An Intriguing George Adamski Article

One of the advantages of being a librarian with access to the worlds largest UFO, Fortean and paranormal phenomena archive, AFU, is now and then discovering documents giving new data and unique insights into some aspect of the UFO contactee enigma. Presently I am examining the late George Adamski co-worker H.C. Petersen´s archive, part of which was donated to AFU in 2013. Recently I found a very intriguing article, Chemical Analysis, written by George Adamski in 1961. An article implying a possible connection to or involvement in the once secret CIA MK-Ultra mind control program. Experiments conducted during the 1950 and 60s.

Here is a relevant quote from this article:

H C Petersen

”In the past several years the space people have tested our various chemicals that are supposed to be for health and the betterment of human beings. As a result 62 out of 80 space people, who took these drugs, had to be taken back to their home planet in order to get them back to normal, while 6 out of the 18 left were able to stand the test longer. But eventually they started doing things and spreading false information, where reason was no longer their guide. And recently they had to be taken back. Two of these 6 were almost insane at the time. While the 12 are still here, being closely watched by their superior… I know this to be true for I have met these space people who were taken away. I was given the privilege to watch them from the beginning and how these things affected them. 

(George Adamski, Chemical Analysis, Aug. 24, 1961).

George Adamski in Denmark 1963

This quote certainly raised my eyebrows. What kind of space people would come to our planet and use their own people in dangerous and cruel medical experiments? A scientifically and spiritually advanced civilisation would of course have detailed knowledge of the biological and psychological effects of various chemicals and would never engage in such unethical acts. If these statements by George Adamski are to be taken seriously then he must have, during his last years, been involved with a shady and possibly dangerous group of ”space people.” Or could Adamski have been used in some black ops mindcontrol program like MK-Ultra?

Today there are hundreds of books and thousands of articles about Project MK-Ultra, in many respects an illegal program officially implemented between 1953-1973. Details of the project were not brought to public attention until 1975. A large number of people became unwitting test subjects of mind manipulation through drugs, electroshocks, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse. CIA worked with some 80 U.S. institutions in these tests, using front organizations. How come that George Adamski already in 1961 described a mind manipulation program almost identical with MK-Ultra?

Readers of my blog are aware of that I have advanced the theory that several individuals in the 1950s and 60s were involved in a psychological and cultural influence test. An experiment implemented by a group of benevolent aliens, earth based or extraterrestrial, a group with access to “vimana” technology.  Some of the people contacted tried their best to implement the projects and ideas received by the visitors. Others couldn´t stand the psychological strain and social stigma of the experiences or invented fake stories when the real contacts ended. Circumstantial empirical evidence indicates that the following contactees were involved in this test: George Adamski, Orfeo Angelucci, George Van Tassel, Daniel Fry, Howard Menger a.o.

As many of his co-workers noted, something happenend to George Adamski in the beginning of the 1960s. His behavior and ideas changed and he started to refer to a ”new set of boys”, a new group of space people that had contacted him. Quoting Carol Honey, New Zealand journalist Tony Brunt writes in his Adamski biography: ”Later in 1962 he wanted to get into fortune telling. ”He asked me to publish in my newsletter that he would give an analysis of photographs for $5, a recent photo and the person´s date of birth,”Honey wrote. ”I refused to do this. He claimed that he was shown how to do this on his ”Trip To Saturn.” I could not go along with his new idea and told him I couldn´t understand how the ”brothers” could propose such a thing. He preplied he couldn´t understand it either but he trusted them and they wouldn´t let him down.”
Tony Brunt, George Adamski. The Toughest Job in the World, p. 24.

Tony Brunt

In the 1960s there was much discussion and speculation among Adamski co-workers and friends what had happened. Former co-worker Lou Zinsstag concluded: ”In 1964 Henk and I had come to similar conclusions. George had got into the wrong hands. Either, we reasoned,  his ”new set of boys” was an extremely clever fake organization, a group of secret agents (not necessesarily governmental), trained experts in mind control and hypnosis, or else George was dealing with a new group of space people who were deliberately feeding him false information in order to confuse an issue which had been established by the earlier friendlier group.”

(Lou Zinsstag, Timothy Good, George Adamski – The Untold Story, p. 71)

How much was CIA and other more secret intelligence organizations involved in and using UFO contactees in the 1950s and 60s for medical and sociological  test purposes? The fear of communism was one reason they kept an eye on contactees. But could the influence have been more profound? In 1978 ufologist Rick Reynolds was approached by a mysterious man named Bosco Nedelcovic, who claimed to have worked for the CIA and the Department of Defense. One of his projects involved destabilizing prominent figures in the civil rights movement. Nedelcovic also revealed that he had been involved in the Vilas-Boas abduction which was a part of the CIA´s mind control program called MK-Ultra. With the help of a helicopter and a chemical derivative in gas form the MK-Ultra operatives wanted to find out how the human mind could be altered and manipulated by hallucinogenic substances. And Antonio Vilas-Boas became the unfortunate human guinea pig.

