Donald Keyhoe and Contactees
According to the author, he had seen a saucer land at a remote spot in New Mexico. As he cautiously walked toward it, a voice came out of nowhere.
"Don't touch the hull, pal, it's still hot."
Guided by the unseen voice, the author said, he had gone aboard and been whisked to New York and back at 8000 miles an hour. During this time the operation of the saucer was explained to him by the unseen space man—who said he was talking by remote control from a mother ship outside our atmosphere.
Reading this fantastic story, I thought of all the hidden official UFO reports—serious accounts by veteran Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps pilots who had met these mysterious ships. For months now every effort had been made to hide these serious reports or to ridicule the pilots when the stories broke. But here on the front page of a national newspaper was this far more incredible tale, its author treated much less rudely than some veteran airmen who had reported encountering saucers.
Keyhoe's perspective of the 'contactee' cases was delineated in the preceding chapter of the book.
My talk that night was given before a church group in Larchmont. Because of the religious aspects of the saucer problem, I had been a little uneasy. But no one in the audience seemed concerned at the thought of other inhabited worlds. However, several of the audience later asked me about the published claims of contacts with space men. By this time there were several of these incredible stories in print, none with a shred of acceptable evidence. In my opinion they were hoaxes, delusions, or stupid practical jokes—and I told this to the audience.
Later I discussed this with John Du Barry, personal friend whom I met after the talk. Du Barry, a former True editor, had helped me with my first UFO investigation.
"I don't say there haven't been contacts," I explained. "The Air Force may have secret records of communications or even landings—but I'd have to see proof to believe it."
Du Barry nodded. "So would I. As to these stories, I think they're mostly cheap fakes. Some of them have already been exposed."
"It's an easy formula. Anybody can claim he has met a space man at some secluded spot, or even ridden in a space ship. If he picks a time when nobody can prove where he was, no one can call him a liar."
"What troubles me," said Du Barry, "is the number of people who accept such faked stories. I've talked with a number of them—intelligent people, some of them successful in business—and they really believe it. At least I can see they want to—"
"That's just it, John, they want to believe it. I talked to the doctors and staff of Waterbury Hospital at their annual banquet in February. And a psychiatrist there gave me his explanation. He said all these 'contact' books describe kindly space people, beings like ourselves, who come from wonderful worlds where there are no wars, no struggles for existence. They have all the answers—the keys to a perfect life. No diseases, no hard work, just an ideal existence, lasting for hundreds of years."
"I get it," said Du Barry. "What these books are offering is an escape from all the troubles here—the H-bomb threat, financial problems, sickness, and so on. I can see how people would seize on it and hope the UFO race will save them. But it's a cruel hoax."
"Of course, it could happen that way. But it would be worse than a cruel hoax if they turned out to be dangerous creatures."
As one example of 'proof' of his experiences, Daniel Fry had a 1954 photograph of a flying saucer that was published in Bryant and Helen Reeve's autobiographical Flying Saucer Pilgrimage (1957). The circumstances of the photograph was presented in the blog article "Bryant and Helen Reeve's Commentary about Daniel Fry. I also commented about the resemblance of the photo with photos presented in books by Arthur Shuttlewood in the article "More UFOs Over Warminster".
The following excerpt from Fry's first published account of his case The White Sands Incident (1954)—presenting some of the remembered conversation with the unseen operator, 'Alan,' of the flying saucer—shows the unconventional aspect of Alan's answers to Fry's questions. This is Alan's response when Fry asked, "Why pick me? Just because by the merest accident I happened to be here when you landed. I could easily put you in touch with any one of dozens of men right here at the base, who are far more advanced than I in science." Fry had found his room "unbearably hot and stuffy" and decided to take a walk.
"When you say that you happen to be here by the merest accident, you greatly underestimate us," was the reply. "The brains of many Earth men transmit readily, but you are one of the very few whose brain also receives well. If you inquire when you return to your quarters, you will discover that the air conditioning system did not break down tonight; although it has frequently done so in the past."
Previous blog articles about Fry include "Daniel Fry's First Contact Experience" and "Beyond The White Sands Incident".
