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Contactee

Contactees  are persons who claim to have experiencedcontact with  extraterrestrials. Contactees have typicallyreported that they were given messages or profound wis-dom by extraterrestrial beings. These claimed encoun-ters are often described as ongoing, but some contacteesclaim to have had as few as a single encounter.

As a cultural phenomenon, contactees perhaps had theirgreatest notoriety from the late 1940s to the late 1950s,but individuals continue to make similar claims in thepresent. Some have shared their messages with small

groups of followers, and many have issued newsletters orspoken at UFO conventions.

The contactee movement has seen serious attention fromacademics and mainstream scholars. Among the earliestwas the classic 1956 study,  When Prophecy Fails  by LeonFestinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, whichanalyzed the phenomenon. There have been at least twouniversity-level anthologies of scientific papers regardingthe contactee movements (see sources below). “The con-tactee movement is a rich treat for anthropologists, stickywith sincere and sincerely deluded individuals. Were thecontactees in touch with anything other than their own

internal fantasies?"[1]

Contactee accounts are generally different from thosewho allege alien abduction, in that while contactees usu-ally describe beneficial experiences involving human-likealiens, abductees rarely describe their experiences posi-tively.

1 Overview

Astronomer J. Allen Hynek described Contactees as as-

serting “the visitation to the earth of generally benign be-ings whose ostensible purpose is to communicate (gener-ally to a relatively few selected and favored persons —)messages of 'cosmic importance'. These chosen recipi-ents generally have repeated contact experiences, involv-ing additional messages..”[2]

Contactees became a cultural phenomenon in the 1940sand continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s, often giv-ing lectures and writing books about their experience.The phenomenon still exists today. Skeptics hold thatsuch 'contactees’ are deluded or dishonest in their claims.Susan Clancy wrote that such claims are “false memories”

concocted out of a “blend of fantasy-proneness, mem-ory distortion, culturally available scripts, sleep halluci-nations, and scientific illiteracy.”[3]

Contactees usually portrayed "Space Brothers"asmoreorless identical in appearance and mannerisms to  humans.The Brothers are also almost invariably reported as dis-turbed by the violence, crime and wars that infest theearth, and by the possession of various earth nationsof nuclear and   thermonuclear weapons.   Curtis Pee-bles summarizes the common features of many contacteeclaims:[4]

•  Certain humans have had personal and/or mental

contact with friendly, completely human-appearingspace aliens.

•   The contactees have also flown aboard flyingsaucers, and traveled into space and to other plan-ets.

•  The Space Brothers want to help mankind solve itsproblems, to stop  nuclear testing  and prevent theotherwise inevitable destruction of the human race.

•  This will be accomplished very simply by the broth-erhood spreading a message of love and brotherhoodacross the world.

•  Other sinister beings, the Men in Black, use threatsand force to continue the cover-up of UFOs and sup-press the message of hope.

2 History of contactees

2.1 Early contactees

Though the word  contactee was not in common use un-til the 1950s, the authors of the anthologies noted in“sources” below use the term to describe persons whoseclaims occurred centuries before the UFO era, attempt-ing to depict them as a part of the same tradition.

Though not linked to flying saucers or odd aerial lights,it is perhaps worth noting that there is a long historyof claims of contact with non-earthly intelligences. Thefounding revelations of many of the world’s religions in-volve contact between the founder and a supernaturalsource of wisdom, such as a god in human form or anangel. In this context, it might be expected that most of

the 1950s contactees would form their own religions, withthe contactee as sole spiritual leader, and that is just whathappened, almost invariably.

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2   3 RESPONSE TO CONTACTEE CLAIMS 

As early as the 18th century, people like  Emanuel Swe-denborg were claiming to be in psychic contact with in-habitants of other planets. 1758 saw the publication ofConcerning Earths in the Solar System, in which Sweden-borgdetailedhis alleged journeys to the inhabited planets.J. Gordon Melton notes that Swedenborg’s planetary tour

stops at Saturn, the furthest planet known during Sweden-borg’s era — he did not visit Uranus, Neptune or Pluto.[5]

Later,  Helena Blavatsky would make claims similar toSwedenborg’s.

