The Youthful Space People

”They were dressed alike, in blue-gray ski-type uniforms… I could see they were fair-skinned, and of average height… Through the large opening in the craft stepped a beautiful woman. She had long blond hair and was dressed in a similar outfit… as she approached, she appeared to be the same woman I had met 14 years ago… This lovely creature had not changed at all in appearance during those 14 years. She still looked only about 25.”

Connoisseurs of contactee literature probably recognize this quote from Howard Menger´s classic From Outer Space to You (p. 51), published in 1959. Several other contactees have described this group of benevolent alien visitors in similar terms, intrigued by their youthful and ”ageless” physical appearance. They generally look like young men and women between 20 and 30 years. Ufologists and esotericists who have investigated contactee cases have proposed various theories to account for this mystery. A question often asked: do these visitors have the same type of organic physical bodies like us?

On January 30, 1965, at about 2 a.m., radio and TV technician Sid Padrick was walking along the Pacific coast near Watsonville in California when he heard a sound like a jet roar. When he looked up he saw a shadowy outline of a huge disc-shaped UFO, and started to run away down the beach in panic. He then heard a voice coming from the UFO that assured him the occupants of the object meant no harm to him. They invited him on board. The crew of the UFO was of 8 men and 1 woman, basically human in appearance. One occupant told Padrick he could call him "Xeno", the Greek for "stranger" and guided him into the ship; which had two floors with seven rooms each. Xeno was the only one to talk to Padrick, with "no accent whatsoever". He said he was the only one in the crew who spoke English. Sid Padrick would tell that space men are on mission of exploration and survey, that they had been in contact with a group of people in New Zealand for two months, but are not interested in meeting governments.

After a while, the spaceman told Padrick that they had traveled some distance and were now parked in a deserted area, which revealed on subsequent investigation to be near Leggett, California, 175 miles northwest of Watsonville:
"After we had landed on the hillside, he told me to step out so that I could come back to the place later - to know this was real and not dreamed. I stepped out alone and walked around the outside of the ship. I felt the hull. It seemed very hard but not metallic: I never felt anything like it before. The closest thing to it I ever felt on this Earth would be a windshield - plexiglass. It had a very fine finish, a highly polished finish. He didn't tell me that touching this craft would do me harm, and I had no bad effects from it - none whatever. I was outside for not more than three minutes. I got down and looked at the legs it was on and I tried to find markings on it: I didn't find a mark on it anyplace."

Padrick was then taken back to where he had been picked up two hours earlier, he stepped out of the craft and walked home. He reported his experience to the Air Force, and was grilled for three hours by a team headed by Major Damon B. Reeder from Hamilton Air Force Base, the Headquarters, Western Air Defense Force, near Sacramento. Sid Padrick was interviewed by several ufologists and journalists. I found one of these detailed interviews in the Wendelle Stevens archive, which I am presently organizing. In an article A Probing Conversation With a Contactee by Harold D. Salkin, we learn some further details of the visitors physical appearance: 

”Question: What did the people you talked with look like? Were they human in appearance?

Padrick: The people were all about 5´ 9´´ tall, about 150 to 155 pounds. They all had the same short hairdo, all exept the woman. She had long hair, pushed right down the back, under her clothing. We didn´t go into the room she was in – we just passed by the door – so I didn´t get a close look at her; but I did see that she was very pretty. By our standards, I would say they all looked between 20 and 25 years old, very young , pert, energetic and intelligent looking. (Official UFO, January 1978, pp. 33-34).

Regarding the venusian "Orthon" George Adamski writes: "The flesh of his hand to the touch of mine was like a baby’s, very delicate in texture, but firm and warm. His hands were slender, with long tapering fingers like the beautiful hands of an artistic woman. In fact, in different clothing he could easily have passed for an unusually beautiful woman; yet he definitely was a man. He was about five feet, six inches in height and weighed – according to our standars – about 135 pounds. And I would estimate him to be about 28 years of age…  As nearly as I can describe his skin the colouring would be an even, medium-coloured suntan. And it did not look to me as though he had ever had to shave, for there was no more hair on his face than on a child’s."
(Desmond Leslie, George Adamski, Flying Saucers Have Landed, Werner Laurie edition, London 1959, p. 195).

