Guides and mentors: Alice Bailey

As a young student in 1971 I was browsing the shelves in the antiquarian section of Anderssons bokhandel (Andersson Bookshop) in Norrköping. My eyes caught the title Telepathy, written by Alice Bailey. I bought the book and was immediately fascinated by its content, although there was much that was beyond my understanding and knowledge at the time. After acquiring some further titles by Alice Bailey I enrolled as a student in The Arcane School in 1972. Receiving the student papers Light on the Path I began meditation and study with the help of my personal secretary at the school. I kept this up for about one year but as I also had the ordinary school to attend and being chairman of the local UFO society I resigned from The Arcane School in 1973. This was my first acquaintance with the Alice Bailey books, which I would later continue studying all my life.

Parts of my Alice Bailey collection

There are today literally hundreds of metaphysical systems and schools and thousands of channeled messages from various exotic entities. Cults and new age societies are constantly being formed based on these messages while scholars are doing their best trying to document the new groups and ideologies, with their many offshoots. At Archives for the Unexplained (AFU) we have large collections of channeled messages, especially from “space people”.  They are usually exceedingly boring to read, a combination of well-meaning platitudinous comments and naïve love-and-light mysticism. It is fully natural and reasonable that academic scholars and intellectuals being confronted with such “wisdom” become even more skeptical of this genre and find secular humanism or materialist reductionism a better alternative.

The critical and scientifically minded student will eventually, if persistent, in this djungle of conflicting messages and teachers, discover that there is a philosophy and tradition of a quality vastly different from the popular new age channelings. It is referred to as The Esoteric Tradition or Ancient Wisdom and can be regarded as the third intellectual force or pillar in cultural history alongside religion and science. One of the foremost exponents of this philosophy or science of the multiverse is Alice Bailey. In other blog entries I have asserted that accepting esotericism as a worldview or paradigm does not imply irrationalism or a loss of intellectual integrity.

In the Esoteric Tradition as represented by a.o. Helena Blavatsky, Alice Bailey and Henry T. Laurency we find a philosophy that is consistent and rational with a profound humanism at its core. It also constitutes the best and most interesting multiverse paradigm and theory aviable to explain the multitude of intriguing UFO and paranormal phenomena documented by many researchers. Esotericism as presented by Alice Bailey is definitely on the side of modernity, democracy, social democracy, gender equality, human rights and politicallly more left than rightwing. She also wished to give a more balanced description of the adepts, the custodians of the Ancient Wisdom: " They will stand forth as living examples of goodwill, of true love, of intelligent applied wisdom, of high good nature and humour, and of normalcy. They may indeed be so normal that recognition of what They are may escape notice." (The Externalisation of the Hierarchy, p. 699).

Alice Bailey was for many years the amanuensis for the Tibetan, who dictated several of her books. He was given the name Djwhal Khul (D.K.) but that is not his real name. When first contacted and asked for co-operation Alice told the Tibetan: "Certainly not. I´m not a darned psychic and I don´t want to be drawn into anything like that". (The Unfinished Autobiography of Alice A. Bailey, p. 163). She had noted that many metaphysical and sprititualist writings were of so low an order of intelligence and mediocre in their content that educated people laugh at them and cannot be bothered to read them. Eventually she did give it a try as she found the quality of the esoteric philosophy dictated by the Tibetan of a high order.

Alice Bailey

The Tibetan asserts that he is "secretary and organising contact man" to the inner world government or planetary guardians. (Discipleship in the New Age, p. 33). He often refer to his access to the esoteric archive, library and museum maintained by the adepts, mentioned in several books by Blavatsky, Olcott and Leadbeater: "I but present the facts as I know them from my access to records more ancient than any known to man." (Esoteric Psychology, vol. one, p. 394). A problem with the Bailey books, Theosophy and esotericism in general is the abstruse and confusing terminology. The Tibetan is very much aware of this problem: "A new and deeper esoteric terminology is badly needed". (Telepathy and the Etheric Vehicle, p. 131). This problem has been brilliantly solved by the eminent Swedish esotericist Henry T. Laurency in his presentation of esotericism or the science of the multiverse. Another problem with the Bailey literature is the constant use of Christian terminology and references. Words and expressions like God, the return of Christ etc. should have been abolished and a more neutral or scientific language used. Alice Bailey probably favoured the Christian terminology because of her background as an orthodox Christian missionary but these expressions will have a deterrent effect on students with an agnostic or non-Christian background.