In 1891, Thomas Blott’s book  The Man From Mars  waspublished. The author claimed to have met a Martianin Kentucky. Unusually for an early contactee, Blott re-ported that the Martian communicated not via telepathy,but in English.[6]

Another early contactee book, of sorts, was   From In-

dia To The Planet Mars  (1900) by Theodore Flournoy.

Flournoy detailed the claims of Helene Smith, who,whilst in a trance, dictated information gleaned from herpsychic visits to the planet Mars — including a Mar-tian alphabet and language she could write and speak.Flournoy determined that Smith’s claims were spurious,based on fantasy and imagination. Her “Martian” lan-guage was simply a garbled version of French.

2.2 1900s

Two of the earliest contactees in the modern sense wereWilliam Magoon and Guy Ballard (the latter a followerof Madame Blavatsky).

Magoon’s book William Magoon: Psychic and Healer  waspublished in 1930. He claimed that, in the early 20thcentury, he had been unexpectedly and instantaneouslytransported to Mars. The planet was essentially earth-like, with cities and wilderness. The inhabitants had radioand automobiles. Though they were invisible, Magoonsensed their presences.

Though Magoon was obscure, Ballard would have moreimpact via the I Am movement he established. In 1935,

Ballard claimed that, several years earlier, he and over100 others witnessed the appearance of 12 Venusians in acavern beneath Mount Shasta. The Venusians played mu-sic for the audience, said Ballard, then showed the crowda large mirror-like device that displayed images of life onVenus. The Venusians then allegedly reported that theearth would suffer through an era of tension and warfare,followed by worldwide peace and goodwill.

George Adamski, who later became probably the mostprominent contactee of the UFO era, was one con-tactee with an earlier interest in the occult. Adamskifounded the Royal Order of Tibet in the 1930s. Writes

Michael Barkun, “His [later] messages from the Venu-sians sounded suspiciously like his own earlier occultteachings.”[7]

Christopher Partridge notes, importantly, that the pre-1947 contactees “do not involve UFOs.”[8] Rather, hesuggests that an existing tradition of extraterrestrial con-tact viaseances and psychic means promptly incorporatedthe flying-saucer mythos when it arrived.

2.3 Contactees in the UFO era

The 1947 report of Kenneth Arnold sparked widespreadinterest in flying saucers, and before long, people wereclaiming to have been in contact with flying saucer in-habitants.

There was a nearly-continuous series of contactees, be-ginning with George Adamski in 1952. Radio host JohnNebel interviewed many contactees on his program dur-ing this era. The stereotypical contactee account inthese days involved not just conversations with friendly,

human-appearing spacemen but visits inside their flyingsaucers, and rides to large “Mother Ships” in Earth orbit,and even jaunts to the moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter andSaturn.

By the late 1950s, many contactees were no longer claim-ing to have been physically visited by aliens; rather, theywere more often in psychic contact with the spacemen,who passed their messages on to people in trances. How-ever, alien contact via Ouija board, spirit mediums andchannelling was fairly common even in the early 1950s.Eventually, there was a complicated crossover with thelater "psychic channeling" movement, which found a de-

gree of renewed popularity beginning in the late 1960s.

In support of their claims, early 1950s contactees of-ten produced photographs of the alleged flying saucersor their occupants. A number of photos of a “Venusianscout ship” by George Adamski and identified by him asa typical extraterrestrial flying saucer were noted to beara suspicious resemblance to a type of once commonlyavailable chicken egg incubator, complete with three lightbulbs which Adamski said were “landing gear.”[9]

For over two decades, contactee   George Van Tasselhosted the annual “Giant Rock Interplanetary Spacecraft

Convention” in the   Mojave Desert.

[10]

Another 1950scontactee, Buck Nelson, held a similar convention in theOzarks of Missouri up until 1965.

