."
(“The Sky People,” Round Robin, vol. 17,
no 1, Jan-Feb 1961, p 22). What Crabb described was well underway, and as we
shall see, just what George Adamski had perfected back in the late 1940s.
“The Disgraceful Flying Saucer Hoax” article by Bob Considine in Cosmopolitan magazine, Jan. 1951, noted that the US Air Force wasted a lot of time and money investigating phonies, but that flying saucer fakery was not actually a punishable offense:
“And nothing can be done about such frauds. A man who pilfers a three-cent stamp from the Post Office Department can be fined and sent to a Federal prison... Yet the most callous and cynical saucerhoaxers will continue to go scot free, with a cackle of delight, until a penal act is created to check such offenses.”
Except when there was some other associated fraud, hoaxing a saucer story was not a crime. That legal loophole gave opportunists a virtual license to steal.
Contactees and Capitalists
The history of the Contactee era is complex and
involves many interesting personalities, each with their own storylines. The
1957 book, Flying Saucer Pilgrimage, by Bryant and Helen
Reeve provides a great look at the era and its figures from a believer’s point
of view, and it shows just how intermingled the saucer culture was with New Age
mysticism. Our examination is more centered on how the UFO culture, particularly
the Contactee faction, was exploited by those seeking fame and fortune. We’ll
introduce some of the players who were significant in capitalizing on flying
saucer belief, actually turning it into a business. Sort of a Saucerian “Who’s
Who” of personalities discussed in past and future STTF articles.
Kenneth Arnold
Kenneth Arnold’s 1947 sighting launched the flying saucer craze, and within
weeks of it, he was lecturing on the topic. Early on, Arnold cagily refrained
from committing to an explanation, but he did say he thought the saucers were
under intelligent control and might be from another world. Arnold was the first
witness to become a UFO lecturer, and he went on to publish a souvenir booklet
and co-author a non-fiction book on his experiences.
Ray Palmer
Raymond A. Palmer was in the UFO business well
before the whole saucer scene took off. He promoted the Charles Fort-derived
notion of extraterrestrial spaceships visiting earth as reality in his science
fiction magazine Amazing Stories. In 1947, Palmer latched on to
the premier saucer witness, Kenneth Arnold, featuring him in the 1948 debut of Fate
magazine and co-writing The Coming of the Saucers in 1952. Palmer also
published many UFO, New Age and Contactee books including: Other Tongues,
Other Flesh by George Hunt Williamson, 1953, The Secret of the Saucers
by Orfeo Angelucci, 1955, and Flying Saucer Pilgrimage by Bryant and
Helen Reeve, 1957. A born huckster, Palmer began increasing the UFO content in
his magazine Other Worlds, then in 1957 retitled it Flying Saucers.
Donald Keyhoe
Donald Keyhoe was a retired Marine major who had served in World War I and
became a writer of both news articles and fiction, including adventure stories
for pulp magazines. In 1949 the editor of True magazine sent Keyhoe the
assignment of picking up a flying saucer story they’d gotten stuck on, hoping Keyhoe’s
military contacts could help him penetrate the secrecy. The resulting article
was a sensation almost as big as the original fever of 1947, and along with the
resulting 1950 book, The Flying Saucers Are Real, proved that UFOs was a bankable topic. Keyhoe was focused on factual, documented cases from
credible witnesses, but many others that followed were peddling sensational
stories to cash in.
Frank Scully and Silas Newton
In a way, it all began with a lecture. Silas Newton told a story for Denver college students, an implausible tale of a crashed
flying saucer and the dead aliens inside being captured and hidden by the US
government. Frank Scully promoted the crashed saucer story, and in a sense, it
paved the way for the Contactees tales of meeting aliens. Behind the Flying
Saucers introduced the basic meme of peaceful visitors from Venus, a world
far more advanced than our own, but opposed by the barbaric US military, who
Scully called “the Pentagonians.” The saucer story itself was the brainchild of
oil swindler Silas Newton who evidently invented it as a backdrop to sell
“doodlebugs,” oil detection devices that he said were based on the alien
technology. The crashed saucer story became a best-selling book and enduring legend
even though it was proven to be without factual basis. Frank Scully and Silas
Newton were honored guests when flying saucer conventions began to be held, but
that diminished when Newton and his partner Leo Gebauer were convicted of fraud
in 1953. Newton set another precedent though, for a light penalty. He never
served any prison time for the fraud. When it comes to saucers, crime pays.