The investigator of UFO and paranormal phenomena will, in the books by Alice Bailey, find an enormous amount of data regarding various phenomena and entities. I find it somewhat amazing that neither ufologists nor esotericists have noted that in the writings of Bailey there are many references to an awaited extra-terrestrial intervention mentioned before 1946. I have found no less that 34 references on this subject in her books. Here a few examples from The Externalisation of the Hierarchy, clothbound ed. 1981:

April 1935: "... the regenerative forces of Those extraplanetary Beings Who offer Their Help at this time." (p. 25)

April-May 1940: "Hovering today within the aura of our planet are certain great spiritual Forces and Entities, awaiting the opportunity to participate actively in the work of world redemption, re-adjustment and reconstruction.... the waiting extra-planetary Forces." (p. 222-223)

September 1940: "There still remains one mode of intervention which is still more mysterious, illimitably more powerful, and definitely more difficult to evoke and subsequently to contact. This is the emergence, responce, or appearing of great Sons of God Who dwell in sources far removed from our planetary life altogether..." (p. 261)

April 1943: "Certain great Energies of extra-planetary significance Who stand ready to intervene..." (p. 392).

The books by Alice Bailey constitute an intellectual challenge. They are not easy to read but why should the science of the multiverse be easier to understand than any academic discipline? It takes years of intensive study and hard work to be an accomplished esotericist. Mainstream academics and intellectuals will probably not consider esotericism as a working hypothesis or paradigm until definite empirical evidence indicates a multiverse. Until then esotericism will be the domain of scientific heretics and iconoclasts in the cultural underground. The philosophical attitude to esoteric philosophy has been formulated by the Tibetan:

"Our attitude should be that of reasonably enquiry and our interest that of the investigating philosopher, willing to accept a hypothesis on the basis of its possibility... Those open minded investigators who are willing to accept its fundamentals as a working hypothesis until these are demonstrated to be erroneous. They will be frankly agnostic..." (A Treatise on White Magic, 1971 (orig. 1934, pp 6, 32).

Guides and mentors: Timothy Good

To keep the chronology of the guides and mentors in my life the relevant name here should be Riley Crabb, director of Borderland Sciences Research Foundation (BSRF) 1959-1985. But as I have written rather extensively on Riley in earlier blog entries interested readers are referred to these blogs. Instead I wish to present the ufologist and author Timothy Good, who has been a great inspiration and friend for many years.

Rather early in my ufological career I lamented the fact that so few of the classic contactees of the 1950s had been thoroughly and seriously studied and their experiences documented. “Scientific” ufologists usually dismissed these individuals as cranks and cultists, without further investigation. Many contactees, of course, belonged to the rogue and crackpot category but there were, in my opinion, a few intriguing exceptions: George Adamski, Orfeo Angelucci, Daniel Fry, George van Tassel, Howard Menger a.o. Activists in the 1950s and 60s UFO and new age community were usually either rather naïve believers or debunkers on the issue of contactees. There were few open minded, serious investigators looking into the contactee enigma.

Timothy Good during his Swedish visit in 1998

This situation began to change in the 1980s with the publication of George Adamski – The Untold Story, written by Lou Zinsstag and Timothy Good (1983). Finally a study that was neither a hagiography nor a debunking dismissal but a careful weighing up of the evidence for and against this controversial man. After reading and reviewing the book in 1983 I immediately wrote to Timothy Good expressing my appreciation of their research: "Isn´t it peculiar that the first actual biography on Adamski should be written by Europeans? Where are the American UFO detectives?" I received a very kind reply and since then we have kept the correspondence going all these years. Timothy Good has provided me with many interesting documents, transcripts of interviews, photographs and data relating to his worldwide investigation of contactee cases. We have compared data and discussed all the tricky issues of this fascinating enigma.

In my first letter to Timothy I presented my theory regarding secret brotherhoods on Earth and UFOs, the Esoteric Intervention Theory. Here a quote from Tim´s reply, dated February 27, 1984: "Let me discuss your fascinating theory, which, as you correctly point out, is not a new one. It may please you to learn that Howard Menger, with whom I spent a lot of time in 1978, shares your view. He does not now believe that the people he met (and meet them he did - of that I am certain) came from Venus and Mars, Saturn etc. He think´s it far more likely that they come from a superior civilization here on Earth that has existed for thousands of years. BUT may use Venus and Mars as bases, since they obviously have spaceflight capability."

