One aspect of the UFO phenomenon that has been going on for quite sometime is that of alien abductions. These are the times when people are taken willingly or not, and whisked off to the unknown, often coming back with some very strange stories to tell. Such accounts can fall many places on the range of the weird, but one of the weirdest is that of a South African woman who claims to not only have been spirited away to an alien planet, but also to have had an alien lover and a child. Hers is a story of abductions, aliens motherships, exotic new worlds, star-crossed lovers, and all of the utter bizarreness that all implies.

Looking at her life before all of the strangeness started, one would never accuse Elizabeth Klarer of being particularly unusual, crazy or unhinged. She was actually very respectable. Born in South Africa in 1910, Klarer studied music and meteorology in England, before serving as an accomplished pilot for the Royal Air Force and working for the South African Air Force Intelligence decoding secret German transmissions. It would not be until after the war when in 1950 she read a book on UFOs and began to have long buried memories come floating back to the surface from her childhood. She recalled that when she was 7 years old she and her sister had seen a luminous silver disk fly over their farm, as well as a bright orange-red and cratered planetoid that flew past high in the sky. She would remember having several other sightings of the disk over the years, and claimed that her sister and their Zulu farmhand has also seen it. This is all strange enough as it is, but it would get utterly bizarre in the mid-1950s, when she had an experience that would kick off one of the weirdest cases of alien abduction on record.

These early memories coming back to her caused Klarer to develop a deep interest in UFOs, and this would get even stranger when a series of UFO sightings in 1954 brought her to investigate a remote, rural hill outside of Johannesburg. According to the native Zulu people of the area, the UFO was actually a mythical lightning bird from their lore, but when Klarer arrived she would have an encounter with what was most definitely a spacecraft, appearing as a spinning disc with a stationary dome in its center. The craft emitted a humming noise and she claimed to have seen one of the craft’s occupants through a porthole. She tried to get a closer look, but claimed that she had been pushed away by a wave of heat pouring off of it. Klarer would claim that she then began having telepathic communications with an entity calling itself “Akon,” who said he was from the planet Meton, in the galactic region of Alpha Centauri, and also that he was a crew member and scientist aboard the spacecraft, as well as that he was in fact the being she had seen through the porthole.

Elizabeth Klarer

Klarer would become obsessed with it all, going back to the hill several times in the hopes of seeing that ship and Akon again. In 1956, she would get her chance, when she once again saw the craft descend at the hill. This time was very different, as Akon revealed himself to Klarer, and introduced her to his companion, described as the ship’s botanist and astrophysicist. The aliens then invited her aboard their ship, which they described as merely a scout ship, and brought her up to a much larger, cigar-shaped mothership that was reportedly f miles in length and included cities, parks, trees,  flowers, and even lakes within it. According to Klarer, she spent some time on this vast mothership meeting the inhabitants of this “city ship,” which she said looked just like humans, but “taller, better looking, more considerate and gentle; not aggressive and violent.” She also learned were actually originally from the planet Venus, and had relocated to Meton eons ago, after Venus had become uninhabitable. According to them, Venus had long ago been alive with vegetation and was very much like Earth, but had gradually become a hostile environment, forcing them into an exodus that brought them to their new faraway home of Meton. She would say of all of this:

The Venusian scientists recognized the Sun was a visible star, with maximum and minimum periods of sunspot cycles, which happens to this day, but at certain epochs in time it expands. Now the Sun is expanding and contracting all the time. It is pulsating like a heart, but at certain epochs it expands out more, in intensified radiation. Now this is what happened to Venus, and being closer to the Sun her seas had dried out, and what little fauna remained (and all the flora) were destroyed. And then of course the dinosaurs, which had dominated the Earth, were also destroyed through the intensified radiation. Thus the great civilization from Venus, which we call the mother planet, was able to get away from Venus, and landed on earth and the moon, as way-stations. 

They moved to Meton which is now the home planet because it is very similar to the mother planet, Venus, in atmospheric conditions, distance from the star and also, the more important of all, the higher vibratory rates, which is more compatible to an advanced civilization and consciousness. They had bases on the Moon, Mars and Earth which they still visit. The Venus people left a section of their civilization here on Earth to look after the planet and advance the mentality and consciousness of the indigenous people of this planet, which they are in the process of doing.