Contactee Truman Bethurum interacted with 'Captain Aura Rhanes' and her male crew members of a flying saucer from the planet 'Clarion' as documented in Aboard a Flying Saucer (1954). Aura's commentary quoted by Bethurum included a declaration that a time could come for Earth people "when all planetarians may mingle, visit and stay, as some of them do now." In another conversation, Aura expressed the cautious attitude of the people from ‘Clarion’ toward Earth inhabitants: " . . . you know what crowds are like when they see and hear things they do not understand. Fear makes them do strange and evil things . . ." I noted the similarity between Captain Aura Rhanes and Arthur Shuttlewood's 'Queen Traellison' in my review of The Warminster Mystery (1967). Previous blog articles about Bethurum include "The Letters from Aboard a Flying Saucer" and "MP3 Audio: Truman Bethurum 1954 Radio Interview".
Another flying saucer contactee who has been the subject of previous blog articles is Orfeo Angelucci, author of The Secret of the Saucers (1955) and Son of the Sun (1959). In a latter portion of his initial account of his experiences in the self-published 1953 newspaper-style Twentieth Century Times, Angelucci recounted some incidences that had been until then "omitted because they may be considered as completely impossible." Here is the excerpt —
One of these concerns the coin-like piece of "metal" on the floor of the craft as he [Angelucci] sat there. This object was about the size of a silver dollar, and Orfeo knew it was meant for him to pick up, perhaps as a memento. The object seemed warm in his hand, and it felt active and "alive." It gradually diminished in size, and completely disappeared before he reached the ground again.
Another phenomenon was his "singing" while at work. It was not unusual to those who heard him. But on this particular instance it was totally involuntary, induced by some outside force. He merely kept to a corner, behaving as though he were singing. A song which he had never known before.
There was still another, occurring after he had decided to include these in postscript, and after the contact had been broken.
It was on the morning of October 16, 1952. At 4:30 he was awakened by a shrill humming, and high frequency vibrations which seemed to emerge from the metal bed springs themselves, and from the ceiling, so that he felt sandwiched in between two poles. This remained perfectly constant for twenty minutes, and was accompanied by a high frequency earth tremor. Both his wife and a neighbor young lady were aroused by this episode.
Angelucci indicated that he equated the sound with "the 'flying discs' motion . . . It was terrific beyond description." Seven previous blog articles have presented information about the case of Orfeo Angelucci including "Orfeo Angelucci's Strange Predicament" and "Bryant and Helen Reeve's Commentary about Orfeo Angelucci". I commented in the article "More UFOs Over Warminster (Part 2)" about the correlation between an incident reported by Arthur Shuttlewood with similar occurrences chronicled by Angelucci.
Donald Keyhoe's opinions of contactees were further elaborated with an incident recounted in his fourth UFOlogy book Flying Saucers: Top Secret (1960) that occurred after he became Director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. The letter 'A' in this excerpt represents George Adamski. In the book 'Henry Brennard' was the name used to indicate a Washington, D.C. news correspondent.
About 10:30, Brennard called me at home.
"Have you gone nuts—taking in that guy A------?" He named a "contactee" widely known for fantastic claims, including tales of flights with Venusian spacemen.
"What are you talking about?" I demanded. "He's not in NICAP."
"Well, he flashed a membership card on a TV show in Los Angeles."
"What?"
"He claims you sent it personally—made him an honorary member."
"Henry, that's the first I ever heard of this. He must have a fake card."
"The Air Force captain who told me says it's real. One of their PIO's in Los Angeles saw the program. The close-up showed a regular NICAP card, with your printed signature." Brennard hesitated. "Could anybody in your office have sent it without letting you know?"
"No, that's imposs—" I stopped short. "I can't believe it, but I'll find out in a hurry."
"You'd better work fast. This is a big break for the Air Force censors. They can use it to kill off NICAP."
I fired a telegram to the contactee, denying he was a NICAP member and warning him not to repeat the claim. Then early next morning I hurried into the office. When I checked the membership files I had a double shock.
Not only was A------ listed as an honorary member, but six other widely known contactees!
In the uproar that followed, one employee resigned after revealing a disagreement with NICAP's policy about contactees. But this did not reduce the danger of a ruinous press story.
Keyhoe observed that most of the claims seemed ridiculous: "tales of marrying Venusian women, visits to Mars, Venus, Saturn and the moon. Some stories were obvious frauds, others unfortunate delusions." Keyhoe worried that publication of a story implying NICAP acceptance of contactee claims could result in a loss of congressional support and alienate the public as well as many NICAP members. Telegrams were sent to the contactees, voiding their membership cards. An article about these events was published in the NICAP August-September 1958 newsletter The U.F.O. Investigator Vol. 1, No. 5.