White collar crime, at least.
George Adamski
George Adamski used flying saucers as the bait to get people to accept the
mystic teachings he’d been peddling since the 1930s with his "Royal Order
of Tibet." In 1952 he recycled his old material, saying it was knowledge
passed to him from the angelic people, our Space Brothers from other planets.
Adamski topped Newton and Scully’s story of a magnetic saucer from Venus by
adding a living, talkative occupant, a friendly brother from space. “Orthon”
was borrowed from Klaatu, of the 1951 film, The Day the Earth Stood Still,
a modern Messiah figure. It was a means for Adamski to spread his “ministry,”
but the desire for fame and fortune may have been part of it too. Adamski’s
rise as a UFO lecturer and author is chronicled in A Critical Appraisal Of George Adamski The Man Who Spoke To The Space Brothers by Marc Hallet, 2016. The financial success of Adamski is
discussed, and Hallet says that things really took off with the publication of
the 1953 book, Flying Saucers Have Landed, which became a bestseller.
Adamski capitalized on his fame in a number of ways. At his many lectures, he
sold his books and pamphlets, and at his Palomar Gardens home, sold copies of
his saucer photos and charged tourists to look through his telescope. Hallet
also notes that “He also simply accepted gifts, sent in by admirers from all
corners of the world.” It was a good business model, and Adamski soon had many
imitators and competitors.
Gray Barker
Gray Barker launched The Saucerian in September 1953, a magazine, devoted
to flying saucers and associated mysteries. His 1956 book, They Knew Too
Much About Flying Saucers, helped establish the legend of the Men in Black,
and stir up saucer paranoia. Barker wrote the column, “Chasing the Flying
Saucers” for Ray Palmer’s Flying Saucers magazine, which helped boost
his profile, and he went on to become a book publisher himself. Under his
imprint, Saucerian Books, Barker published over 80 books and booklets by
Contactees and New Age authors between 1959 and 1984. In The Saucerian
and Saucer News, he also sold his own self-made flying saucer films and
other merchandise, as well as brokering books and products by others.
Truman Bethurum
Truman Bethurum was the second most popular Contactee behind Adamski, and he
developed a significant following of his own within the saucer world. Bethurum
captivated crowds with his tales of riding in a spaceship piloted by Aura
Rhanes, the beautiful female saucer captain from planet Clarion. In 1954,
Bethurum’s book, Aboard A Flying Saucer was released, and he sold it
along with other pamphlets at lectures and conventions. In 1955 Aura Rhanes (in
astral form) advised Bethurum to solicit contributions to purchase land and
build the “Sanctuary of Thought,” a commune of peace and brotherly love. Its
continued operation was funded by further contributions, the sale of Bethurum’s
literature - and the fees from private spiritual readings.
Orfeo Angelucci
Orfeo Angelucci is mentioned here chiefly because of his popularity in the early
days, and for his role in the inaugural 1953 Los Angeles saucer convention. In The
Secret of the Saucers, Orefo Angelucci described a visionary experience
where an otherworldly entity spoke to him and shared revelations, ones that
sound familiar to other occult saucer narratives:
“We know your mind is filled with questions. One
question in particular troubles you and it concerns the entity the world knows
as Jesus Christ. May we set your mind at rest. In allegorical language Christ
is indeed the Son of God. The star that burned over Bethlehem is a cosmic fact.
It announced the birth on your planet of an entity not of Earth’s evolution. He
is Lord of the Flame — an infinite entity of the sun. Out of compassion for
mankind’s suffering He became flesh and blood and entered the hell of ignorance,
woe and evil. As the Sun Spirit who sacrificed Himself for the children of woe
he has become a part of the oversoul of mankind and the world spirit. In this
He differs from all other world teachers.”
Angelucci went on to become a popular lecturer,
the author of two books and a series of pamphlets, and he seemed to be the most
sincere of the Contactees, more of a religious visionary than a
performer.