In the Daily Times Advocate, December 23, 1973 Adamski co-worker Charlotte Blob told of visit from what she belived was the space people: ”… she was lecturing on UFOs once in a home in a remote section of Wisconsin and only the scientists and teachers invited were given the address. As it got under way there was a knock on the door, and two young men, with golden suntans that you just don´t get in a Wisconsin Winter, she said, asked to come in. Believing that they were students told about the meeting by one of the professors, she let hem in and only after considerable conversation which they carried on in an unusual accent and a singsong tone, and after the intensity with which they followed each speaker and the information he contributed, did she even begin to believe they might be visitors from a ship.”

As I have documented in a former blog entry my Danish friend and research colleague Rene Erik Olsen had several meetings in 1990-1992 with two intriguing, good looking individuals who displayed unusual knowledge and technology. The man said he was 28 years old and the woman appeared around 30. The result of these encounters was the book The Alien Visitors.

” While doing research both in the U.S. and researching the Eduard Meier-case (trips to Switzerland in 1988-1990) I was contacted by many people during that period, but especially two people stood out - they knew of my research in Switzerland and my planned trip to the U.S. and they wanted to part some information on the subject. Subsequently I had four meetings with these two individuals who provided intricate details on the propulsion principles… Those two individuals (a woman and a man - who knew each other) had information which I could not question. The woman worked at a research lab (in Copenhagen) and the man I do not know where he was working (or if he had a job). They both knew each other (I gathered that from a joint meeting with them both) and they presented things which I had no way of proving or refuting - photos attached to metallic surfaces (never seen that before) showing crafts (both large and small) and they also showed movie-clips on what best can be described as a small "Ipad" - which was not available back then (Ipads came out in 2010). They did not tell me what to do with the information, only that they wanted to give this, so I did the prudent thing  (back then) and sat on the information. 

(Email from Rene Erik Olsen, April 5 2019).

On October 18, 2018 Mr. Glenn Steckling, director of the George Adamski Foundation, lectured at the UFO-Sweden field investigator seminar. During a private conversation Glenn showed me a photograph from a UFO meeting claiming that one of the men in the photo was a space man. To me he looked like a very young man. Once again a case of youthful space people. The encounters I have mentioned are only a few of many similar cases documented in UFO literature.

A peculiar feature of these visitors is their ability to disappear in front of witnesses, whether this is accomplished by advanced technology, materialization or some form of hypnosis. All three options can be found in contact cases. An interesting example is the meeting between journalist and esotericist Paul M. Vest and the youthful alien visitor ”Bill” in 1953. Bill suddenly appeared out of nowhere to the astonished Paul:

Paul M. Vest

" We shook hands and I recall being aware of the peculiar feel of his hand-as though it were without any underlying bone structure... He was about six feet tall or slightly over and appeared to be about twenty-eight years old… A casual observer would certainly not be startled by his appearance. In a crowd he would pass as a rather unusual appearing person. But as I studied him more closely while he talked, I was aware of certain strange characteristics in his physical appearance. His skin was exceptionally white – so white in fact that it appeared to have an odd bluish tinge. His cheek bones were unusually high and his eyes and brows had a peculiar Oriental cast. Yet in no way did he resemble a true Oriental. And I noticed that his ears were oddly pointed and appeared to be more delicate and complex than any I had ever seen. I recalled how odd his hand had felt in my grasp. Looking at his hands, I noticed that his fingers were long and tapering and so smooth that they seemed to be without joints or underlying bone structure. He spoke slowly and clearly with no trace of an accent, but he seemed to be choosing his words with great care. I noticed too that his voice had a peculiar resonant quality."

Cases like these are often disregarded a priori by scientifically oriented  ufologists but I think it is time to reconsider many of the old contactees of the 1950s and 60s and follow an alternative approach in research, looking for confirmation of the contact from independent witnesses and various types of circumstancial evidence. Some years ago I asked psychiatrist Dr. Berthold E. Schwarz about this problem regarding his investigations of Howard Menger. Schwarz told of the many witnesses who really did experience strange phenomena, including aliens at the Menger farm. In a letter to me May 29, 1986, Schwarz concludes: "Yes, the contact claims or case of Howard Menger is far from being an open and shut or black and white matter." This could be said regarding many of the both classic and recent contact experiences.