The book by Lou Zinsstag and Timothy Good in many ways reopened the George Adamski case and inspired renewed investigative efforts to understand contact experiences. A more open minded view on contactees had earlier been presented by American ufologist Ted Bloecher at the First International UFO Congress in 1980. George Adamski - The Untold Story contain a mass of new data and insights into the controversial claims of this the first generation contactee.

Timothy Good is not, like Desmond Leslie, an esotericist but his theories and conclusions relating to the experiences of Adamski and other contactees are in line with the Esoteric Tradition. Referring to the extraordinary feats of yogis like Paramhansa Yogananda he concludes: "It is my conviction that many extraterrestrials are capable of these and other even more fantastic feats: indeed, I see little difference in this respect between highly-evolved human beings on this planet and those from any other. These abilities are precisely what we should expect..." (p. 197). Timothy Good also express a deep fascination with individuals like Comte de St. Germain, Cagliostro and Anton Mesmer and finds it likely they were associated with the "ancient races". (Earth. An Alien Enterprise, pp. 405-406).

Timothy Good

From an esoteric aspect there is an interesting point made by Lou Zinsstag, relating to the rather doubtful claim that Adamski had some "private tuition" in Tibet at an early age: "I suspect that the young boy must have enjoyed tuition by a teacher or guide, connected with a group in Tibet, as he subsequently founded the "Royal Order of Tibet"". (p. 5). Could Adamski, at an early age, have been contacted by a Tibetan teacher, similar to the experiences of Millen Cooke, who wrote the prophetic article Son of the Sun in 1947?

One of my favourite books by Timothy Good is Alien Base (1998), a comprehensive account of physical contactee cases documented by the author during his worldwide travels. Here we find the remarkable contact experiences of Joelle Marchemont, a good friend of Timothy Good for many years. In a letter in 1984 I asked why he regarded her as reliable: "Re. my contactee friend. Why reliable? I have known her since 1952 and can vouch for her integrity. She has never tried to capitalise on the story, and, indeed, is unable to discuss all the details, due partly the the ET`s ability to control her memory of certain things they told her, and also becuase she was in the Maquis (French Resistance) in the last war, and thus is able to keep some information to herself." (Letter August 28, 1984).

To mainstream serious ufologists Timothy Good is probably best known by his classic studies Above Top Secret (1987) and Need to Know: UFOs, the Military & Intelligence (2006). He has for many years lectured worldwide and several of these lectures can be found at YouTube. As a professional violinist and a member of the London Symphony Orchestra for fourteen years, he has worked together with famous musicians as George Harrison, Elton John, Paul McCartney and U2. A rather unique combination of talents and achievements.

A young Timothy Good in Japan

The latest book was published in 2013, Earth - An Alien Enterprise, which I reviewed in an earlier blog entry. Chapter eleven is a summary of the Swedish Richard Höglund case, which I spent many years documenting and has discussed extensively with Timothy. We have sometimes differed in opinion on the veracity of various contactees. One example is the controversial Amicizia story from Italy of which I have grave doubts. But most of the time during our years of correspondence we have reached similar conclusions on cases investigated.

Reading and listening to Timothy Good is a stimulating adventure and intellectual challenge. You may not always agree with his ideas and theories but he has done what serious ufologists neglected to do: to thoroughly investigate and document the first generation contactees and their experiences. Because of this interest he is sort of a heretic among the "scientific" ufologists and skeptics who continue investigating the easily explained lights in the sky instead of going after the real enigma, the close encounters and contact experiences. It was very much with the help of Timothy Good that I was able to elaborate an extended version of Vallee´s Esoteric Intervention Theory. In this respect he has been an important guide and mentor of which I am eternally grateful.

Guides and mentors: Sture and Turid Johansson

In my life I have met many interesting and extraordinary personalities. Some have been basically mentors and others both friends and mentors. In this last category I include the couple Sture and Turid Johansson, often mentioned in older blog entries. I first met Sture and Turid in late Autumn 1972 and we immediately became very good friends. They freely shared their many and sometimes frightening UFO and close encounters. The rather unusual and varied experiences of Sture and Turid was what actually inspired me to begin in depth investigations of the often complicated and controversial physical contactee cases. Foremost the enigma of Richard Höglund.