Daniel Fry
Daniel W. Fry was yet another Contactee and went on to form his own
spiritually-focused UFO organization, Understanding, Inc., which had local
study groups or “Units” that formed a network. Speakers approved by Fry could
tour the Understanding lecture circuit from group to group, and usually be fed,
housed, and paid by the membership along the way. Fry’s lecture circuit
provided a ready customer base to saucer lecturers, and for the more predatory
types, easy marks to be tapped for dollars.
Gabriel Green
Gabriel Green was an active participant in the
Contactee convention scene, claimed to have had his own contact experiences,
and founded the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America in 1957. Green presided
over the AFSCA, published their magazine, sponsored lectures, and hosted their
successful series of UFO conventions. Green capitalized on his status as a
saucer celebrity by announcing his candidacy for President of the United States
with Daniel Fry as VP, running on a platform based on the teachings of peace
and wisdom from space. His 1960 presidential bid was backed by the support of
his UFO convention lecturers, and supposedly, the people of Alpha Centauri.
Green ultimately withdrew and endorsed John Kennedy, but later entered the race
for United States Senator for California in 1962, where he lost in the primary
with a relatively impressive 170,000 votes.
George Van Tassel
George Van Tassel began hosting the annual
Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention at Giant Rock, California, in 1954,
providing a stage for anyone who claimed to be in contact with flying saucer
occupants. It
was a showcase for Contactees, who had a spiritual saucer approach,
regarding aliens as angelic “Space Brothers,” and Van Tassel’s host organization
was “The Ministry of Universal Wisdom.” Lecturers for his first convention included George Hunt
Williamson, Orfeo Angelucci, Truman Bethurum, Dan Fry, author Frank Scully and
Van Tassel himself. Admission was free, but there was a bustling marketplace
with books and saucer-related merchandise for sale. Shortly thereafter, Van
Tassel said he received plans from the aliens to build the Integratron, a
building to house a machine that he claimed would “recharge energy into living
cell structure, to bring about longer life with youthful energy." Van
Tassel began soliciting financial donations to finance it., and the building
was completed in 1959. However, the rejuvenation device never was finished, despite
of the thousands of dollars collected for its construction. Nevertheless, Van
Tassel’s conventions energized the Contactee scene in the 1950s, and he
inspired many others to host flying saucer gatherings in other locations.
Long John Nebel and “The Party Line”
Another person instrumental in giving Contactees
a voice was Long John Nebel who hosted the legendary WOR radio talk show, “Long
John’s Party Line,” which launched in 1954. The format featured Nebel and a
group of panelists interviewing an offbeat guest. The Daily News from
New York, in their Aug. 2, 1957 edition described the show:
“Long John's ‘Party Line’ is something unique in
radio, one of the most interesting and novel post-midnight items ever heard in
New York and in the 25 other states reached by WOR... Airing Mondays through
Saturdays, midnight to 5:30 A. M. Nebel and his guests discussed
“unconventional subjects as flying saucers, haunted houses, reincarnation,
astrology, numerology, witchcraft, stage and black magic to hypnotism, the
stock market, advertising practices, medicine, travel, archeology,
bullfighting, modern art and music...”
The show featured some serious UFO proponents
such as Donald Keyhoe, but they were far outnumbered by the fantastic fringe
from “The Way Out World.” Nebel himself was not a believer, but he knew what
was good for business.
Howard Menger
Howard Menger struck fame by appearing on the
Oct. 29, 1956, Long John Nebel show, which led to national TV exposure on the Steve
Allen Show. Menger’s tale was familiar, he’d met people from a spaceship,
gone for a ride and taken pictures. The story was so familiar, he became known
as “the East Coast Adamski.” Menger became a flying saucer entrepreneur, with
an impressive list of products. His record of piano music, Authentic Music
From Another Planet, 1957 was followed by his bride-to-be Connie Weber’s My
Saturnian Lover, 1958, and together they held the” East Coast
Interplanetary Space Convention" at his New Jersey farm in 1958, and
unlike the Van Tassel gatherings they charged admission, $2.00. Gray Barker
announced the publication of Menger’s book there, and From Outer Space to
You came out in 1959. Gray Barker marketed these products through his Saucerian
magazine, and also sold copies of Menger’s flying saucer pictures and movies.