That there were many groups, not always benevolent, involved with the early contactees was often mentioned by the contactees themselves in books and lectures. Howard Menger was warned by his space people that he should be aware of false contacts:

"Who are these people? I thought I could listen to any of you.
They´re not US Howard. there are OTHERS operating. I´ll speak of them simply as The Conspiracy... My friend, this earth is the battlefield of Armageddon, and the battle is for men´s minds and souls... You don´t know Howard, that there is a very powerful group on this planet, which possesses tremendous knowledge of technology, psychology, and most unfortunate of all, advanced brain therapy...They use people not only from this planet... but also other people of your own planet - people you don´t know about. People who live unobserved and undiscovered as yet. It is a kind of underground in your popular terminology."
(Howard Menger, From Outer Space to You, 1959, pp. 142-144).

Researching the history of the 1950s contactees is like opening Chinese boxes. You open one and find another box inside – with a still deeper mystery.

Ufologists And Spiritual Seekers

”…the history of ufology should be placed within an esoteric context. Throughout history there has been a tradition of higher knowledge, and the claim that it was accessible to us, if only we agreed to be tested, to work through certain spiritual problems… That´s the meaning of the hermetic schools. The UFO problem, the question of parapsychology, are central to this business. Looking for the solution isn´t just a scientific project; it´s a quest, an initiation, an enigma like that of the Sphinx…”. (Jacques Vallee, Forbidden Science II, p. 211).

I am often reminded of this thoughtful quote from Jacques Vallee when looking back at the many years of UFO research and the spiritual quest of my own life. Several colleagues and friends in the UFO research community have recognized this profound idea and besides being committed to the scientific, empirical method in research have also, sometimes in secret, being sincere students of the Forbidden Science – The Esoteric Tradition. This quest is no easy path to tread alone, offering a djungle of metaphysical schools and teachers with conflicting ideas. I had the good fortune of,  early in life, finding a group of ufologists who were also spiritual seekers. This blog post is the story of this group.

One Winter evening in the beginning of the 1960s, when I was around ten years old, my mother and I went for a walk to get rid of some bulky trash nearby our then place of living in Södertälje. It was a beautiful, starry night and mother told me about various constellations and stars. This awe-inspiring experience so greatly influenced me that I as soon as possible visited the local public library to borrow books on astronomy. My mother was from early in life a spiritual seeker and an avid reader. This deep interest was reflected in the library she built up at our home. There were books on Spiritualism, Theosophy, Anthroposophy, ancient mysteries and all the early UFO contactee books from the Swedish publishing house Parthenon. Authors like George Adamski, Daniel Fry, Ray and Rex Stanford, Elisabeth Klarer a.o. As a young teenager I discovered these books in our family library and became deeply fascinated by all these subjects, especially UFOs.

In November 1970 my friend Kjell Jonsson and I formed a local UFO group in Södertälje. We were young, naive and idealistic and spent many evenings skywatching and waiting for the space people to appear in their craft. When our UFO interest became more realistic and research oriented we founded, in 1973, an informal working group Arbetsgruppen för ufologi (AFU), later Archives for UFO Research, together with UFO colleague Anders Liljegren, Norrköping. Today the acronym is well known as Archives for the Unexplained.

A local UFO group, Stockholms UFO-Center (SUFOC), had been formed in 1971. I became aquainted with the leaders of this group, especially Tony Eckardt and Lennart Johansson and we cooperated on several UFO projects and exchanged newsletters during 1972-1973. Sture and Turid Johansson were invited for a lecture at SUFOC in 1973. Sture and Turid were deeply involved in the UFO contact scene in the 1960s and 70s with several UFO observations and personal contact experiences. Now they planned to form a meditation group and several members of the Stockholm UFO-Center joined this group which began in the Autumn of 1973, meeting every Friday evening. 

Tony Eckardt during one of our field investigations, July 1972

Although living in another city I was also invited and attended my first meditation session on November 1, 1973 at the home of Sture and Turid Johansson, then living in Lidingö, Stockholm. Stockholms UFO-Center was a rather small group, not more than 20 members. Only a few of the more spiritually oriented members joined the meditation group. Besides Sture and Turid Johansson the core group consisted of Tony Eckardt, Lennart Johansson, Eva Helderud, Solveig Simlin, Sune Nordwall and Pia Ringstrand. Our meetings always started with the Lord´s Prayer followed by around 15 minutes meditation. During the first months we tried studying The Secret Doctrine by Blavatsky but soon realized that this tome was not for beginners. The rest of the evenings were spent drinking tea or coffee  coupled with vivid discussions of UFOs, paranormal phenomena, mysticism, esotericism and meditation methods.