Klarer was then returned to Earth. She had several meetings with Akon, usually at the same hill, and she found herself becoming attracted to him. During their rendezvous Akon purportedly gave her a silver ring that enhanced their telepathic connection, and told Klarer that she was in fact a reincarnated Venusian with whom he had been romantically involved when Venus was still alive and before they had fled to Meton, and that they were in fact soulmates. One thing led to another, and according to Klarer they consummated their relationship, leading her to become pregnant with Akon’s child. It was then that she decided to run off with her alien lover in 1958, and he agreed to take her up to their mothership once again, after which she was taken to Meton itself, which she would learn was one of seven planets their civilization claimed as their own.

Klarer would allegedly stay on Meton for a full four months, and give birth to their son there, which they named Ayling. As for the planet itself, Klarer would describe it in meticulous detail, including their government, educational system, way of life, and even the flora and fauna. According to her, Meton was a Utopian society, with no war, crime, or poverty, and where everyone had equal access to plentiful food and energy, with no monetary system and a method for creating unlimited renewable energy. The people wore luxurious clothes fashioned of silk, and lived in expansive parks, and since there were no tall buildings or factories there was no pollution. She explained that all education was done through telepathy, eliminating the need for school books or physical school buildings. In an interview with researcher Stuart Bush, she would say of Meton:

It is similar in size to Earth, a little larger, covered with vast seas, and the lands are islands, not continents. Climate is beautiful, under control, and in fact, is really a utopia. They have everything they want. They are not only thousands of years ahead technologically from us, but are also spiritually very advanced. There are no politics, law, or monetary system. Medicine is a scientific activity and not required for health since they are all in perfect health. Their way of thinking is quite different from what most people over here would understand. They are a loving, gentle and constructive people.

Everyone industriously does their work which they like doing most. There is no need for law; there is no crime or police. Everyone is free and has a code of ethics. They constantly create beauty around them and in general there is complete harmony. Their homes are lovely. You can see from the inside out; the material is transparent one way. They don’t have schools or universities. Their education is completely visual ~ all done by what is called an electric mirage. They have a little phial about three inches long and they insert it into a niche in their home or the wall of a spaceship. A 3D scene fills the room ~ an advanced form of a holograph. There are no books. They travel a great deal. The young children are taken around the galaxy so they can learn from experience. They can use the electric mirage to go back to a former time in their history. They could, for instance, view our planet at the time of the dinosaurs. They have beautiful paintings and create lovely music ~ harmonic music and very uplifting spiritually, which relate to the harmonic music of the galaxy. They communicate by means of telepathy and educational concepts can get transferred this way. They are capable of thinking in terms of the basic concepts not dependent on language ~ they perceive the feelingness behind words. There is no problem in the learning of languages such as any of those on Earth.

All in all, it seems like a pretty great place to live, and Klarer would have liked to have stayed there forever. However, the conditions of Meton proved to be too much for her physically. She would explain that “the vibrations of the magnetic field” were too different on Meton compared to earth, which weakened her heart and forced her to return to her homeworld. After a tearful goodbye to Akon and Meton, even leaving her son behind as well in order to complete his education, Klarer returned to Earth. There she would sometimes meet with Akon and Ayling and frequently speak with them through holographic calls. According to her Akon and her son would later embark on a journey across the universe together. She used her experience to preach for a society of peace, love, and environmental understanding, trying to raise awareness of these things and bring the people of Earth to a higher level like her beloved Venusians.

Sketch of Akon

In the meantime, when her story came out she was a sort of celebrity in the UFO community, being interviewed by some of the top researchers in the field at the time, she became extremely popular on the convention circuit, and she was a guest of honor at the 11th International Congress of UFO Research Groups at Weisbaden in 1975, which was attended by scientists of twenty-two nations and where she was given a standing ovation. Her story also made news headlines worldwide, where she was unfortunately often the butt of jokes and ridicule, yet she adamantly stuck to and defended her surreal story. In addition, Klarer went about writing a book about her experiences, which would eventually be published in 1980 under the title Beyond the Light Barrier. It was this book that she later claimed had drawn the attention of nefarious government parties who intimidated her and tried to silence her. She began work on a second book called The Gravity File but her death in 1994 saw it left unfinished.

