Invisibility and Materialization

On March 11, 1973 Thorvald (Bevan) Berthelsen, together with three witnesses from his workplace in Köping, Sweden, observed a cylinder-shaped object silently passing over the city. No explanation was found to this observation, which was reported in local media. Thorvald Berthelsen and his wife lived in a country house with good views in all directions. On the same day his UFO observation was mentioned in the local newspaper a man knocks on their door. Thorvald is met by a man in his thirties, dressed in a brown suit and white shirt. He has dark hair, appears suntanned and his eyes are slanted but still not Asian looking. The man ask Thorvald how he is feeling and continue asking about directions. He says thank you and leave. "I thought, who the hell was that? I ran out and looked for him. The road was straight in both directions. If he had come walking I would have seen him. His eyes were slanted. That caught my attention. Afterwards I felt this experience was weird".  Thorvald later became the chairman of UFO-Sweden (1976-1978).
(Interview with Thorvald (Bevan) Berthelsen, October 10, 1992)

Interviewing Thorvald (Bevan) Berthelsen at AFU, October 10, 1992

Experienced investigators of UFO and paranormal phenomena immediately recognize the situation.  Our visitors from wherever they come from have the uncanny ability to disappear right in front of witnesses. In my investigations of contactees and close encounter reports I have stumbled on this phenomenon several times. Connoisseurs of UFO literature know there are hundreds of similar cases documented.

My old friend, ufologist Gösta Johansson, often discussed the various abilities of the aliens with contactee Richard Höglund, an enigmatic case which I have documented in several blog entries:
Håkan: How did the aliens look?
Gösta: They were brown, like suntanned, thin, dark eyes, long fingers. Only once did he notice something defective in their bodies. It was a man with a scar on his head. There were no women among them and they didn´t sleep or eat but drank, even liquor, and smoked. They could disappear into thin air. He told me that once he had been sitting chatting with two aliens on a bench in the Bahamas when some people approached them. He felt so ashamed because he was suddenly talking into thin air.The aliens were simply gone. But otherwise they seemed totally material.
Interview with Gösta Johansson, February 13, 1980).

Gösta Johansson, September 15, 1986

There appears to be at least two different ways this disappearance is achieved, as described by witnesses and contactees – advanced technology and classic materialization. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", is a classic quote from science fiction author Arthur C Clarke. But in individual cases it can be quite difficult to determine what is to be regarded as the most likely explanation.

In a recent interview Glenn Steckling, director of the George Adamski Foundation told of meetings with a group of highly advanced, benevolent visitors and their use of technology to accomplish disappearance:
”They carry a little device which is also on their ships as well. And this device that they carry on their person, about the size of a cigarette lighter, is bending light rays around the object. So in other words they activate the device and the light rays bend around it and since you only see what is reflected back into your eyes and into your brain because in reality the brain sees not the eyes. Then the light rays continue around the object and so you can no longer see it. Physically there is no such thing as dimensional shifting and time warp or all this other science fiction nonsense. What it is, physically it is still there. You can touch them, you can hear them. And they can walk right past you. And so my father said I´d love to see that in action. And so a few weeks later we´re walking along the streets of Washington D.C. and this gentleman, the same guy´s coming towards us and in his arms he has his hans full of laundry and as he gets close within a couple of meters all of sudden he lifts his hand and wavs and disapperars. Gone he is. And you can hear him walking right past us, the sound of his shoes. And we all three of us turn around and look and a couple of meters behind us he suddenly reappears and turn around and waves again and smiles and keeps walking.”
(Talking Weird. Episode 14: Glenn Steckling, interview June 24, 2020).

Glenn Steckling lecturing in Sweden, October 20, 2018

George Adamski gave a somewhat different answer to this question. I don´t know if Adamski ever told of a technical device to accomplish disappearance.

”Q – Do space people materialize and dematerialize?
A – They do not but they can place their mind in a high frequency state that causes their body to become invisible to our limited range of vision. There are some Earth people that can use this law. But the body reamains as solid as the blades of an electric fan revolving at a high rate of speed that causes them to become invisible to our sight.”
(George Adamski, Answers to Questions Most Frequently Asked About Our Space Visitors And Other Planets, revised 1965, p. 16).

American contactee George Van Tassel also mention a technical device used by one of the alien visitors named Mr. Wheeler or Venuto, when visiting Giant Rock: "The man didn´t dematerialize. He was still there, because the third time he disappeared I had my hand on his shoulder, and he was solid; still there under my hand."
(Proceedings, April, May, June 1977, p. 14)

Ufologist William F. Hamilton, who was a good friend of Van Tassel interviewed some of the witnesses to this event: "About thirty people were present for this session. Venudo took out a crystal device, identical in appearance to the one worn by Solgonda, and proceeded to demonstrate it by tapping it and disappearing from view. Dan (Boone – HB) asked Venudo to repeat this performance and reached out to touch his shoulder when he disappeared again. Dan found Venudo invisible but tangible. I interviewed Dan and another female witness about three years after the event and when Saturday night sessions were a thing of the past." Unfortunately these interviews have never been published to my knowledge.
(William F. Hamilton, Alien Magic, 1989, p. 9)

Compare this description with the experience of contactee Howard Menger:
”When the alien is approx. 20 ft. From me, I (Howard) can see that it is a female. She had on a suit or uniform which appeared to be a strange, stiff material and it seemed difficult for her to get from the craft to where she was. She touched the light on her belt, the light expanded and enveloped her whole body and she disappeared from view. I (Howard) yelled to the two men standing at the craft, ´where did she go´? And they yelled back that she had returned to the craft.”
(Howard and Connie Menger, The High Bridge Incident, comment on one of many pictures between pages 103-105).