3 Response to contactee claims

Even in ufology—itself subject to at best very limited andsporadic mainstream scientific or   academic  interest—contactees were generally seen as the lunatic fringe, and“serious” ufologists subsequently avoided the subject, forfear it would harm their attempts at “serious” study of

the UFO phenomenon.[11][12] Jacques Vallée notes that“No serious investigator has ever been very worried bythe claims of the 'contactees.'"[13]

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Carl Saganhas expressed skepticism about contactees andalien contact in general, remarking that aliens seem veryhappy to answer vague questions but when confrontedwith specific, technical questions they are silent:

Occasionally, by the way, I get a letter fromsomeone who is in “contact” with an extrater-restrial who invites me to “ask anything.” Andso I have a list of questions. The extrater-restrials are very advanced, remember. SoI ask things like, “Please give a short proofof Fermat’s Last Theorem.” Or the GoldbachConjecture. And then I have to explain whatthese are, because extraterrestrials will not callit Fermat’s Last Theorem, so I write out thelittle equation with the exponents. I never getan answer. On the other hand, if I ask some-thing like “Should we humans be good?” I al-

ways get an answer. I think something can bededuced from this differential ability to answerquestions. Anything vague they are extremelyhappy to respond to, but anything specific,where there is a chance to find out if they actu-ally know anything, there is only silence.[14]

Some time after the phenomenon had waned,  TempleUniversity historian David M. Jacobs noted a few inter-esting facts: the accounts of the prominent contacteesgrew ever more elaborate, and as new claimants gainednotoriety, they typically backdated their first encounter,

claiming it occurred earlier than anyone else’s. Jacobsspeculates that this was an attempt to gain a degree of“authenticity” to trump other contactees.[15]

4 List of contactees

Those who claim to be contactees include:

5 References

[1] Randles, Jenny & Houghe, Peter (1994).   The Complete

Book of UFOs: An Investigation into Alien Contact and 

Encounters . Sterling Publishing Co, ISBN 0-8069-8132-6

[2] Hynek, J. Allen (1972).   The UFO Experience: A Scien-

tific Inquiry, p.5. Henry Regnery Company.  ISBN 978-0-8092-9130-4.

[3] Clancy, Susan (2005).   Abducted , Harvard UniversityPress, ISBN 0-674-01879-6.

[4] Peebles, Curtis (1994).   Watch the Skies: A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth, pp. 93–108. Smithsonian Institu-tion, ISBN 1-56098-343-4.

[5] Melton, Gordon J. , “The Contactees: A Survey”. InLevin, ed. (1995) The Gods Have Landed: New Religions 

From Other Worlds , pp. 1–13. Albany: University of NewYork Press. ISBN 0-7914-2330-1.

[6] Melton, p.7.

[7] Barkun, Michael (2003).  A Culture of Conspiracy: Apoc-alyptic Visions in Contemporary America. Los Angeles:University of California Press, Berkeley.   ISBN 0-520-23805-2

[8] Partridge, Christopher. “Understanding UFO Religionsand Abduction Spiritualities”. In Partridge, Christopher(2003) ed.   UFO Religions   (2003), p.8. London: Rout-ledge. ISBN 0-415-26323-9,

[9]   “PROFILES IN PSEUDOSCIENCE:GEORGEADAMSKI!". Retrieved 2010-09-18.

[10]   Fortean Times Magazine | Articles |

[11] Sheaffer, Robert (1986).  The UFO Verdict: Examining the

Evidence, p. 18. Prometheus Books. ISBN 0-87975-338-2

[12] Sheaffer, Robert (1998).   UFO Sightings: The Evidence,pp. 34–35. Prometheus Books.  ISBN 1-57392-213-7

[13] Vallee, Jacques (1965).   Anatomy of a Phenomenon: 

Unidentified Objects in Space, A Scientific Appraisal , p.90.Henry Regnery Company. ISBN 0-8092-9888-0.