We are left with quite a tale, indeed. What do we make of this wild story of a woman who was whisked away to another world and had a child fathered by an alien? In her defense, Klarer was often described as having total conviction in what she was saying, which she kept up until her death, never once giving the impression that she was lying and never deviating from the facts as she saw them, even in the face of scathing criticism. She seems to have at least really believed what she was saying. Her story is also incredibly tight. Various interviewers tried to get her to trip up or contradict herself but this rarely happened, meaning that if it was a fiction then it was very well thought out, if highly improbable and sometimes nonsensical. Also impressive is just how incredibly elaborate her bizarre story is. Klarer describes every aspect of the planet Meton, its people, and its society in rich, meticulous detail, and looking at interviews such as the very in-depth one given by researcher Stuart Bush, it can be seen that she seems to have an answer for everything without ever really missing a beat. If this is all some concocted mythology or delusion, then it is an incredibly complex one, and a master class of world building.

Of course, with a story this wild there are skeptics. Besides the fact that, well, she is claiming that an alien fathered her child and that she lived on another planet, there just isn’t a shred of evidence for any of it, no matter how convincing she may seem when telling the tale. There are no witnesses to corroborate what she claimed, no proof of her supposed pregnancy, and no one seems to recall any unusually long absence during the time Klarer was supposedly having her 4-month-long space adventure. The only evidence that Klarer ever produced were the ring that Akon gave her, which she never let anyone examine and has disappeared, and some photographs that are supposedly of Akon’s flying saucer but which are woefully fake looking, looking more like someone threw a hubcap in the air. This lack of any evidence and the sheer fancifulness of her story in general has caused even some of the most hardcore and outspoken proponents of alien abduction to doubt her.

What happened to Elizabeth Klarer? Is she pulling everyone’s chain and this is all just a big hoax? If so, why would she cling to it to her dying day? Is this all a delusion or the product of a warped mind? Perhaps, but she had a lot of credentials that did not paint her as a nut job. This seems to be one of those outlandish cases that just seems to pop up in UFO lore every once in a while, and considering that there is no way to prove or disprove any of it, we will probably only have this quite frankly bonkers tale to go on, and wonder how much, if any, is actually true.

The already strange ‘Oumuamua just got a lot more bizarre as a new study has suggested that the interstellar visitor contained a large amount of hydrogen ice. Ever since it was first detected back in October of 2017, it has been surrounded by much mystery and confusion.

Where do we even begin with ‘Oumuamua’s bizarre characteristics? Well, first of all, it looks incredibly odd as it’s shaped like a cigar which is definitely unusual for space rocks. Additionally, it showed non-gravitation acceleration that was not the result of being pulled in by the sun or other large space objects. In fact, when comets accelerate, they usually spit out debris behind them when they heat up, but ‘Oumuamua never developed a tail. Not to mention the theory that it is an alien spacecraft.

Another recent hypothesis has suggested that it is just a piece of a planet that was ripped apart when it flew too close to its host star.

‘Oumuamua’s route through our Solar System.

The latest theory, however, is just as fascinating as scientists believe that it was probably made of hydrogen ice. Greg Laughlin, who is a professor of astronomy at Yale University as well as the co-author of the study (which can be read here), said in a statement, “This is a new type of object, but it looks like there may be many more of them showing up going forward.”

Laughlin and Daryl Seligman, who is the lead author of the study and works at the University of Chicago, both said, “Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but we don’t often see it in solid form; that requires extremely cold temperatures. But such temperatures exist in the coldest cores of giant molecular clouds, nurseries that give rise to stars and their associated planetary systems.”

Laughlin explained that as ‘Oumuamua traveled closer to our sun, it became warmer which caused its hydrogen to melt and quickly boil off of its surface. That would have also caused it to accelerate in addition to getting thinner resulting in its odd elongated shape. He compared this process to when we use a bar of soap and it thins out.

‘Oumuamua

If their theory is correct, it would mean that there are many “hydrogen comets” travelling around space. “Their presence would be an accurate probe of the conditions in the dark recesses of star-forming clouds and provide a critical new clue for understanding the earliest phases of the still-mysterious processes that generate the birth of stars and their accompanying planets,” Laughlin noted.

