In the American magazine UFO Report 1977, John Keel
wrote a very interesting article, The Contactee Key, presenting some of his
conclusions and advice from several years of field investigation. He noted the
great mistake made by the early UFO organizations, APRO and NICAP, in regarding all contactees as hoaxers and
consequently missing a lot of valuable data: ”Had these groups applied some
fundamental logic to the situation they might have realized their approach was
wrong… By publicly dissociating themselves from the contactees, the early
ufologists left this fruitful aspect entirely in the hands of the government.”
(UFO-Report, vol. 4, no. 4, August 1997).
John Keel (in the middle) during his visit to Sweden 1976
What John Keel discovered during his field investigations
was that some contactees were actually genuine and did encounter visitors from
somewhere and that this aspect of the UFO enigma required a different approach
than ordinary mainstream UFO research. Jacques Vallee, in his Messengers of
Deception, let the character Major Murphy define this problem facing
ufologists: ”What makes you think UFOs are a scientific problem?... science has
certain rules. For example it has to assume that the phenomenon it is observing
is natural in origin rather than artificial and possibly biased. Now, the UFO
phenomenon could be controlled by alien beings. If it is, added the Major, then
the study of it doesn´t belong in science. It belongs in Intelligence. Meaning
counter espionage.” (p. 68).
During my many years of contactee investigation I
discovered that in a few physcial contactee cases there was independent or
circumstial evidence that the contactee really was meeting ”strangers”, whoever
they were. Lou Zinsstag found this out regarding George Adamski and ufologist
Ted Bloecher changed his mind on contactees when he discovered a similar
situation in the Woodrow Derenberger case.
Based on these experiences what I find rather frustrating
in mainstream UFO research, at least in Sweden,
is the large amount of time spent by field investigators on ordinary UFO
observations and misidentifications. In my view a complete waste of time and
money that will never solve the UFO enigma. I have for years tried, without
much success, to convince active ufologists in Sweden to forget
misidentifications and reports with very little empirical data and concentrate
one hundred percent on close encounters and contact cases. My advice is as
ever, try to be more of a UFO detective or intelligence agent than investigator
of lights in the sky.
One of the most intriguing and complicated UFO
contacts I have ever investigated is the Richard Höglund case, summarized by
Timothy Good in his latest book Earth - An Alien Enterprise. I will not repeat
the summary here as you can find the case here and on several of my blog
entries. But I would like to give a few details of the circumstancial evidence
indicating a genuine contact.
Richard Höglund
1. Disappearance
of kidney stones.
Richard claimed to have been healed from his kidney troubles with an instrument
placed on his back during the first contact on December 9, 1965. The pain left
him instantly when the alien visitor held an instrument to his back. There
were x-rays taken both before and after this incident. I received written
statements from three medical doctors involved with the x-rays. They confirmed
that no stone was visible on the plates after December 9, 1965, but there is a possibility
that the stones could have left the body in a natural way. According to one of
the doctors, Karl Erik Swenson, the
later plates after the incident seems to indicate a man who never had any
kidney stones.
Karl Erik Swenson M.D. Richard´s physician
2. Telephone interference
Two of Richard´s friends Gösta and Sture Johansson many times experienced
strange telephone problems talking to Richard. Often when Gösta Johansson called Richard on the phone, the line was broken and a harsh voice simply said
”it is wrong”, always the same voice. Sometimes when talking on the phone a
clicking sound was heard and then Richard became very nervous and wanted to end
the conversation. Once the clicking sounds could be heard after the
conversation had ended and the phone was dead. Then a call came and when Gösta
answered the same voice only said ”it is wrong”. Gösta Johansson was convinced
that Richard´s phone was tapped.