[14] Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism,   http://www.csicop.org/si/show/burden_of_skepticism/

[15] Jacobs, David M. (1975).  The UFO Controversy In Amer-ica. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-19006-1.

[16] Moosbrugger , Guido (2004).  And Still They Fly! (Second 

Edition). Steelmark, ISBN 0-9711523-1-4

[17] Lewis, James R. (2000) “UFOs and Popular Culture,”Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc.,   ISBN 1-57607-265-7

[18] Curran, Douglas (1985)"In Advance of the Landing,”Abbeville Press, ISBN 0-89659-523-4

[19]  Time (magazine) (1979-07-03) Crash Pad (2007-05-06)

[20] Story, Ronald D. (2001) “The Encyclopedia of Extrater-restrial Encounters,” New American Library,   ISBN 0-451-20424-7

[21] Bethurum, Truman (1995) “Messages from the People ofthe Planet Clarion”, Inner Light Publications,   ISBN 0-938294-55-5

[22] Fry, Daniel W. (1954) "The White Sands Incident", NewAge Publishing Co, ASIN: B000GS5BJ6

[23] Ortega, Tony (March 5, 1998).   “The Hack and theQuack”. Phoenix New Times. Retrieved 2007-05-05.

[24] Hendrick, Bill (June 29, 1997). “The Mysteries Of Aliens

And Area: Atlanta believers keep the faith in the oth-erworldly”. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Archivedfrom the original on 2007-05-12. Retrieved 2007-05-12.

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4   6 EXTERNAL LINKS 

[25] Howard, Dana (1954) “My Flight to Venus”

[26]   “Venus Unveiled”. NOVA (TV series). October 17, 1995.Retrieved 2007-04-26.

[27] Allingham, Cedric (February 14, 1955). “Meeting on theMoor”. Time (magazine). Retrieved 2007-04-27.

[28] Scott-Blair, Michael (August 13, 2003).   “UFO pioneerinspires site’s astronomy theme”. Sign On San Diego. Re-trieved 2007-04-27.

[29]   My contact with flying saucers , London, N. Spearman[1959], OCLC 285784

[30]   Why we are here, Los Angeles, California, DeVorss &Co., 1959, OCLC 8923174

[31] Roy Britt, Robert (February 28, 2003). “Alleged NASACover-up of Menacing 'NEAT' Comet Threat is PureBunk, Experts Say”. Space.com.

[32]   Martin, Riley; Tan.   “Chapter One - The Coming ofTan”.   The Coming of Tan. Historicity Productions. p.6. Retrieved 2007-04-06. I was but seven years of agein November of 1953, when I first saw the strange lightsabove the river near my home in Northeastern Arkansas.

[33]  My trip to Mars, the Moon, and Venus , UFOrum, GrandRapids Flying Saucer Club, 1956, OCLC 6048493

[34] Binder, Otto O. (June 1970). “Ted Owens, Flying SaucerSpokesman, The incredible truth behind the UFO’s mis-sion to Earth”.  SAGA: 22–25, 90–94.

[35] Szwed, John F. Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times 

of Sun Ra, Pantheon, 1997, ISBN 978-0-679-43589-1; pp28–29

[36] Strieber, Whitley (July 29, 1998).   “Confirmation: TheHard Evidence of Aliens among Us”. CNN. Retrieved2007-04-25.

[37] “Centralian Tells Strange Tale of Visiting Venus SpaceShip in Eastern Lewis County” from the  Centralia Daily

Chronicle, April 1, 1950

[38] Rael (2006).   Intelligent Design. Nova Distribution. p.109.

[39] York, Malachi Z. Man From Planet Rizq Study Book One:

Supreme Mathematics Class A For The Students Of TheHoly Tabernacle p. 23

[40] Rael (2006).   Intelligent Design. Nova Distribution. p.109.

[41]   http://www.stanromanek.com/

6 External links

•   Another overview of 1950s contactees

•

 Another survey of 1950s contactees and their asso-ciated religious cults

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7 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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