Buck Nelson
Buck Nelson achieved some celebrity status from
his story about meeting Venusians and their giant 385-pound dog, “Big Bo,”
which he chronicled in the 1956 booklet, My Trip to Mars, the Moon, and
Venus. It was sold at his appearances at Giant Rock and lectures
nationwide, but he had another product, physical evidence from his space
adventures, packets of fur from Big Bo. In 1958 Nelson began hosting his own
annual “Spacecraft Conventions” at his ranch in Mountain View, Missouri.
Besides the typical book stalls for lecturers’ wares, Nelson had his own saucer
souvenir booth which sold toys, postcards, ball-point pens, pennants, balloons,
liniment for sore backs and so much more. Nelson also operated a concession
stand offering such refreshments as hotdogs burgers and soda. By Nelson’s final
convention in 1966, attendance was down to 150 people, down from the phenomenal
turnout of 1958 with about 2000 customers.
Major Wayne S. Aho described himself as the
director of “Washington Saucer Intelligence,” which becomes a bit less
impressive-sounding when you know it was based in Oklahoma, not Washington, DC,
that it was a civilian organization, that the Major was retired from the Army,
and that he mostly the director of his own lecture tours. The press and public
sometimes confused the Contactee Aho with the far more conservative UFO
proponent Major Donald Keyhoe. Aho was a pervasive lecturer in the late 50s,
but seemed to begin phasing out the Washington Saucer Intelligence facade about
the time he became “Director of Public Education” for Otis T. Carr’s OTC
Enterprises, Inc. Aho created the New Age Foundation in the early 1960s, a
UFO-based organization that was overtly religious, and held spiritual
gatherings at Mt. Rainier.
Reinhold O. Schmidt
Reinhold O. Schmidt was an agricultural broker,
a seemingly ordinary man drawn into an extraordinary adventure. He saw a silver
spaceship and its crew near Kearney, Nebraska, and after his credibility was
challenged was briefly confined to a mental hospital for observation.
Afterwards, Schmidt went on to have a series of ever more amazing contacts -
and lecture tours. The space people showed Schmidt where to mine for gold and
precious miraculous minerals, but when Schmidt began luring large investments
out of gullible widows, he eventually wound up in trouble - court and then
prison.
Otis T. Carr
Otis T. Carr was considered an inventor, not a
Contactee, but he shared in their values - and their spotlight on the lecture
stages. Carr’s plan was to build a saucer-shaped spaceship operated on cosmic
free energy principles, and to do so, he formed OTC Enterprises, Inc, and set
about his goal of collecting $20,000,000 to finance it. His story has some
elements in common with that of Reinhold O. Schmidt, including arrest,
conviction, and some of the supporting cast. Like with Schmidt, we’ll be giving
the Carr story a feature-length STTF treatment in the future, part of
our “Flying Saucer Swindlers” series.
The End of the Beginning
By the early
1960s, the saucer prophets’ act had worn thin, and their day was done. Donald Keyhoe and other serious flying saucer
proponents considered the Contactees a distracting circus sideshow that damaged
the credibility of the UFO topic. They wished the clown show would go away, and
to some extent, it happened. George Adamski died in 1965, and the Contactee
scene seemed to be drying up as well. Gabriel Green’s Amalgamated Flying Saucer
Clubs of America was finished around 1969, and Dan Fry’s Understanding Inc.
were fading, but so was the more serious NICAP. That left APRO and MUFON to
carry on, leaving the Contactee folks without a major organization to champion
their cause. The conventions at Giant Rock continued on a smaller scale but
ended with the death of George Van Tassel in 1978.
However, the Contactee movement wasn’t finished,
it just fell out of fashion. In the 1970s the stories of the Pascagoula
Abduction and the Travis Walton incident helped revive interest in alien
encounters, and the message of the Space Brothers was rekindled somewhat by the
1978 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In the 1980s without a
strict Donald Keyhoe to keep the Contactees away, the spirit of the Space
Brothers made a stealthy comeback by infiltrating mainstream ufology. As UFO
organizations struggled to survive, they relaxed their standards to embrace
devotees of fringe beliefs of all sorts. This side of ufology is not
necessarily about money, but it’s show business, and as the saying goes, the
show must go on.
In the weeks and months to come, STTF will take
a closer look at some of these figures, including their careers as lecturers,
convention promoters, and sometimes, criminals.