Space woman just before she disappeared, photo by Howard Menger 1956

If some alien visitors can make themselves disappear how to explain the disappearance of their cars? John Keel encountered alien visitors, often the so-called Men in Black, several times during his investigations in the 1960s. “On a number of occasions I actually saw the phantom Cadillacs as advertised, complete with sinister-looking passengers in black suits. On Long Island, following the directions given me in an anonymous phone call, I pursued one of these cars down a dead-end road where it seemingly vanished into thin air (there were no side roads or turn-offs).” (John Keel, The Eighth Tower, p. 141)

A interesting case of a disappearing car has been investigated by British ufologist Jenny Randles:
It all began in late August 1971 in a town in East Midlands, England.  Jim Wilson had observed a white light moving slowly across the sky. Just an ordinary mundane sighting of no special interest but ufologist Derek James, a close colleague of Jenny Randles, made a standard follow up. He was rather surprised to find that two men in smart business suits and driving a black car har interviewed Jim Wilson. The men claimed to be from the Ministry of Defense (MoD) and instructed the witness to forget the sighting as it had been identified as the Russian satellite Cosmos 408.

Why would the MoD send two men to interrogate a witness to such an ordinary sighting? Derek James checked the satellite information centre at Farnborough. At the time of the observation Cosmos 408 had been over Canada and had not passed over England at all. Now the witness contacted Derek once more and was rather alarmed because several nights in succession two unknown men in a black Jaguar car had parked outside his house and he was sure they were watching him. Derek James had a relative who was a high ranking police officer and a plan was hatched to check the car as they were perhaps planning a robbery.

A police car was asked to keep a look out and on October 19 and 20 the policemen watched the car outside Jim Wilson´s house. The car waited for about thirty minutes and then drove off. A check of the car registration found out that the vehicle did not exist and now the police became really interested. On October 21 a police patrol was ordered to bring in the occupants of the Jaguar for questioning. Following standard procedure the two policemen walked towards the car, one on either side. They noticed two smartly dressed men inside. They were just about to knock on the window when the car simply disappeared into nothingness in front of the astonished policemen. The area was examined but gave no clue to the disappearance. Neither car nor occupants were ever seen again. For rather obvious reasons a cover story was presented in the final police report.

This unusual Men In Black case was published by Derek James and Jenny Randles in Flying Saucer Review, vol. 23, no. 3, October 1977. A somewhat updated version was later published by Jenny Randles in her book Investigating the Truth Behind MIB the Men In Black Phenomenon,1997.

If disappearance is accomplished by technology how about cases where visitors walk through doors or walls? There are indications that the visitors encountered by Richard Höglund could also pass through walls, as told to me and witnessed by my friends Sture and Turid Johansson. But that takes more than just bending light rays. Passing through walls requires materialization.

Some contactees also mention what must be regarded as a form of materialization. In his letter to Karl and Amy Veit, September 19, 1961, published in Besucher aus dem Weltraum, American contactee Eugene Drake makes these interesting comments (my translation): "There are very few people who have had real physical contact with space ships or space people, like ourselves. I have on various occasions experienced how space people appear in condensed form and I could shake their hands. After the contact they disappeared into a higher frequency."

Eugene Drake 1951

Dorris Van Tassel, wife of George Van Tassel, claimed several encounter with alien visitors and that her home functioned as a sort of safe house for both contactees and space people. One of her close friends told me how he reacted the first time he became aware of this: ”I remember the first time there was about 5 space people in Ms.Van Tassel's house talking with her as I quietly watched, and then suddenly one of the men turned , looked directly at me, smiled gently, and then very slowly turned to the kitchen room wall and walked right through the wall! I watched this very closely as he then came back in. Let me tell you , those kind of incidents have a very deep and troubling affect on our minds because we cannot comprehend it.” I asked my correspondent whether Dorris was aware of that these five men were space people: ”O yes, she knew them well. It was perfectly normal for her.” 

(Email, February 26, 2012).

There is still much research needed to understand this phenomenon. A thorough study of all cases documented in UFO literature would be of great help. A worthy project for my many colleagues around the world.

Finally I cannot resist a humourous comment on the issue of disappearance by my favourite Fortean iconoclast John Keel, from his autobiography Jadoo: "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.)"