CONTACTEES: A History of Alien-Human Interaction: October 2011

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Space Brother HQ

While out in California a couple of weeks ago, me and Greg Bishop took a trip out to the Los Angeles office of the Aetherius Society, which - given my deep interest in the Contactee movement - was a real treat!

We were given an excellent tour of the place, provided with 20 or 30 minutes of very insightful chat about the society's founded (George King), and given permission to roam wherever we wanted and take photos of whatever caught our eyes - which is exactly what I did!

If you can't read it too well, the sign on the gate I'm leaning against reads thus:

"THIS GATE NOT TO BE USED UNLESS YOU HAVE PERMISSION OR BUSINESS IN SIR GEORGE'S BUNGALOW."

You have been duly warned!

And, finally, an interior shot...

Space Brothers & Secret Agents

If there's one thing we can say for certain about the early Contactees, it's that their stories of alien interaction were profoundly weird and controversial. Some might even say wholly unbelievable.

But, might there have been an underlying reason for the stories being so controversial? Could that reason have been to try and make the UFO issue look ridiculous in the eyes of the public and the media?

In other words, could it be the case that some of the Contactees were actually secret tools of the Government, working to an agenda to deflect people away from certain aspects of the UFO problem and swamp the "good" material with a wealth of hard-to-believe tales of trips to the Moon and Venus?

As my latest post at Mysterious Universe notes, such a possibility should not be ruled out...

COMMENTS ON CONTACTEES

"Nick Redfern, the Brit with a knack for ferreting out all the dope on outrageous subjects, presents a revealing look at alien contact." Best-selling author of Alien Agenda, Jim Marrs.

"Nick Redfern, author of a wide variety of UFO books from the serious to the popular, has taken the bull by the horns and produced the, so far, definitive book on the subject." Andy Roberts, author of Albion Dreaming.

"...The disturbing fact, according to Redfern, is that a common thread tends to lead to the same, surprising conclusion in the bulk of cases. We are not alone, he posits, but the "others" are not necessarily from Venus or the Pleiades. Where they do originate, and what it is that they want, I will leave to Redfern's eloquent explanation." Linda Godfrey, author of Hunting the American Werewolf and The Beast of Bray Road.

"...Contactees outlines a peculiar subculture that remains present in the fringes of Americana, and though well known to some, it has received its best treatment thanks to the efforts of Redfern." Micah Hanks, The Gralien Report.

"...A book that I couldn’t set aside. Nick Redfern provides relevant information and pertinent minutiae about those now considered to be part of the UFO fringe." Adrian Wells, The UFO Iconoclasts.

'In this newly published work, Redfern gets down into the trenches to examine the band of eerily human-looking blond-haired visitors who early on expressed their concern about our warlike ways..." Timothy Green Beckley, Bizarre Bazaar.

"...what we really like is that many theories are thrown forward but without dogmatic adherence to any particular one. The ET hypothesis is made to sound unlikely, and we strongly agree that it is unlikely. The solution to the mystery is far more complex than that." Jim Moseley, Saucer Smear.

"...Redfern has given this subject a very good treatment and that Contactees is well worth reading." Robin Anderson-Forbes, My Strange Blog.

"Reading these tales, there are a number of reasonable possibilities. They are all clearly the work of the human imagination (or perhaps lack of same), and the only question that remains is whether they came from the spontaneous imagination of dreams, hypnogogic and other visionary experiences; or from the crafted imagination, and in the latter case whether the contactees wanted a powerful imperative for their own religious and political views, or were in it mainly for the money." Peter Rogerson, Magonia.