While ‘Oumuamua has traveled well past Earth, astronomers are hoping to use what they’ve learned in order to find other similar space objects in the future.

Back in 2016, I wrote an article here at Mysterious Universe titled “UFOs: Don’t Let Them Rule Your Life.” To a significant degree, the article was focused on the controversial “11:11 phenomenon” and a guy who was immersed in it to such a degree that he was practically controlled by it. You can find the article at this link. That same article provoked a fair amount of comments, something that didn’t surprise me at all. Today, I thought I would expand on this issue of how people really do become affected by the UFO subject – and not in a positive way. I don’t know why, but on more than a few occasions I have seen people enter Ufology sane, rational and normal, only to eventually plunge into states of paranoia, fear, isolation and eccentricity. So, in that sense, today’s article is very much a warning to one and all. I should stress that this radical change of character doesn’t happen to a huge degree (as far as I can tell). On more than a few occasions, however, I have seen something close to madness set in – and sometimes set in quickly. With that all said, let us now take a look at the first of three examples of how the UFO subject – at times – doesn’t just alter lives, but can come close to destroying lives, too.

Albert Bender

Part 1 of this 3-part feature is focused on the the guy who began the Men in Black phenomenon almost on his own: Albert Bender. Indeed, had Bender not had the bad luck to get into the field of  Ufology, the chances are we would not have known of the MIB. Or, at the very least, the creepy phenomenon would not have reached the levels of interest that it did in the 1960s and 1970s. But, it’s not the MIB that we need to focus on in this article. Rather, it’s what the UFO subject did to Bender. It plunged him into a dangerous situation that he was lucky to get out of. Like a lot of people, Bender developed an interest in UFOs in the immediate wake of the Kenneth Arnold affair of June 24, 1947. At the time, Bender was in his mid-twenties. As the 1950s came around, Bender created the International Flying Saucer Bureau. He also published his own newsletter, Space Review. Neither were destined to last for very long. What began as an exciting hobby for Bender turned into an absolute nightmare. After being visited by a trio of strange characters with shining eyes,  and with the ability to read minds and walk through walls (yes, the MIB), Bender’s life changed quickly. He didn’t have that many friends to begin with, but after his MIB encounters, Bender spent just about all of his free time in the attic of his stepfather’s home, digging ever deeper into the UFO phenomenon. And into the world of the occult, too. When Bender did go out (his day job aside), it was usually to go to the local cinema in Bridgeport, Connecticut. On his own.

For reasons that were never really explained, but also in the wake of his MIB encounters, Bender developed a weird fear that he had developed cancer. He wrote about it on several occasions – making it very clear that that he was in a deep state of hypochondria. History has shown that Bender, thankfully, did not have cancer. In fact, when he passed away in 2016, Bender was just six years short of 100! Moving on: a careful reading of Bender’s 1962 book, Flying Saucers and the Three Men, reveals that he clearly had a dose of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Everything in his attic had to be in its place. If it wasn’t, he would get frustrated – even angry, at times.  And if it looked like something had been moved, Bender suspected that it was due to the MIB, government agents or…well…you get the picture. Spending your time in an attic room, with a fear of a deadly disease, with a significant dose of OCD, and while you’re worrying that someone is creeping around that same attic when you’re out of the house, surely cannot be healthy. For Bender it definitely wasn’t.

Here’s the part when the story becomes uplifting. Yes, the story does end in a happy fashion. It was something that, in the early 1950s, changed Bender’s life for the better and that led him to finally quit Ufology. An English woman named Betty – a flight attendant at the time – became a friend to Bender. Betty very soon became far more than that: Albert and Betty got married and they moved to California. Their first home was in Bakersfield. They later settled, in what turned out to be permanently, in Los Angeles. And, guess what? Bender’s fears of having cancer went away. As did the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. As did the deep fear that people were skulking around his home. Apart from a very few and brief forays into Ufology in the 1960s, Bender was done with it all. And that was a very good thing.