More information about this event is found in “The Quest For The Truth About UFOs: A Personal Perspective On The Role Of NICAP” (1994) by Richard H. Hall. In response, Daniel Fry sent a letter to NICAP in 1957 and published the letter in his newsletter Understanding. Many details may be read in a danielfry.com article, including a NICAP statement reporting that Fry had provided the organization with a copy of a letter "from Mrs. Rose Hackett Campbell, former NICAP office secretary, in which she told Fry he was a 'founding member.'"
One of the contactees to receive a NICAP telegram was Reinholdt Schmidt. I previously wrote in the blog article "Aftermath" about contradictions found in Schmidt's accounts of his case. Information provided in Flying Saucers: Top Secret gave me a better understanding of the period when Schmidt received national media publicity as a self-professed contactee.
The great "flap" of 1957 began on November 2.
For days, all over the globe, UFOs by the hundreds descended into our atmosphere, several coming close to the earth. Within forty-eight hours the censorship wall was breached, as dramatic reports by trained observers hit the front pages. In the fight to regain control, some Air Force officials even repudiated their own men. And still the reports poured in.
On November 5, Keyhoe received a telephone call from a Kearney, Nebraska radio announcer, who informed him about an incident involving Reinholdt Schmidt that had been said to have occurred a few hours earlier. The radio announcer asked for Keyhoe's opinion on behalf of NICAP.
I had a sinking feeling, knowing what this story could do. Of course, meeting a space crew wasn't impossible; we knew there had been brief landings. But all of the "contact" claims we'd examined—tales of long talks with spacemen, being flown to the moon, Mars, Venus or Saturn—appeared to be dreams, delusions or frauds.
"We'd have to question Schmidt and examine the area before we could answer that. But please put this in your broadcast: So far, NICAP hasn't found proof of a single 'contact' claim."
If the Kearney announcer could have seen ahead, Schmidt's story probably would have died that night. Months later, Schmidt publicly claimed four new contacts. Once, he said, he was taken aboard a spaceship—with his car—for a trip to the North Pole. Before returning him to California, he reported, the spaceship descended and traveled for miles under the arctic ice.
But Schmidt's first claim was less fantastic, and by next morning it was on the front pages. Then it was discovered he had a prison record, and Kearney authorities locked him up for a mental test.
Publication dates for Schmidt's brief books are listed as 1958 for The Kearney Incident: Up to Now, a 30-page book published by Spacecraft Research Association, and 1963 for My Contact with the Space People: The Reinhold Schmidt Story; a True Account of Experiences with People of Another Planet (1963); republished in 1990 as Edge of Tomorrow (also the title of a movie adapted from Schmidt's accounts). Schmidt wrote that two weeks of testing at a mental hospital occurred following the initial "special news flash" and his local radio and television interviews, about which he stated: "These programs were also released on national radio and TV networks." It is hard to imagine how this came about without any preliminary investigation by media staff, motivating my estimation of his case being a bizarre example of disinformation. Schmidt reported, "The crowds of curious and interested people who flocked to Kearney caused a traffic jam for blocks around the police station. Inside there was 'standing room only.'"
Here are two photos from Schmidt's book. "Mr. Schmidt has been interviewed many times. One of his latest interrogations was before the movie cameras in Hollywood."
"From left to right: Reinhold O. Schmidt, three crew members, and 'Mr. X,' the captain or leader of the crew. All of the space craft crew members are played by professional actors in the motion picture 'Edge of Tomorrow.'"
Considering some of the events chronicled in Keyhoe's books, it is easy to suppose that propaganda tactics implemented by government officials might have included the exploitation of false contactees. This was alleged by John Keel to be the case with contactee Howard Menger as Keel wrote in his 1970 book UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse:
. . . in letters to Gray Barker and Saucer News editor Jim Moseley, Menger termed his book "fiction-fact" and implied that the Pentagon had given him the films and asked him to participate in an experiment to test the public's reaction to extraterrestrial contact.
He has helped us, therefore, to dismiss his entire story as not only a hoax, but a hoax perpetrated by the U.S. government!
Beyond factual data presented in UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse, Keel offered a diverse variety of conjectural material and gross speculation encompassing undiscerning and cynical perspectives of phenomena associated with contactees.
