The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries (100 page)

The mistake about the desert surface seems typical of Däniken’s cavalier attitude to facts. Another can be found in
Gold of the Gods
, where Däniken offers a photograph of a skeleton carved out of stone, and wants to know how ancient sculptors knew about skeletons in the days before x-rays – overlooking the fact that every graveyard was full of them. It is also in
Gold of the Gods
that Däniken claims to have been taken into an underground city where he examined a secret library with books made of metal leaves. His companion, he said, was an explorer named Juan Moricz. When Moricz flatly denied the whole story Däniken hastened to concede that he had invented the underground library, but insisted that in Germany authors of popular non-fiction works are permitted to use certain “effects” – that is, to tell lies – provided they are merely incidental and do not touch the facts . . . And in spite of these embarrassments, Däniken continued to publish more books, each one of which, he claimed, helped to establish his astronaut theory beyond all possible doubt.

Understandably, then, the increasing flood of books by “ufologists” aroused most serious investigators to fury or derision.

Yet there were notable exceptions. J. Allen Hynek, as we have already observed, was part of Project Blue Book, and the evidence he studied finally convinced him that, no matter how many cranks, simpletons and downright liars managed to obscure the facts, these facts unequivocally indicated the real existence of flying saucers, and even of “space men”. It was Hynek who coined the phrase “close encounters of the third kind” meaning encounters with grounded saucers and “humanoids” and he begins his chapter on such encounters (in
The UFO Experience
,
A Scientific Enquiry
): “We come now to the most bizarre and seemingly incredible aspect of the entire UFOs phenomenon. To be frank, I would gladly omit this part if I could without offense to scientific integrity . . .” And he goes on to consider a number of cases which, although they sound preposterous, were too well-authenticated to be dismissed. One typical case will suffice.

On 11 August 1955 a flying saucer was seen to land in farming country near Kelly-Hopkinsville, Kentucky. An hour later members of the Sutton family were alerted by the barking of the dog to the presence of an intruder near their farmhouse, and saw “a small ‘glowing’ man with extremely large eyes, his arms extended over his head”. The two Sutton men fired at him with a rifle and shotgun, and there was a sound “as if I’d shot into a bucket”, and the “space man” turned and hurried off. When another visitor appeared at the window the rifle was again fired and they ran outside to see if the creature had been hit. As one of
them stopped under a low portion of the roof a claw-like hand reached down from it and touched his hair. More shots were fired at the creature on the roof, and although it was hit directly it floated down to the ground and hurried away. For the next three hours the eleven occupants of the house remained behind bolted doors, frequently seeing the “space men” at the windows. Finally, they all bolted out of the house, piled into two cars, and drove to the nearest police station. Police could find no signs of the spacemen, but as soon as they were gone the creatures reappeared. The next day a police artist got witnesses to describe what they had seen; the pictures that emerged was of tiny creatures with round heads and saucer-like eyes, and arms twice as long as their legs.

The family was subjected to a great deal of harassment as a result of their story; but serious investigators who questioned them had no doubt whatever that they were telling the truth.

Perhaps the most famous case of a “close encounter of the third kind” was that of Barney and Betty Hill. In September 1961 they were returning through New Hampshire from a holiday in Canada when they saw a flying saucer apparently in the process of landing. Two hours later they found themselves thirty-five miles from this spot, with no recollection of what had happened in the meantime. Eventually they consulted an expert in amnesia, Dr Benjamin Simon, who placed them under hypnosis; the Hills then described – independently – what had happened. They had been taken aboard the “saucer” by a number of uniformed men who looked more or less human (Barney said they reminded him of red-haired, round-faced Irishmen), subjected to a number of medical tests or experiments – skin and nail shavings were taken, and Betty Hill had a needle inserted into her navel – then they were hypnotized and told to forget everything that had happened. Allen Hynek himself was later present when Barney Hill was placed under hypnosis, and was allowed to question him. He ended by being convinced of the genuineness of the experience.