Sture and Turid Johansson had been involved in UFO and spiritualist circles for several years before I met them. They were spiritual searchers studying different teachers and traditions. After a lecture at Stockholms UFO-Center in 1973 Sture and Turid began meditation meetings at their home in Lidingö, Stockholm, with a group of members from the UFO society. In November 1973 I was invited to attend these meditation sessions. We met every Friday night for about three years and became a very tightly knit group and close friends. For me this group was especially important as I was troubled by personal problems during the Spring of 1974.

Sture and Turid Johansson

We all became fellow spiritual seekers in the meditation group, studying a.o. Helena Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner and discussing all aspects of philosophy and paranormal phenomena. These were joyous and inspiring gatherings.  Although the subjects discussed were serious we often joked heartily and rather irreverently about spiritual teachers and ourselves. As almost all of us were active in various UFO, parapsychological and spiritual organizations we referred to our group as The Occult Mafia.

We often gathered together at holidays, New Year´s Eve and other occasions. We had summer parties, visiting lectures, exhibitions and interesting persons among our acquaintances. One evening we spontaneously decided to place our meditation session deep in the forest, a few Swedish miles south of Stockholm at a place called Paradiset, the Paradise. After having walked in the dark forest for about a mile we arrived at a small lake, Trehörningen. There the group settled together, meditating and gazing at the beautiful night sky filled with stars and occasional meteors. It way an awe-inspiring evening full of magical beauty and mystery. Many times later we gathered at this place for recreation and bathing in the lake, a few times sleeping in a lapp cot or tepee built close to the lake.

Me in the lapp cot (tepee) at Paradiset, August 1974. the dog belonged to Sture och Turid

New year celebration with the group 1974. Sture, Turid and Lennart Johansson

I came to know Sture och Turid Johansson very well and we spent many evenings at my small one room apartment in Sundbyberg, discussing and trying to understand the many facets of the UFO enigma and of course their own close encounters and contacts. Often during these evenings we were joined by our good friend Åke Franzén, one of the few Swedes to have personally investigated the famous Mothman in West Virginia. Åke was a volcano of good spirits coupled with an intense thirst for knowledge of all aspects of UFO and paranormal phenomena. Our gatherings were full of joy and laughter and will forever be cherished in my memory.

Happy gathering at my apartment March 1978, Turid, Åke Franzén, Sture

A seminal event occurred during our meditation meeting on November 19, 1976. Turid told the group that Sture had recently begun going into a trance state and a spirit, Simeno, had started talking through him. Although members of the group had read about many paranormal events we were all somewhat apprehensive when Sture started to gasp and shake, rised up and a completely foreign voice came from his lips. The voice greeted us and told us not to be afraid.

The trance communications marked the beginning of the end for the meditation group. Sture och Turid Johansson became more and more involved in spreading the messages from Simeno, and later an old Egyptian calling himself Ambres. In 1976-1977 I participated in several trance sessions at the home of Sture och Turid and hade many long conversations with Ambres. I taped these sessions and they became important as they taught me a lot of how trance communication works and the problem of interpretation.

The teachings of Ambres became very popular and soon a group formed around the couple. In the 1980s Sture och Turid moved to the north of Värmland, building a center attracting many followers who came from all over the world to listen to the Ambres teachings. Sture became very famous in the 1980s when celebreties like Shirley MacLaine and Dennis Weaver visited the center in Sweden. Sture and Turid travelled around the world and I have letters and postcards posted from California, Hawaii and Mexico. Sture also figures in the miniseries Out On a Limb from 1987, based on the bestselling book by Shirley Maclaine. It was perhaps inevitable that our meditation group should split up and the members chose different paths in life. The group had served its purpose and our respective dharma made us chose different roads and spiritual traditions. For me the way ahead meant an extensive study of the Esoteric Tradition, especially Henry T. Laurency and Alice Bailey.