I’m not saying that Ufology is always a dangerous field to get into. I am saying, however, that sometimes – whether due to a person’s character, to the intrusion of certain aspects of the UFO phenomenon itself, or most probably to a bit of both – lives begin to change. “Mutate” might be a good term to use. On occasions, those changes are subtle. But, very often, they are not destined to stay like that. Albert Bender did the right thing: at first he balanced his interest in UFOs with his life with Betty. That is, until the time came when Bender knew he had to quit Ufology – as in completely. I should stress that not everyone, of course, needs to totally quit the Saucer scene to remain sane. For some, however, like Bender, it’s just not a good place to hang out. I’ve seen the signs in more than a few people in Ufology and it’s not a positive situation. For the most part, balance is the key to all of this. Enjoy your UFO research. But, enjoy having fun in the world outside of Ufology, too.  And don’t spend most of your time alone in an attic.

In Part 2 I’ll share with you an even weirder – and equally disturbing – saga from New Zealand.

Part 1 of this article was focused on the life and involvement in Ufology of Albert Bender. He was one of the key figures in the development of the Men in Black phenomenon. Part 2 takes us to New Zealand and to an equally hazard-filled story. The saga starts with one of New Zealand’s earliest Flying Saucer seekers: Harold Fulton. He started his UFO research in the early 1950s and passed away halfway through the 1980s. Fulton served in the Royal New Zealand Air Force. That was not all: he created the Civilian Saucer Investigation (CSI). Just like Albert Bender’s International Flying Saucer Bureau, the plan for the Civilian Saucer Investigation body was for its members to research and investigate cases – and to write-up reports on their findings. In other words, it was a well-planned operation designed to try and understand the nature of the UFO phenomenon in New Zealand. Interestingly, it wasn’t long before Albert Bender and Harold Fulton began to correspond with each other. Also mirroring Bender’s work, his group, and his newsletter, the CSI took off to a significant height. It wasn’t long after the creation of the CSI that Fulton and his colleagues had more than five hundred subscribers to the Flying Saucers journal. What began as friendly correspondence between the two soon changed. It became decidedly mysterious.

As I noted in my 2017 book, The Slenderman Mysteries: “It wasn’t long after the revelations concerning Albert Bender’s torturous encounters with the Men in Black surfaced that Fulton contacted Bender. A lengthy period of correspondence between the two duly followed. Indeed, Fulton had established a connection with numerous UFO researchers in the United States, including Gray Barker, who, in 1962, published Albert Bender’s MIB-themed book, Flying Saucers and the Three Men. The letters between Fulton and Bender (in my possession) make it very clear that Fulton was concerned that whatever it was that had got its grips into Bender was, by the summer of 1953, now doing exactly the same with him. Fulton told Bender (and MIB investigator/author Gray Barker, too) that on several occasions he experienced in his home the very same overpowering odor of sulfur-meets-rotten-eggs that Bender had talked about. Equally disturbing, Fulton began to see vague, shadowy, human-like figures out of his peripheral vision – and usually late at night, and always when he was engaged in his UFO research. They were wizened, goblin-like things that crept around Fulton’s home, in what amounted to almost a taunting fashion: they wanted to be seen, but not too closely. A bad sign that the Shadow People were on the move, perhaps?”

Intriguingly, some of the Shadow People that Fulton encountered way back then sound very much like today’s Hat Man, as the creature has become known. It is a dark, shadowy figure usually seen wearing an old-style fedora hat – hence the clear and obvious MIB parallels. During the summer of 1953, Fulton wrote to Bender and told the latter that he and his wife had been woken up on several occasions by an overwhelming smell of brimstone. It started in the bedroom and, eventually, overwhelmed the whole family home. Violent thumping on the walls of the house in the dead of night became regular.. It all sounded very much like poltergeist activity. On top of that, small balls of light flickered around the entrance to the bedroom. For Fulton and his wife, things were becoming nightmarish. It wasn’t long at all, however, before additional New Zealand-based UFO researchers told of their similar, nerve-jangling experiences. As an example, Fulton wrote to Bender about the incidents involving a man named John Stuart – a fellow citizen of New Zealand.

