The quote in the title of this blog article comes
from a letter from John Keel to my AFU colleague Anders Liljegren, August 10,
1982. And Keel continues: ”Forget the flying saucer propaganda. We are dealing
with something very close to home.”. During my many years of
investigation of contactee cases I have now and then pondered whether this
could actually be the answer to some of the very physical contact experiences
reported worldwide. If we are partly dealing with one or more groups of
earth-based and undiscovered aliens we are faced with an even greater enigma
than extraterrestrial visitors.
There are contactees who have doubted whether the
aliens they have encountered really come from Venus, Mars etc. as they
sometimes claim. An interesting example is Enrique Castillo Rincon from Costa
Rica, author of UFOs. A Great New Dawn for Humanity (1997). Enrique meet a businessman, Cyril Weiss, of Swiss
nationality and they become friends. Later he encounters this man aboard a UFO,
as he actually belongs to an advanced group of extraterrestrials trying to help
Earth. Enrique is taken to their secret retreat or base in the Andes. Enrique
is given secret code keyes to be used to identify agents of the organization
but also as a protection against "the opposition". Whether it is the
"opposition" or a real intelligence group, in 1974 Enrique is
contacted by three foreign-looking individuals offering to take him to
Washington D.C., all expenses paid, for a test in "regressive
hypnosis". He accepts the invitation: "Outside, two men were waiting
with a luxurious, dark-coloured Cadillac. I started feeling like a star in a
suspense movie." (p. 113) After this visit to Washington D.C. and
interrogation Enrique has several doubts: "What were the true identities
of those obscure agents who could take me and return me to Bogota, with
arrangements made with a complete network of people, all so well coordinated?
What were their true motivations?" (p. 119)
Enrique Castillo Rincon
Rincón is very puzzled
of what it all meant and who the aliens actually were. One of the chapters of
his book is named "The Venusians - are they Venusian?" In the preface he states: "I am not a mystic nor
a religious fanatic... Neither have I considered myself a "chosen
one" to save humanity, and I detest those "contactees" who
pretend to have been appointed by some divinity to carry some message to the
suffering and almost disgraced human race...Over twenty years have passed and I
still don´t know why I was contacted. Was it plain chance?... Why was an
individual belonging to the "sandwich-class" (middle-class), such as
myself, assigned such an "ungrateful" task as this one, which has
meant jeers, calumnies, epithets, and nick-names against my person and my
dignity?" (p.xiii-xiv)
A case of very physical and partly normal contact with aliens is reported by a man named Leland and documented by Dr. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke (Encounters With Star People, Chapter 6, They Are Among Us). He describes what has happened during several nights at his ranch near the Nebraska border: ”They come at night. They hover over the field. They lower automobiles to the ground. They´re filled with people. The craft goes away and when the car returns the next night, only the driver returns. They take the car and the driver on board their spacecraft and then they´re gone again.”
Leland especially remember one night when he noticed that the car had a flat tire. The driver got out and walked to Leland´s cabin. ”He was a strange looking fellow… He wore a black suit with a white shirt and kept pulling at his necktie like he was not used to wearing it. He avoided looking at me so I never got a good look at his face, but he had a short thick neck. Almost no neck. Like his head sat directly at his shoulders. Maybe that´s why he struggled with the necktie. He just stood there. I got the feeling he wanted me to follow him”.
Leland follows the man and find three men and two women waiting in the car.
None of them spoke. Leland help them change the tire and for this work he
receives ten real silver dollars. Asked by Ardy Sixkiller Clarke what makes him
think they are not humans his comment is: ”Well, they came in a spacecraft for
one thing. They weren´t friendly. None of them spoke to me. They acted strange.
Like they were scared or they didn´t belong here. The women were wearing those
high heel shoes and had trouble walking in them like they had never worn them
before.”