Article from the Swedish daily Expressen November 26, 1985 when Shirley MacLaine visited Sture Johansson

Listening to the taped trance sessions and reading the books written by Sture Johansson I noticed very early that the teachings of Ambres reflected the ideas we had discussed in the meditation group and corresponded clearly to the personal philosophy of Sture and Turid, a mixture of mysticism, spiritualism and Theosophy. Nothing really new came from Ambres. Turid was very much influenced by the doctrine of Mentalism, a form of advaita subjectivism stating that material reality only exists in our minds. In the words of Ambres: "The first four dimensions exist only if someone experience them. The beholder is Man. It is you who have created this room". We also find statements like: "This is not a teaching you should cultivate with your intellect" - "We should never compare teachings". I state this not as debunking criticism because the teachings are in many respects inspiring, beautiful and have probably helped many people to a more positive lifeview. There is no fanaticism, life-negating asceticism or political extremism presented.

Swedish book with the Ambres teachings

What would be my interpretation of the teachings and identity of Ambres today? Although the word esoteric is sometimes used in the teachings the philosophy presented is not esoteric, except with regard to some basic ideas. The intellectual and scholarly esotericist would immediately notice the differences. Besides this fact the adepts or the planetary guardians never use trance channelers with no control of who is communicating. To understand this phenomenon from an esoteric viewpoint I use my standard reference works in the multiverse science. A very good presentation and reasonable explanation can be found in two books by Alice Bailey. Students should read From Intellect to Intuition, pp. 243-249 (clothbound ed.). Here a few quotes relative to the problem of meditation and entity communication: "Again, some "force" - a word frequently used - or some entity comes to the student, as he meditates, and outlines to him some great work that he has been chosen to do; some world message that he has to give and to which the whole world is to listen...Should an apparition appear to him, therefore, and should such an entity make platitudious comments, he will use the same judgement as he would in business or ordinary life... He would probably laugh and continue with the activity or duty of the moment"... The world of illusion is full of these thoughtforms, constructed by the loving thoughts of men down the ages. Regarding channeled messages some further information is found Telepathy by Alice Bailey pp. 75-77: "These messages are normally innocuous, sometimes beautiful. because they are a mixture of what the recipients have read and gathered from Christian sources and the Bible." From the viewpoint of the Esoteric Tradition the identity of Ambres could be either a subconsciously created fantasy personality or an astral entity masquerading as an Egyptian sage.

Sture and Turid eventually separated while Sture continues his work and teachings in Värmland with a new partner. Turid died in October 2010. She will always stay in my memory and I cherish the varm friendship and many joyous meetings we had together. In several respects both Sture and Turid became my teachers and mentors and I am grateful for our time together.

Guides and mentors: John Keel

As I mentioned in a recent blog my first mentor in the intriguing world of ufology was the Swedish UFO contactee Sten Lindgren. During the first years of the 1970s I participated in many activities initiated by Sten, some of them based on his telepathic inspiration from the space people. But in the autumn of 1972 I had become increasingly skeptical of his many claims of contact. I had listened to so many fantastic stories, believing six impossible things before breakfast, that finally my naïve idealism changed into a more inquiring attitude. In my diary November 23, 1972 I wrote: "It feels good to be "normal" again. These two years have been like som kind of UFO hypnosis. It is obvious that UFOs are much more than one believes from the start... The issue of contactees should be investigated and documented."

A seminal influence in the late Autumn of 1972 was my meeting the Swedish couple Sture and Turid Johansson, who told of their rather frightening close encounter experiences and their involvement in the very complicated contact case of Richard Höglund. These and other cases I investigated slowly turned me into a more critical researcher instead of a naïve new age enthusiast. It was during this period that I discovered the books by John Keel. I found his writing fascinating and challenging. His field experience, intellectual curiosity, criticism of traditional ufology together with an iconoclastic and liberating humour impressed me deeply. When my friends and UFO collegues Anders Liljegren och Kjell Jonsson and I founded AFU in March 1973 our ideological inspiration came from John Keel and Jacques Vallee. Today Doug Skinner runs an excellent website devoted to John Keel.

John Keel (middle) visiting Sweden in 1976. Thorvald (Bevan) Berthelsen (left), Carl-Axel Jonzon (right)

I corresponded with John Keel in the 1970s and 80s and also had the good fortune of having him as a guest in my home when he visited Sweden in October 1976. We were a small group of ufologists who gathered in my small one room apartment in Sundbyberg discussing all aspects of UFO and paranormal phenomena for a couple of days. I was especially interested in hearing of his experiences and theories regarding the Men In Black (MIB) phenomenon and the very physical UFO and contact cases. Keel was  intrigued by this aspect and convinced there were aliens among us. “I´d really like to get one”, was his comment. In my copy of Operation Trojan Horse he wrote: “For my good friend Håkan Blomqvist – the secret to the UFOs is on page 321”. Last page in the book is 320. Typical John Keel Fortean humour.