Gösta Johansson 1986
3. Invisible entities
Once on the Bahamas Richard was sitting on a bench talking with one of his
alien visitors. Some people are passing by and suddenly Richard find himself
talking aloud alone and the visitor is gone. He felt very embarrassed of the
situation. Obviously the aliens could make themselves invisible. In the
beginning of the 1970s the couple Sture and Turid Johansson become involved
with Richard´s activities. On a Monday evening around midnight when the couple
have gone to bed Turid is awakened by the sound of their front door opening and
someone walking around with heavy steps in the apartment. Believing she has
forgotten to lock the door Turid goes up only to find the door closed and no
one there. She goes to bed again and then the heavy steps are heard once more,
like someone is walking around in the rooms. She wakes up her husband. They
look for some intruder to no avail and after a while no footsteps are heard.
During a telephone conversation with Richard a few
days later Turid mention the name Var de Cartino, the name of one of the alien
visitors. Richard answers: ”Yes he was here for three days and he visited you
one evening and said you had a nice apartment”. Then Richard gives a detailed
description of Sture and Turid´s apartment, although he had never been there.
Richard Höglund in Nassau, Bahamas
4. Travels
Richard was often gone from home, sometimes for months. He claimed that the
space people picked him up in their craft, often visiting the base hidden in
the Bahamas and also Mexico. Richard complained once to Gösta Johansson that he
was not allowed by his contacts to visit the Olympic Games in Mexico in 1968. Gösta
noticed that sometimes in the middle of the Winter he found Richard with a deep
suntan when he returned to Sweden. Richard was a retired rock blaster with very
little money. He couldn´t have gone on
regular flights around the world based on his meager income.
5. Gunvor Höglund´s Bahamas encounter
Richard´s wife Gunvor was not allowed to participate in the meetings with the alien visitors but she observed them many times when they came to their home. But once, at a restaurant in Nassau, Bahamas, she was introduced to one of Richard´s contacts: ”It was a small and crowded premise. Richard recognized one of his contacts and they came to our table. I watched this man and he looked at me.. He had a brown suit, a sort of suntan, not very tall and rather thin, a southern look in appearance. And he wasn´t very tall. My God, I thought, your suit is too large. He greeted me but we didn´t shake hands… His gaze was very intense and hypnotic. He smoked and left the rest of the cigarette on the table and then went away. I saved the cigarette butt as evidence.”
Richard´s wife Gunvor was not allowed to participate in the meetings with the alien visitors but she observed them many times when they came to their home. But once, at a restaurant in Nassau, Bahamas, she was introduced to one of Richard´s contacts: ”It was a small and crowded premise. Richard recognized one of his contacts and they came to our table. I watched this man and he looked at me.. He had a brown suit, a sort of suntan, not very tall and rather thin, a southern look in appearance. And he wasn´t very tall. My God, I thought, your suit is too large. He greeted me but we didn´t shake hands… His gaze was very intense and hypnotic. He smoked and left the rest of the cigarette on the table and then went away. I saved the cigarette butt as evidence.”
Gunvor Höglund
6. Reluctant contactee
Richard was a reluctant contactee. He was given no message but ordered to start
a Peace Movement in Sweden. This failed and he was reprimanded because other
contactees had succeeded in founding organizations that made a lot of money. Richard
didn´t trust the alien visitors and noticed that they were not of high morals.
He was actually afraid of them but felt compelled to continue working for them.
From a psychological viewpoint his thoughts and reactions are interesting,
speaking in favor of a genuine contact.
When investigating contactee cases like Richard
Höglund it is important to be aware of different alternatives in interpretation
and try to find corroborative evidence supporting the claims. In my book on the
Höglund case I presented several possibilities: The contact claims as a cover story
for criminal activity or espionage, a hoax for making money from gullible
followers, fictional story as a result of drug abuse, mystic visionary
experiences with no physical evidence, the contactee a mental case, mythmaker
or fantasy prone personality. During one period Richard´s friends, Sture and
Turid Johansson, speculated that because of his many travels, he was a courier
in the international drug trade, but they later came to accept his contacts as
genuine.
When ufologists become involved in contactee cases
like this the advice and experiences of John Keel and Jacques Vallee will prove
invaluable. This is a world very different from investigating and documenting
misinterpretations of Venus and airplanes.