Something evident is that the 'contactees' usually didn't judge the authenticity of other contactees, not knowing what to expect of beings other than those with whom each was personally acquainted. A letter from Orfeo Angelucci to Daniel Fry was published in the August 1957 issue of Fry's Understanding newsletter. Angelucci wrote:
In Aboard a Flying Saucer, Truman Bethurum wrote about feeling depressed at the end of February in 1953 when the visits from Aura and the Clarionites seemed to have ended. Soon after arriving home in Redondo Beach, California, his mood changed upon receiving a letter that eventually "changed my whole world for me."
The visit occurred in July. Bethurum commented:
In his book Bethurum wrote that he was convinced the flying saucer from Clarion would return "when conditions are right for it to do so" yet he would never again be able to report going aboard it.
In an abstract entitled "The Emerging Picture of the UFO Problem" (1975), Joseph Allen Hynek considered "close encounters in which physical effects and craft occupants, respectively, are reported" —
Something evident is that the 'contactees' usually didn't judge the authenticity of other contactees, not knowing what to expect of beings other than those with whom each was personally acquainted. A letter from Orfeo Angelucci to Daniel Fry was published in the August 1957 issue of Fry's Understanding newsletter. Angelucci wrote:
From my side of the field I might say this. It is very clear that though our earth is going full into outer space from now on, many of us wonder about the Visitors who have been awakening earthlings in these past ten years. Yes, many of us can see that they were saluting us, and preparing us for our space advent, but many feel that the visitors may have left our skies for awhile, to let us "ride on our own." This is not so. They are always observing, as you are aware of that fact.
So, though the whole world is now becoming Space-minded, there still seems to be an abysmal void somewhere in the whole activity. And this is the lull before the storm, or the dark before the dawn.
It might have dawned on you simultaneously, and perhaps on the other contactees that this weak part of the activity can and must be filled by those already-prepared. Thus, as contactees it becomes the call of us to merge the strength for the first time. This brings to light such as Adamski, Bethurum, Van Tassel, yourself and myself. Our concerted action would in this day be the most formidable and the most effective springboard to launch new activity from our Space Brothers, and so lift many earth people that the New Age could be hailed in.
Of course none of us want to lose touch with the main theme of our experiences, or have them influenced by those of another. But the main theme of all is so similar, and only details and variety of manifestations may seem to make them differ.
In Aboard a Flying Saucer, Truman Bethurum wrote about feeling depressed at the end of February in 1953 when the visits from Aura and the Clarionites seemed to have ended. Soon after arriving home in Redondo Beach, California, his mood changed upon receiving a letter that eventually "changed my whole world for me."
The letter was from a stranger to us, a Professor George Adamski located at the Palomar Gardens at the foot of Mt. Palomar, down near San Diego. He stated in the letter that he had heard about my experiences on Mormon Mesa with the flying saucer people, and that he was very excited and interested.
He would like for me to come down to see him and compare experiences.
The visit occurred in July. Bethurum commented:
After we returned home to Redondo Beach life changed for us again. That tape recording which Professor Adamski had made and was playing for the general public's benefit, was really starting people to talking. Furthermore, all kinds of people from little curious people to well known men of science were taking an inordinate interest in the subject. Our doorbell began to ring mornings before we could even have our breakfast, and it hardly stopped for an intermission all day long and far into the night. The telephone bell ran the doorbell a speedy second. Even the mail man was loaded down with letters which deluged us with questions. Our home wasn't private any more; it had become as public as a railroad waiting room. Mobs wanted to hear the story.
In his book Bethurum wrote that he was convinced the flying saucer from Clarion would return "when conditions are right for it to do so" yet he would never again be able to report going aboard it.
In an abstract entitled "The Emerging Picture of the UFO Problem" (1975), Joseph Allen Hynek considered "close encounters in which physical effects and craft occupants, respectively, are reported" —
Project Blue Book considered all of these as noise, dismissing the first almost always as a "hoax" and the second as "psychological."
But were they all hoaxes or the products of unbalanced minds? Today, with a far larger data base than was available to Blue Book (for not only a great many UFO reports in this country never made their way to Blue Book, but the flow of foreign reports, gathered by UFO organizations and investigators in many other countries also largely by-passed Blue Book), we recognize the self-same patterns occurring today as were reported in the 1950's. It has become increasingly harder to dismiss these reported patterns. Some of what many of us regarded originally as noise may even prove to be part of the signal! Take, for example, the reports from widely scattered regions of the globe, of the seemingly paranormal aspects of some UFO reports. These "contactee" cases have generally been regarded even by seasoned UFO investigators as crackpot emanations. Could they, however, possibly be part of an extremely complex signal that our culture does not know how to interpret?
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