John Stuart lived in Hamilton, New Zealand and, like Harold Fulton, he was fascinated by the Flying Saucer phenomenon. Stuart’s experiences began in 1952. Stuart went on to write a book on the subject, UFO Warning. Not unlike Albert Bender’s 1962 book, Flying Saucers and the Three Men, Stuart’s publication was UFO-based, but it was somewhat tinged with matters of a demonic kind. Interestingly, Stuart began to experience something that John Keel wrote extensively about. Namely, weird, late-night phone-calls from strange characters with near-robotic voices. The first call for Stuart came in the early hours of the morning. Of course, on being jolted out of his sleep in the early hours of the morning, Stuart’s immediate thought was: bad news. As most of us probably would in such a situation. Well, yes, it was bad news. But, not of the kind Stuart was expecting. Rather, it was one of Keel’s creepy characters doing their best to terrify a UFO researcher. In simple terms, Stuart was told to quit Ufology. Or else. A shaky Stuart got himself a shot or two of whiskey. Now, the story gets even more complicated.

As is the case in today’s UFO arena, back then everyone knew everyone else – or, at least, they knew of them. So, when the rumor got out that Stuart was having close and clandestine encounters of a very different kind with a woman named Doreen Wilkinson – who was also active in the UFO field – it didn’t take long before most of the UFO sleuths in New Zealand knew of the claimed affair between the two. Of course, if both Stuart and Doreen were single, no-one would have been spreading gossip. Stuart, however, was married. The pair brushed the whispers away as nonsense. As for why they spent so much time together, Stuart and Doreen claimed it was solely because of the combined UFO research they were doing. Okay. We’ll never know and it’s all in the past now. Whatever the truth, the fact is that Doreen and Stuart spent a lot of time together. It was this togetherness that led to one of the strangest and most sinister of all the New Zealand-based encounters in the early 1950s.

It was during the early hours of the morning when Doreen and Stuart did most of their, ahem, “work.” There was something very strange, however. On occasion, Doreen’s personality would suddenly change. And change radically, too. She became what we might call a supernatural seductress. No, this was not a bit of fun and fantasy and playing role-games. It was as if Doreen had been possessed by a manipulative, sexually-charged, “demon,” as Stuart put it. Interestingly, Stuart vehemently disagreed with his colleagues in Ufology, who believed that Doreen was possessed by the spirit of an alien. Stuart was sure the entity that had Doreen in its grips was a literal demon from a literal Hell. Matters came to their peak when – also in the dead of night –  something suddenly manifested in Stuart’s home. It was described as humanoid-like in figure, but clearly not human. The pair was naturally terrified. Stuart would later say that the thing made a move towards Doreen and forced her to have sex. On a second time, when Stuart wasn’t at home, Doreen was attacked and assaulted again – on this occasion, though, by an invisible creature. Enough was enough.

Just like Albert Bender – whose hazardous experiences caused him to quit Ufology – Doreen and Stuart also left the UFO scene behind them, disturbed by the possibility that the UFO phenomenon had a demonic aspect to it.

Today’s article is the third and final installment on what I call “The Hazards of Ufology.” We’ve seen how Albert Bender’s life suffered to a seriously dangerous degree because of his UFO obsessions. That is, until he walked away from it all. As for part 2, it was focused on a series of strange events that occurred in New Zealand and that resulted in the key players in the story buried in a world of stress, chaos and fear. The third part of the story is significantly different, as you will see. In this example, lives and minds are not torn apart at all. Paranoia and isolation are nowhere in sight. So, you may very well wonder what today’s ufological hazard is. I’ll tell you: it’s the astonishing speed that causes some people to buy into just about everything of a UFO nature – no matter how ridiculous or bogus it might be. In other words, today’s hazard is losing one’s common sense. I could come up with more than a few examples, but I’ll present one for you that will demonstrate exactly what I mean.

Our story revolves around a married couple, Bryant and Helen Reeve. In 1957, they wrote a book titled Flying Saucer Pilgrimage, which was published by Ray Palmer. It’s not a particularly well-known book, but it is readable. In essence, the book tells the story of the pair’s road-trip around the United States, and of their meetings with just about as many people on the UFO scene as they could. It was a trek around the country, in the 1950s, that took three years and that covered approximately 23,000 miles. I should stress this is not a wild and crazy groundbreaking road-trip of the likes that Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady famously embarked on. Or, one of Ernest Hemingway’s adventures. Nope. Bryant and Helen were a retired couple verging on old age and who decided to see if they could figure out what was at the heart of the UFO phenomenon. Not a bad thing to do when you no longer need to work. I have to say that the pair spent a lot of time and effort trying to get the answers to the mystery. And, unlike so many, they were not researchers of the armchair kind. They really did hit the road for three years. There was, however, a problem: they weren’t just a nice, trusting old couple. They were too nice. As you’ll now see.