The alien covert activity theme was discussed in an article, Unseen, Unspoken, Unknown, by R. Perry Collins, published in Ivan T. Sanderson´s classic magazine Pursuit vol. 22 no. 1, 1991. Collins mention several cases involving aliens leaving UFOs and entering ordinary cars. "There have been UFO reports that may be directly representative of actions that are not staged, that are not demonstrations and may have not been intended for our perception." A newspaperman from the Miami Herald told Collins of a case involving a man in Miami, Florida. One evening he noticed a large, dark UFO hovering low over a field at the rear of his building. The object began lowering two large cylinders to the ground below. One contained a large Sedan and the other several men dressed in business suits, carrying briefcases. The UFO moved off into the evening sky. The men got into the Sedan and drove off the field, onto a nearby road, and away.
But who are the people encountered by Leland and Rincon?
They are physical like us and seem to be earth-based in their activities.. If
this is the case, where is their hiding place on this planet? Could some covert
intelligence groups have discovered who these people are and trying to deal
with the issue in their own way? Disclosure of such a fantastic scenario would
probably not be regarded as an option by the people who have a need to know.
Very few of the scientific mainstream ufologists try to uncover the truth in these controversial areas. In his article R. Perry Collins comments on this situation: ”The facts that such reports are very seldom submitted and are scarce in the literature indicates that such direct activities are usually carried out in a completely covert manner. These reports do exist, however, and we must consider them in any complete analysis of the UFO situation.”
Another case illustrating the complexity of the contact experience case was investigated by then APRO respresentative Dr. James Harder, University of California and Dr. Evelyn Brunson. On January 23, 1985 I wrote a letter to Dr. Harder to get more data on his study but unfortunately received no answer. It is documented in Direct Encounters. Personal Histories of UFO Abductees (1980) by Judith and Alan Gansberg, pp. 19-23.
In August 1974 Lydia Stalnaker was driving north from Jacksonville, Florida
when she saw a bright light coming out of the sky. She stopped the car at a
parking area and got out to have a better look. Suddenly another car pulled
into the area and a man that Stalnaker thought she vaguely knew joined her by
the side of the road. They stared at the light hovering over some trees,
assuming it was a helicopter and noticed it descending as if crashing behind
the trees. They decided to drive toward the region to see if they could be of
help.
”I asked the man if he had seen what I had seen… He said, ´Yes, and its right on time´. The man was short, less than five feet five inches, and had a dark, Italian or Jewish look… He coaxed me into his car, and we drove off to find the spot.”
When they got closer to the area of the assumed crash Stalnaker felt un uncomfortable sensation of being suffocated. ”Then it seemed like just a moment passed and we were heading back towards Jacksonville on another road. It was midnight and Stalnaker´s forehead was hurting and she felt nauseated. After this incident she was having frightening dreams of being on an operating table surrounded by people wearing masks, sticking painful needles in her sides. Eventually she sought professional help and was hypnotised. During hypnosis she recounted a classic abduction scenario. After the missing time incident Stalnaker developed telepathic and healing powers and received messages from the spaceman Antron.
What makes this case especially interesting is the physical meeting with the strange man in the parking area. Stalnaker tried to find him again but found out he had disappeared from the town. He had quit his job and no one new where he was. ”His employer said that the man had appeared in town one morning looking for work, but they did not know where he had come from.” I have not read of any ufologist who have followed up on these important clues. But this is the kind of data ufologists should look for.
In his series of articles Science, Counterintelligence and UFOs Val Germann recommends that the ufologist study the techniques and history of Intelligence work including counterintelligence and apply this knowledge when dealing with the more complicated and controversial UFO cases. From the flood of material and documents the researcher must sift out what is a) interesting, b) significant, c) correct information. The social and psychological problem of this endeavor is that the ufologist may find himself in pretty deep water, discovering aspects of reality that are exceedingly controversial and almost impossible to communicate to the general public.
”He can steep himself in the subject, try to collect
everything relevant, and then be fearless in where that material leads him.
This may sound like ”no big deal”, but for those who take the work seriously it
is anything but trivial. In many cases the information relevant to the UFO can
lead down rabbit holes where no respectable person would want to go. But down
the hole the investigator he must go or he will not have the perspective needed
to judge the relevance of information.”
What better way to finish an article like this than a quote from John Keel:
(John Keel, Operation Trojan Horse, p. 214).