John Keel and girlfriend eating a UFO cake during their Swedish visit in 1976

Referring to his first book, Jadoo (1957) in Operation Trojan Horse Keel wrote: "Previous to all this I was a typical hard-boiled skeptic. I sneered at the occult. I had once published a book, Jadoo, which denigrated the mystical legends of the Orient." But this is not quite true. Although it is written in typical Keel fashion with a critical and humourous spirit there are several experiences and phenomena in the book which he can´t explain and truly puzzles the young adventurer. He hear the sound of and get a short glimpse of what could be the abominable snowman. A mystical lama give Keel a demonstration of levitation while other lamas move chairs by mental power and prove their ability of remote viewing by telling of a fire going on in a distant village. When Keel checked later, there had been a fire in the village. Instead of "denigrating" these claims he writes: "There was no explanation for these things. I thought I knew all the tricks of the phony western mediums, but this demonstration stymied me." Although a hard-boiled skeptic, Keel does not appear as the typical debunker in Jadoo, rather as the inquisitive romantic adventurer. And I love his humourous comments, like this one: "One lama told me the way to vanish into thin air is to make the mind a complete blank. (If this is true, then I know several people who should have disappeared long ago.)"

After a lifetime of travel, field investigation and study of UFO, Fortean and paranormal phenomena Keel reached the conclusion shared by many researchers into these areas: we live in a multiverse inhabited by a variety of diverse intelligences. In his last book, The Eighth Tower (1975), he wrote: "Today many scientific disciplines are moving in the same direction, not realizing they are mapping a very old country. In a few years, perhaps even in our own lifetime, all sciences will suddenly converge at a single point, and the mysteries of the superspectrum will unravel in our hands." (p. 216). This a strangely prophetic announcement that could have been written by anyone familiar with the Esoteric Tradition. This “country” has been “mapped” by esotericists like Helena Blavatsky, Charles Leadbeater, Geoffrey Hodson, Alice Bailey, Henry T. Laurency a.o. Although John Keel often use the term elementals, has documented their materializations and understand the problem of encountering them he never seems to have considered esotericism as a paradigm or working hypothesis to understand these phenomena. This becomes even more enigmatic as he wrote in the final chapter of Operation Trojan Horse: “My skepticism has melted away, and I have turned from science to philosophy in my search for the elusive truth." Obviously he never discovered esoteric philosophy.

John Keel´s lack of knowledge of the Esoteric Tradition was one of the reasons why another of my guides and mentors, Riley Crabb of Borderland Sciences Research Associates, never liked his writings. While I tried to defend Keel and present his views and investigations as opening new vistas and giving further evidence of a multiverse, Riley Crabb could never see it this way. In a letter to me March 23, 1980 he wrote: "He (John Keel) is a wilderness crying for a voice, and I´ve told him so. His writings, like those of Jacques Vallee, leave one hopeless... Yes D.K. (Bailey-HB) does warn about the trickiness of Deva and Elemental contacts, but he places them understandably in the over-all picture of evolution we get from the Mahatmas of the Himalayas. There is no such inspirational lift from Keel and Vallee, and there can´t be because the two men aren´t even metaphysical kindergartners, they are metaphysical illiterates."

Personally I found a lot of "inspirational lift" from John Keel although neither Keel nor Vallee could be regarded as esotericists. There is a mass of data and conclusions in their books pointing to an interpretation clearly in line with the Esoteric Tradition. Like this quote from Keel´s last book The Eighth Tower (1975): "Today, scores of scientists working in widely separated , unrelated disciplines are crossing the threshold into the world of ancient science. We call it progress, but Merlin will have the last laugh. Science is inching into magic..." (p.44)

To me John Keel and his books opened up a new world with his knowledge, humour and suggestive language. When you read Strange Creatures from Time and Space and are confronted with all the weird and frightening creature encounters the author gives this final "encouraging" prophecy: " "...someone within two hundred miles of your home, no matter where you live on this planet, has had a direct personal confrontation with an Unbelievable... Next week, next month, or next year you may be driving along a deserted country road late at night and as you round a bend you will suddenly see..."
H. P. Lovecraft would have loved that sentence.