What’s particularly interesting about Helen and Bryant – and their immersion into the world of Ufology – is that they began as complete skeptics, but, in amazingly fast time, became not just believers, but uncritical believers. They bought into just about every story and  every character that came their way. That was their big hazard: they practically lost their ability to see the difference between credible people and horseshit. In the process, their lives were altered by hanging out with characters who ranged from the sane to the crazy, and from con-men to fantasists. I should say, though, that some of those who Helen and Bryant met may well have had genuinely intriguing alien encounters. It all began for the Reeve’s in November 1953, in Detroit, where the two lived. The pair was in debate with a friend of theirs – Henry – about the growing Flying Saucer craze, and particularly the claims and controversial photos of George Adamski. Some of the words that were used in that debate were “insane,” “gullible,” “fake,” and “disgusted.” You get my drift. On top of that, Bryant was an engineer who had little time for aliens and UFOs. But, he agreed to at least take a look at it all.

Admittedly, you have to give it to Bryant and Helen: they certainly wasted no time in trying to solve the mystery. They quickly got in touch with Adamski and invited him to come and speak for the people of Detroit! Not surprisingly, the presence of a man who claimed to have met aliens caught the attention of the local media. As the Freedom of Information Act has shown, FBI special-agents were in attendance, too. And, there are some amusing parts, such as when the matter of Adamski’s expenses surface. So successful were the lectures and radio coverage,  the two decided that a road-trip was the only way to find the answers. Not only that, just about all thoughts of Adamski being a hoaxer went right out of the window. They were becoming true-believers, even if they didn’t realize it. Their first interviewee (who actually decided to visit them at their home) was none other than Truman Bethurum. He was a Contactee made famous for his “encounters” with a hot space babe from a faraway world named Clarion. As for the captain of the craft, her name was Aura Rhanes. Bethurum may or may not have got it on with Aura, who Bethurum described as being “tops in shapeliness and beauty.” Throughout his books, lectures, and interviews Bethurum skillfully skirted around that thorny angle. When Helen and Bryant met Bethurum, and heard his story of extraterrestrial love (maybe…), they were caught. Indeed, from then on they called Bethurum a “pioneer saucerer.”

Next on the list was George Hunt Williamson. He was a man who had a complicated and controversial connection to George Adamski and who claimed to contact aliens via ouija-boards from his Prescott, Arizona home. The pair attended one of Williamson’s presentations. They wrote: “His lecture amazed us in its scope and breadth of view.” Adamski’s co-author on his book Flying Saucers Have Landed – Desmond Leslie – was also someone Helen and Bryant met on their road trip. They said of Leslie: “We enjoyed the Saucerer Royal very much and feel that he is among those chosen to bring the New Age messages to doubting humanity.” Then, on April 22, 1955, the pair went from being interviewers of those who had seen UFOs to witnesses themselves. They had now become a part of the phenomenon. The location was a few miles from Joshua Tree, California. Helen shouted: “It is a mother-ship, a cigar-shaped mother-ship!” Silver-white in color, the craft was soon gone. George Van Tassel was interviewed during the Reeve’s journey through California, as was Contactee Daniel Fry, and Meade Layne. Much of the rest of the book is focused on, for example, “clairaudience,” “projections of Consciousness,” “Samhadic meditation,” “spectrums of sense,” and “vibratory frequency explanation of outer-space.” All of which was quite a change in the lives of the Reeve’s.

So, in conclusion, what we have here is this: the story of two people – Helen and Bryant Reeve – who in November 1953 had no time at all for UFOs. Their lives and thoughts on Flying Saucers and alien life, however, were radically altered in an amazingly quick time. To the point that they came to believe the words of just about all of the well-known Contactees of that era. Then, they had their encounter – which changed them profoundly. And, as the above-paragraph makes clear, they soon turned their attentions to matters more of a mind-body-spirit nature. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that at all. The hazard, though, as I see it, is this: for reasons that are not really clear, the UFO subject has the curious and sinister – and sometimes tragic – ability to radically alter the mindsets of those who immerse themselves in the controversy. A kind of control? Maybe.