Pia Ringstrand and Lennart Johansson

Sune Nordwall and Solveig Simlin

Me during a meditation meeting, August 1974

We all became close friends and fellow spiritual seekers in the meditation group, studying 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 (O.M.)

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. We also sometimes invited representatives from various New Age and occult groups to hear of their experiences and views. 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, 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 in, August 1974

Turid Johansson in the meditation group 1974

Beach party with the meditation group and friends, Summer 1975

Although differing in age and occupation we became a tightly knit group united by our spiritual quest and friendship. Tony Eckardt and Lennart Johansson were engineers active in Stockholms UFO-Center. Lennart donated his entire collection of UFO literature, 200 titles, to AFU during Spring 1974. This became the cornerstone and beginning of the AFU library and archive. His interest and research changed to the more esoteric like the Keely mystery, the Juvelius cipher and Rennes le Chateu. Pia Ringstrand had for several years worked together with Edith Nicolaisen, founder of the Parthenon publishing house. In September 1972 Pia, together with the Parthenon board, had attended the 10th Deutsche UFO/IFO-Studiengemeinschaft (DUIST) Congress in Wiesbaden. Sune Nordwall was a dedicated student of Rudolf Steiner ´s Anthroposophy. I shared his interest in Anthroposophy but had joined Alice Bailey´s The Arcane School in September 1972.

Celebrating New Year´s Eve with the group 1974. From left Sture and Turid Johansson, Lennart Johansson

Lennart Johansson, group meeting August 1974

The meditation group became for me very much the spiritual and social homebase and I moved to Sundbyberg, close to Stockholm to be closer to my spiritual friends. Another reason for the change of city was my entering studies of History of Religions at Stockholm University in September 1974. During my student years at Stockholm University I did a rather extensive study of the Kabbalah, resulting in a short thesis on the early Merkabah mysticism, presented at the History of Religion department. As an addition to my academic studies I also read every book I could find on the Kabbalah, written by various exponents of the Western Mystery Tradition, authors such as Dion Fortune, Gareth Knight, W.E. Butler, A.E.Waite a.o.

A couple of days ago I asked Tony Eckardt what the meditation group meant to him and how he regard this activity today. In an email October 10 he wrote: ”… for me personally it became a mystery school and a unique education for life because of the group.” I can only agree. The group met every Friday evening for about three years. We discussed and investigated all kinds of UFO and paranormal phenomena, distant healing, telepathy etc. We visited mediums, mystics, healers and various spiritual groups like the Liberal Catholic Church. In 1974 several members of our group participated in an Tibetan Buddhist initiation ceremony officiated by Kalu Rimpoche, teacher of Tibetan Buddhism and meditation from Bhutan.

Kalu Rimpoche

During 1974-1975 I was heavily influenced by the well known Swedish nature therapist Birger Ledin. He was clairvoyant and a strong advocate of Steiner´s Anthroposophy and regarded Steiner as the foremost spiritual adept in Europé. Our meditation group visited him at his home on August 8, 1975. This inspired me to suggest that the group be transformed to an esoteric order. We chose the acronym O.M. again but changed it to Ordre de Michel – the Order of Saint Michael. We bought chalices and on September 29, 1975 we founded the order in a sacred ceremony. But this activity and idea soon faded.

In 1975-1976 I studied Theoretical Philosophy at Stockholm University and was very much occupied with the intellectual and epistemological difficulty in accepting the reality of a multiverse in the esoteric sense. In my diary from January 8, 1976 I wrote: “My thinking is now very much occupied with the problem whether it is consistent with intellectual integrity to accept a worldview that cannot be verified by empirical science? If this is possible than esotericism can be philosophically established and motivated.” Up until 1975 I was very much influenced by the writings of Rudolf Steiner on these issues. His ideas regarding a Spiritual Science that could be verified by special training appealed to my own theories. But in December 1975 I read Kunskapen om verkligheten (The Knowledge of Reality) by the eminent and erudite Swedish esotericist Henry T. Laurency. His penetrating criticism of Steiner´s Anthroposophy became a watershed and an eye-opener in my own thinking which resulted in a comment in my diary for December 2, 1975: “By studying Laurency, Bailey and other authors I have found that Laurency´s criticism of Steiner is tenable. I didn´t expect that my view on Steiner could be so radically modified and altered.”

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 said:  ”I greet you. Do not be afraid. It is not as dangerous as it looks. What you call the instrument does not suffer from this… But the instrument is still afraid so please tell him that he represents no hazard to you. I am very glad to be here.” Then followed a short explanation of how trance channeling worked and assurance that the man speaking through Sture would be back again many times.