What has been called the “ultimate in contact stories” happened to Antonio Villas-Boas, a 23-year-old Brazilian farmer. On 15 October 1957, Villas-Boas claims that he was ploughing his fields when an egg-shaped UFO descended in front of his tractor. He tried to run away, but was grabbed by “humanoids” in tight grey overalls and helmets, and carried into the saucer. The space men communicated with sounds like yelps or barks. Villas-Boas was stripped naked and washed, then a blood sample was taken. After this a beautiful naked woman – about 4 foot 6 inches tall – came into the room. She soon induced Villas-Boas to make love to her, although he says that she had an off-putting way of grunting
at intervals that made him feel he was having intercourse with an animal.

Villas-Boas’s story would be an obvious candidate for the “hoax” category but for one thing. Dr Olavo T. Fontes examined him soon after the “encounter”, and found that Villas-Boas had been subjected to a very high dose of radiation. And at the point on his chin where he claimed the needle had been inserted for the blood sample the doctor found two small marks. Villas-Boas’s story is documented with convincing details in
The Humanoids
, edited by Charles Bowen.

Like Hynek, the journalist John Keel was also mildly skeptical about flying saucers until he tried the unusual expedient of studying the subject instead of passing a priori judgements. In 1952 he prepared a radio documentary on things seen in the sky, and came to believe that – even then – there had been too many sightings of flying saucers to dismiss them as mistakes or lies. In 1953, in Egypt, he saw his first UFO, a metallic disc with a revolving rim, hovering over the Aswan dam in daylight. Yet even so, it was not until 1966 that he decided to undertake a careful study of the subject, and subscribed to a press-cutting bureau. What then staggered him was the sheer number of the sightings – he often received 150 clippings in a day. (In those days press clippings were only a few pence each; twenty years later, at about a pound each, the experiment would be beyond the resources of most journalists.) Moreover, it soon became clear that even these were only a small percentage of the total, and that thousands of sightings were going unrecorded. (This is in fact the chief disadvantage of an article like this one; it cannot even begin to convey the sheer volume of the sightings. Any skeptic should try the experience of reading, say, a hundred cases, one after the other, to realize that the “delusion” theory fails to hold water.) What also fascinated Keel was that so many witnesses who had seen UFOs from their cars had later seen them over their homes; this suggested that the “space men” were not merely alien scientists or explorers, engaged in routine surveying work.

In the following year, 1967, Keel was driving along the Long Island Expressway when he saw a sphere of light in the sky, pursuing a course parallel to his own. When he reached Huntington he found that cars were parked along the roads, and dozens of people were staring at four lights that were bobbing and weaving in the sky; the light that had followed Keel joined the other four. Keel was in fact on his way to interview a scientist, Phillip Burckhardt, who had seen a UFO hovering above some trees close to his home on the previous evening, and had examined it through binoculars; he had seen that it was a silvery disc
illuminated by rectangular lights that blinked on and off. The nearby Suffolk Air Force Base seemed to know nothing about it.

Like Hynek, Keel was impressed by the witnesses he interviewed; most were ordinary people who had no obvious reason for inventing a story about UFOs. His study of the actual literature convinced him that it was 98 per cent nonsense; but most individual witnesses were obviously telling the truth. Keel had soon accumulated enough cases to fill a 2000-page typescript; this had to be severely truncated before it was published under the title
UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse.

As his investigation progressed, Keel became increasingly convinced that UFOs had been around for thousands of years, and that many biblical accounts of fiery chariots or fireballs are probably descriptions of them. In 1883 a Mexican astronomer named Jose Bonilla photographed 143 circular objects that moved across the solar disc. In 1878 a Texas farmer named John Martin saw a large circular object flying overhead, and actually used the word “saucer” in a newspaper interview about it. In 1897 people all over American began sighting huge airships – cigar-shaped craft. (This was before the man-made airship had been invented.) Dozens of other early “UFO” sightings have been chronicled in newspaper reports or pamphlets; Chapter 26 of Charles Fort’s
Book of the Damned –
written thirty years before the UFO craze – is devoted to strange objects and lights seen in the sky. One of the most convincing sightings was made by the Russian painter Nicholas Roerich (who designed Stravinsky’s
Rite of Spring
ballet); in his book
Altai Himalaya
(1930) he describes how, making his way from Mongolia to India in 1926, he – and the whole party – observed a big shiny disc moving swiftly across the sky. Like so many modern UFOs, this one suddenly changed direction above their camp. (In many UFO reports, the object seems to defy the laws of momentum by turning at right angles at great speed.) It vanished over the mountain peaks.