Sture and Turid Johansson during a deep trance session

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. I entered The Swedish School of Library and Information Science in Borås. Tony Eckardt became active in an organization for psychobiophysics and producer of the radio programme New Dimensions. Today he run the company Shekinah Media together with his wife Eva. Pia Ringstrand was for a few years a board member of the organization InCal, an information center for alternative lifeviews and new research. Sune Nordwall continued as an advocate of Antroposophy and Lennart Johansson later became active in the Green Party of Sweden. I continued working with AFU and studying the Esoteric Tradition in the writings of a.o. Helena Blavatsky, Alice Bailey and Henry T. Laurency.

Today some of the members of the meditation group have left this world, Turid Johansson, Leif Johansson and Solveig Simlin. When looking back on this time of my life I can only express my deepest gratitude to the Gods of Fate for this opportunity of learning. Our joyous meetings and activities coupled with the varm friendships will always stay in my memory.

AFU - A Unique World Heritage

During the last year I have spent between two and four hours every day sorting, organizing and scanning the very extensive Parthenon archive at AFU. This collection is especially valuable as a research source for a study of the contactee movement of the 1950s and 60s. Edith Nicolaisen, founder of the Parthenon publishing house in 1957, corresponded with many of the well known first generation contactees and organizations. I have scanned 3260 documents from the Parthenon archive, whereof about 1900 letters. The main correspondence file has been scanned earlier by our AFU colleague Leif Åstrand. My estimation is that the total correspondence file must exceed 10,000 letters.

Perusing the various correspondence collections at AFU I notice that very few writers have made and saved copies of their own letters. But Edith Nicolaisen was exceedingly meticulous in all her work and also saved copies of all her own letters. This makes the Parthenon correspondence archive even more unique and complete. I assume this must be one of the largest collection of letters giving the inside view of the contactee movement. With the thousands of documents in the Parthenon archive there is enough material for at least two or three doctoral dissertations, besides being a treasure trove for ufologists.

Letter from Elisabeth Klarer to Edith Nicolaisen 1957

Another treasure trove for ufologists is the AFU Downloads website. AFU has around 80,000 magazine issues on paper, from 57 nations across the world. Of these 22,500 issues are digitized and many of these are aviable to download for free at the our website. Isaac Koi, of AFU’s International Advisory Board, is making an herculean effort to trace editors and publishers of journals and newsletters asking for the rights to scan the contents of old magazine volumes and making them available as PDFs. This is an ongoing work with new magazines added on a regular basis. An invaluable reference source for all types of research into UFO history.

Here you can find complete volumes of many rare old UFO and Fortean magazines: Australian Saucer Record 1955-1962, Saucers, Space & Science (Canada) 1957-1972, Topside (Canada) 1960-1971, Ouranos (France) 1952-1980), Flying Saucers (New Zealand) 1953-1957, Approach (South Africa) 1958-1960, Weltraumbote 1955-1961, Flying Saucer News (United Kingdom) 1953-1956), CSI Quaterly (USA) 1952-1954, Saucer Scoop (USA) 1966-1969 – to name just few.

While I am writing this blog post AFU chairman Clas Svahn, together with Håkan Ekstrand are touring England, visiting ufologists and authors who have promised to donate collections and archives to AFU. In a couple of weeks we can expect another Schenker lorry filled with thousands of books, magazines, organizational archives etc.

313 boxes in London 2012 on their way to AFU

To get an excellent overview and summary of AFU history and collections I suggest reading Clas Svahn´s recently published book Files of the Unexplained, with hundreds of unique photographs. It is almost impossible to give a detailed exposition of all that is happening every year at AFU but you get  a fairly good estimation of our work by reading some of the AFU Annual Reports.

All this work would be impossible without the generous donors from around the world. Take a look at the impressive list of donors at our website, who all have contributed to AFU. On behalf of AFU I once again would like to express our deep gratitude to all our idealistic friends worldwide. After all these years I can still experience a profound fascination, looking back to our humble beginning in 1973, when we started with two bookshelves in the small one room apartment of our late friend, librarian and AFU co-founder Kjell Jonsson.

Kjell Jonsson at our two bookshelves in August 1977

AFU is not only about thousands of books, magazines and documents but essentially an organized effort to understand the nature, origin and implications of the many types of intriguing phenomena, hitherto not generally recognized by mainstream science and society. In a couple of decades when we oldtimers have left this strange planet, or at least left our physical bodies, we hope the torch of research will be carried on by a new generation of  heretic, non-conformist investigators and scholars, who dare to cross the threshold into what Jacques Vallee has named Forbidden Science. And we hope that AFU will be the international center for this inquiry.