Keel was also interested by the parallels between reports of “space men” and descriptions by people who claim to have had supernatural experiences. The “angel” that instructed Joseph Smith – founder of the Mormons – to go and dig for engraved gold tablets sounds very like the kind of space visitor described by Adamski and so many others. During the First World War three children playing in meadows near Fatima, Portugal, saw a shining globe of light, and a woman’s voice spoke from it. (Only two of the three heard it, although all saw it, suggesting that it was in their minds rather than in the objective world.) Crowds began to visit the spot every month where the “Lady of the Rosary” (as she called herself) appeared to the three children – only the children were able to
see and hear her. But on 13 October 1917, when the Lady had announced that she would provide a miracle to convince the world, the rainclouds parted, and a huge silver disc descended towards the crowd of seventy thousand people. It whirled and bobbed – exactly like the UFOs Keel had seen – and changed colour through the whole spectrum; all watched it for ten minutes before it vanished into the clouds again. Many other people in the area saw it from their homes. The heat from the “object” dried the wet clothes of the crowd. Keel cites this and other “miracles” (such as one that occurred in Heede, Germany), and argues that they sound curiously similar to later UFO accounts.

There also seemed to be a more sinister aspect to the UFO affair; witnesses began to report that “government officials” had called on them and warned them to be silent; these men were usually dressed in black, although sometimes they wore military uniforms. No government department had – apparently – ever heard of them. Albert K. Bender of Bridgeport, Connecticut, suddenly closed down his International Flying Saucer Bureau in 1953, and declared that three dark-skinned men with glowing eyes had pressured him into abandoning his researches. Most UFO enthusiasts blamed the government; but when Bender published his full account ten years later it was obvious that something much stranger was involved; the three men materialized and dematerialized in his apartment, and on one occasion had transported him to a UFO base in Antarctica. Jacques Vallee, another scientist who had become interested in the UFO phenomenon, noted the similarity between this story and medieval legends about fairies and “elementals”.

When Keel began to investigate sightings in West Virginia of a huge winged man who seemed to be able to keep up with fast-moving cars, he himself began to encounter vaguely hostile entities. A photographer took his picture in an empty street, then ran away. Just after arranging to meet another UFO expert, Gray Barker, a friend revealed that she had been told about the meeting two days ago before Keel had even thought of it. “Contactees” would ring him up and explain that they were with someone who wished to speak to him; then he would have conversations with men who spoke in strange voices. (He sometimes got the feeling he was speaking to someone in a trance.) Keel would be instructed to write letters to addresses which upon investigation proved to be non-existent; yet he would receive prompt replies, written in block letters. On one occasion, he stayed at a motel chosen at random, and found a message waiting for him at the desk. He says (in
The Mothman Prophecies
): “Someone somewhere was just trying to prove that they
knew every move I was making, listened to all my phone calls, and could even control my mail. And they were succeeding”. The entities also made many predictions of the assassination of Martin Luther King, of a planned attack on Robert Kennedy, of an attempt to stab the pope; but they frequently seemed to get the dates wrong. Keel concluded that “our little planet seems to be experiencing the interpenetration of forces or entities from some other space-time continuum”.

The British expert on UFOs, Brinsley Le Poer Trench (the Earl of Clancarty), reached a similar kind of conclusion on the basis of his investigations. He expresses them (in
Operation Earth
) as follows: