Part 2 : Extraordinary Encounters..Alpha Zoo Loo to Bashar

EXTRAORDINARY ENCOUNTERS: 

AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EXTRATERRESTRIALS 

AND OTHERWORLDLY BEINGS

by Jerome Clark

Alpha Zoo Loo 

Trucker Harry Joe Turner allegedly met an alien named Alpha Zoo Loo during a frightening encounter on a Virginia highway. The first incident reportedly took place on the night of August 28, 1979, when a UFO hovered over his truck. Even though the truck was moving at seventy miles per hour, an alien figure opened the door, and a terrified Turner fired several pistol shots at it, without apparent effect. Turner blacked out, returning to consciousness in the Fredericksburg warehouse that had been his destination. 

Turner noted other anomalies. His odometer indicated that he had traveled seventeen miles though he knew that Winchester, his starting point, and Fredericksburg were eighty miles apart. An odd, filmy substance covered the truck, and parts of his CB and AM/FM antennae were missing, as if they had been melted or cut off. He also complained of a burning sensation in his eyes . While trying to enter his truck to resume his journey, Turner passed out and was taken to a hospital. After a short stay he was released and, on returning home, suddenly “remembered” that the UFO had lifted both him and the truck inside it. 

Turner also recalled that the craft carried a crew of white-clad, human like beings who wore caps. When they took the caps off, Turner could see a series of numbers stamped, or otherwise impressed, on their heads. They spoke in a squeaky, high-pitched tone. Only when one of them, Alpha Zoo Loo, slowed his speech could Turner understand it. 

As they traveled through space, Alpha Zoo Loo asked Turner questions about his truck. Eventually they arrived at a planet two and a half light years beyond Alpha Centauri, where dome-covered cities dotted an otherwise devastated landscape. Turner had the impression that the civilization had experienced a nuclear war in its not-distant past. 

Back on Earth, Turner later claimed other contacts with Alpha Zoo Loo and assorted aliens. His erratic behavior, however, undercut his credibility, leading friends, family members, and onlookers to wonder about his psychological stability. Investigators also learned of Turner’s reputation for yarn-spinning.

Alyn 

“Alyn” is the name Constance Weber, who wrote under the name Marla Baxter, gives Howard Menger in her book My Saturnian Lover (1958). Weber/Baxter relates that after being widowed, she devoted herself to an interest in flying saucers. In the summer of 1956, she joined a group headed by Alyn R., who “was said to have had contacts with people from other worlds.” Alyn eventually reveals his secret to her: “I am not of this world! I am a volunteer to Earth from the planet Saturn.” On Saturn, he tells her, he was the spiritual teacher Sol da Naro. In the meantime, on Earth, the two become lovers. She writes, “My Saturnian lover did wonderful things for me. . . . My body seemed to grow more softly contoured through this pygmalion transformation as the Saturnian sculptor, by his unique artistry, molded me by his every electric touch and caress.” At the end of the book, she learns that in a previous incarnation she had been Marla, a Venusian beauty in love with Sol da Naro. 

During the time period covered by the book, Howard Menger, a sort of East Coast counterpart  to California’s George Adamski , left his wife, Rose, for Connie Weber. At one point during their affair, but before Menger had ended his marriage, four disillusioned followers accused Weber of impersonating a spacewoman who was supposed to be granting them an audience in an unlighted room. The couple survived the scandal, however, and were married in due course. Eventually, they moved to Florida where  they live now. 

Amoeboids 

A professional woman writing under the pseudonym Lisa Oakman claims that from childhood into her early twenties she experienced many encounters with nonhuman beings. Most were generally human like in appearance, but the most exotic she calls “amoeboids.” 

The amoeboids were “horrible” and “nightmarish” entities, shaped like amoebas, with the colors of bruises. They attached their wet snouts to the fleshy areas of her body, sucked, and left round, red marks in their wake. Some seemed to be taking energy, others blood. They would come into her bedroom at night, and she was too terrified to resist them. She lay paralyzed while they did their work, and she did not resume activity—in this case, screaming—until they were gone.

Andolo 

Andolo was a being channeled by contactee Trevor James Constable. Andolo, a member of the Council of Seven Lights, a kind of cosmic governing board consisting of wise space people, communicated from a vast extraterrestrial satellite, Shan-Chea, in orbit around Earth. 

In the mid-1950s, concerned about mysterious disappearances of airplanes and their crews, Constable asked Andolo if he and his associates ever abducted or killed human beings in this way. Andolo assured him that the “Universal plan” kept them from causing “a physical death wittingly under any circumstance.” He warned, however, that “dark ones” did not recognize these laws. They would steal earthly aircraft in order to learn about earthly technology, and “they may desire the entities [persons] in the airplane for purposes of their own, regarding which I shall presently tell you nothing” (James, 1958). See Also: Contactees Further Reading James, Trevor [pseud. of Trevor James Constable], 1958. They Live in the Sky. Los Angeles: New Age Publishing Company. 

Andra-o-leeka and Mondra-o-leeka 

Chief Frank Buck Standing Horse, an Ottawa Indian from Oklahoma, met Andra-o-leeka and Mondra-o-leeka onboard a spaceship that took him to several planets in July 1959. The ship, called Vea-o-mus, landed around 10 P.M. on the evening of the twelfth. Piloted by Andra-o-leeka, the ship took off again, this time going to Mars, then to Venus. After a short stay there, a female pilot, Mondra-oleeka, a Venusian, relieved Andra-o-leeka, and the ship went on to Clarion, a planet hidden on the other side of the sun. (Clarion first apAndra-o-leeka and Mondra-o-leeka 21 pears in contactee stories after Truman Bethurum reported meeting a “scow” [a small spacecraft] and its pilot, the beautiful Aura Rhanes, who hailed from that planet.) After a short stop on Clarion, Vea-o-mus took a two-hour journey to a planet called Oreon (as opposed to “Orion,” a constellation). Standing Horse stayed there for two days. 

Oreon, he reported, was a beautiful planet, so lovely that as a man of the gospel he wondered if he were in heaven. “Heaven is a long way from here,” he was told (Dean, 1964). While there, he ate well, mostly fish as well as fresh fruit from giant plants. 

Several years later on December 22, 1962, Standing Horse entered a spacecraft near Bakersfield, California, and was taken to Jupiter where he saw a magnificent building made of marble. He witnessed the dancing of “five tribes of Indians.” In a Jupiter city, at the Church of the Open Door, he heard a concert in which Handel’s The Messiah was sung. At one point he saw a screen that recorded scenes from Earth. According to Standing Horse, the people of Jupiter are better-looking versions of earthlings, with the races living together in harmony. 

The chief was returned to Earth three days later, on the evening of Christmas Day. His hosts drove him back to a Hollywood bus station in a car without wheels and powered by electromagnetic energy. “Two cops were arresting two men on the corner,” Standing Horse wrote to John W. Dean, “and were they dumbfounded when they saw the car come down and let me out!” Standing Horse claimed to have met Mondra-o-leeka one more time on the streets of Cesko, California, on October 11, 1962. See Also: Aura Rhanes; Bucky; Contactees Further Reading Dean, John W., 1964. Flying Saucers and the Scriptures. New York: Vantage Press. 

Angel of the Dark 

On several occasions, New Age writer Alice Bryant has encountered the Angel of the Dark, who sometimes calls herself “an Angel of the Divine Plan.” The angel stands nearly three stories tall. “Large, matte-dark feathers with iridescent tips” cover her. She wraps her wings around herself like a cloak and wears a wooden bird mask from which a long, sharp beak extends. 

She is here to take away all those feelings and fears that impede spiritual progress. Her bird mask symbolizes her connection with the vulture, which removes carrion, and the eagle, which soars toward the light. “I cleanse the shadow side into perfection,” she says. Further Reading Bryant, Alice, and Linda Seebach, 1997. Opening to the Infinite: Human Multidimensional Potential. Mill Spring, NC: Wild Flower Press. 

Angelucci, Orfeo (1912–1993) 

Orfeo Angelucci was among the most interesting of the early contactees. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he was generally deemed 22 Angel of the Dark UFO contactee Orfeo Angelucci (Fortean Picture Library) sincere, even by skeptics who tended to see him as something of a religious visionary in a flying-saucer context rather than as a cynical exploiter of the credulous. Angelucci's initial contact allegedly occurred on May 24, 1952, in Burbank, California. Driving home from work at an aircraft factory, he saw a saucer, which emitted two small globes. The globes approached him, and a masculine voice assured him that he had nothing to fear. Angelucci saw a crystal cup materialize, and he drank a delicious, healing liquid from it. A screen appeared before him, showing a striking-looking man and woman who seemed to read his mind. Another visionary experience, initiated like the first time by a “dulling of consciousness” (Angelucci, 1955), occurred two months later. On August 2, he had a physical encounter with space people for the first time. 

Angelucci soon went public with his experiences, warning that a world war was imminent. From the ruins of the world, a “New Age of Earth” would arise. He also related that after six months of unusual psychological symptoms, as well as “vivid dreams of a hauntingly beautiful, half-familiar world,” he was transported to a beautiful otherworld . He learned that he had lived there in another life, when he was known as “Neptune.” Angelucci wrote two books on his experiences and became a prominent figure on the contactee circuit. With the passing of the initial wave of enthusiasm about contactees, Angelucci became little more than a distant memory of saucerdom’s heady early days. His death in Los Angeles on July 24, 1993, was little noted. 

In his time, however, his claims attracted the attention of the celebrated psychologist and philosopher C. G. Jung, who wrote about them in one of his last books. Jung observed, “The individuation process, the central problem of modern psychology, is plainly depicted . . . in an unconscious, symbolic form . . . although the author with his somewhat primitive mentality has taken it quite literally as a concrete happening” (Jung, 1959). See Also: Contactees Further Reading Angelucci, Orfeo, 1955. The Secret of the Saucers. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press. 1959. Son of the Sun. Los Angeles: DeVorss and Company. Jung, C. G., 1959. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. 

Anoah 

Anoah, associated with the Melchizedek Order of the White Brotherhood, consisting of wise extraterrestrial and spiritual entities, channeled through Austin, Texas, psychic medium Jann Weiss in the 1980s. The Planetary Light Association, which at its peak had some 3,200 members around the world, distributed books and tapes of these channeling sessions. It also held workshops at which enthusiasts listened to Anoah discuss the transition from an old age to a new age of expanded consciousness and cosmic awareness. See Also: Channeling Further Reading Ached, Fretter, 1963. Melchizedek: Truth Principles. Phoenix, AZ: Lockhart Research Foundation. Weiss, Jann, 1986. Reflections by Anoah. Austin, TX: Planetary Light Association. 

Anthon 

At the contactee-oriented Rocky Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation held in Laramie, Wyoming, in May 1982, Ken McLean read a statement from “a Mr. Watanabe,” who claimed to be an extraterrestrial living in a human body. His true name was Anthon, and he was in his third earthly incarnation. The first was during the Revolutionary War, he said. He was one of 150,000 “incarnate beings” living on our planet and observing our activities. These beings telepathically communicated their findings to space people both on the surface of our planet and in our upper atmosphere. 

According to Anthon, we are now entering the end of an age that began with Jesus’ appearance, though Anthon believes Jesus was not the Son of God but “the only human being to have incarnated through enough lifetimes and enough karmic experiences to transcend death. . . . He is in charge of the transition into a ‘New Age’ which will occur sometime in the near future.” 

Anthon claimed that many incarnate beings do not know their true identity; thus they have to be awakened to it. See Also: Contactees Further Reading Sprinkle, R. Leo, ed., 1982. Proceedings: Rocky Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation. Laramie: School of Extended Studies, University of Wyoming. 

Antron 

Driving along a section of highway between Jacksonville and Callahan, Florida, one August night in 1974, businesswoman Lydia Stalnaker saw a bright, flashing light just above some nearby treetops. A suffocating sensation enfolded her, and she lost consciousness. When she awoke, she was still behind the wheel, but on a different road. Soon she learned that three hours, for which she could not account, had passed. Under hypnosis in May 1975, she “recalled” being taken into a spacecraft, where aliens told her that another woman would be placed inside her body. She saw the woman sitting on the other side of a table from her. Stalnaker’s head was placed inside some kind of mechanical device, and she passed out. When she revived, a spaceman told her she was now one of them. He escorted her out of the ship, and she returned to her car. 

Subsequently, Stalnaker claimed, she found that she had extraordinary psychic gifts that allowed her to read other people’s minds and to practice paranormal healing. Before long Stalnaker was channeling the alien woman, who called herself Antron. Antron reported that she was from a “star galaxy.” She had come to prepare earthlings for a great cataclysm. “We want to take the good people with us to recolonize elsewhere,” she said (Beckley, 1989). See Also: Channeling Further Reading Beckley, Timothy Green, 1989. Psychic and UFO Revelations in the Last Days. New Brunswick, NJ: Inner Light Publications. Gansberg, Judith M., and Alan L. Gansberg, 1980. Direct Encounters: The Personal Histories of UFO Abductees. New York: Walker and Company. 

Anunnaki 

Ancient-astronaut theorist Zecharia Sitchin, author of a series of books under the rubric The Earth Chronicles, argues that a race of human like beings, the Anunnaki, live on the planet Nibiru (also known as Maldek), the alleged twelfth planet of our solar system. Though unknown to astronomers, Nibiru, on an elliptical orbit, circles our sun every 3,600 years. According to Sitchin, Nibiru will be in our immediate planetary space in the near future and will be detected between Mars and Jupiter. When that happens, the Anunnaki will make their presence known by appearing on Earth. 

Sitchin’s ideas are based on his reading of ancient Sumerian documents. In his view they confirm that the Anunnaki—a Sumerian term—created humans in their image, via genetic engineering with the DNA of native anthropoids, after their arrival some four - hundred thousand five hundred years ago. These original earthlings were created so that they could work as slaves in the Anunnaki’s terrestrial gold mines; the extraterrestrials needed the gold to preserve the atmosphere of their home world. Many thousands of years later, they returned to give the Sumerians and Egyptians their respective civilizations and actually lived among these people for a thousand years. One visitor from Nibiru, Enki, reportedly saved the human race. When a hostile alien, Enlil , tried to keep the Anunnaki from warning humans that the passing near Earth of Nibiru would cause an immense tidal wave , which would sweep over Earth and destroy its inhabitants, Enki resisted. He told Noah , of biblical fame, about the coming deluge, and Noah set to work on his ark, thus ensuring the survival of earthly life. 

The Anunnaki supposedly live a very long time because one year to them is the number of earthly years it takes their planet to go around the sun. Their technology is so advanced that they developed space flight half a million years ago. They are also able to revive the dead. One critic has written, “Clearly, Sitchin is a smart man. He weaves a complicated tale from the bits and pieces of evidence that survive from ancient Sumeria to the present day. Just as clearly, Sitchin is capable of academic transgressions (fracturing quotes, ignoring dissenting facts) . . . and flights of intellectual fancy. . . . Worst of all, he is almost utterly innocent of astronomy and other assorted fields of modern science” (Hafernik, 1996). See Also: Greater Nibiruan Council Further Reading Hafernik, Rob, 1996. “Sitchin’s Twelfth Planet.” http: // www. geocities . com / Area 51 / Corridor / 8148/hafernik.html Schultz, Dave. “The Earth Chronicles: Time Chart.” http: / / www. geocities.com/ Area 51 / Corridor/8148/zchron.html Sitchin, Zecharia, 1976. The Twelfth Planet. New York: Stein and Day. ———, 1980. The Stairway to Heaven. New York: St. Martin’s Press. ———, 1985. The Wars of Gods and Men. New York: Avon Books. 

Apol, Mr.

In the mid to late 1960s, while researching material for a series of books, occult journalist John A. Keel allegedly received a series of phone calls from “Mr. Apol,” a badly confused, interdimensional entity. Apol did not know where he was in time, often confusing past and future, and traveling through both involuntarily . According to Keel, “he and all his fellow entities . . . [ played] out their little games because they were programmed to do so” (Keel, 1975). In the fashion of psychic vampires, they lived  off the energies of contactees and other experiences of the paranormal. Keel believed Apol to be an ultraterrestrial as opposed to an extraterrestrial, because in Keel’s view such entities come from other realities rather than other planets. 

Though Keel did not meet Apol himself, a Long Island woman saw him pull up to her house in a black Cadillac, a vehicle favored by the enigmatic men in black, earthly agents for unearthly intelligences. Keel reported that the woman thought Apol looked “Hawaiian.” When he introduced himself, he shook her hand. His own hand was “as cold as ice.” 

Keel dedicated his book Our Haunted Planet (1971) to “Mr. Apol, wherever you are . ” See Also: Contactees; Keel, John Alva; Time travelers; Ultraterrestrials Further Reading Keel, John A., 1975. The Mothman Prophecies. New York: Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton and Company. 

Arna and Parz 

Between 1976 and 1980 a family at Oakenholt in northern Wales underwent a complex series of extraordinary experiences. Perhaps the first event involved six-year-old Gaynor Sunderland, who, while playing in a field one summer afternoon, spotted a cigar-shaped craft resting on the ground. She saw a man in a spacesuit walking in front of the object, using a gun like device to burn holes into the ground. Apparently caught by surprise, the being stared at her, and Gaynor had the impression that he was probing her mind. An angry-looking woman appeared alongside him, and Gaynor felt the same sensation of mind-intrusion. Hearing noises from within the craft, the woman returned to the spacecraft, and the young girl took the opportunity to flee. Many other bizarre UFO incidents involving all five Sunderland children as well as their parents took place subsequently. 

In February 1979 Gaynor glimpsed two smiling beings who had appeared in some nearby bushes and then vanished when she turned away. On June 24 she encountered the same alien couple in a sort of out-of-body experience. Lying in bed at 11 P.M., she saw the ceiling open into a tunnel, sucking her in toward a distant light. Once she reached the end of the journey, the couple—now accompanied by a small boy—greeted her. The woman was named Arna, the man Parz. They gave her a tour of their world, showing her a stream as well as some vegetation unlike anything on Earth. Their manner was courteous but not particularly warm. When Arna touched Gaynor’s hand, the visitor witnessed a great city under a red sun and unclouded blue sky. All of the people in the city looked young. After the vision faded, Arna said good-bye via telepathy and promised another meeting. Gaynor returned to the tunnel and ended up in her bed. 

A few weeks later, in August, Arna reappeared to display images of a destroyed Earth. She asked Gaynor for her assistance in directing an energy being back to its proper residence. Gaynor, her brother Darren, and her parents walked to a field and meditated until they sensed that the intruder was gone. 

On the night of September 14, Arna and Parz appeared and took Gaynor into their spacecraft. Besides the couple she knew, there were three others. One looked so close to being purely human that Gaynor wondered if the young woman, who looked to be about nineteen years of age, was some kind of hybrid. Gaynor noticed a picture on the wall of a male being like Parz, only older. He was standing by a globe of a planet that clearly was not Earth. The ship flew into space. Half an hour later Arna and Parz told her that it had reached its destination, which turned out to be a kind of zoo full of bizarre creatures, all of them in twos. The animals were not in cages and had a great deal of space in which to wander. Finally, the sights were too unsettling for Gaynor, and her hosts permitted her to return to the ship. Before they parted, however, Gaynor learned that Arna and Parz were “about 3500 of your years old” (Randles and Whetnall, 1981). 

Gaynor sensed somehow that she had not really been in space. What she had experienced were vivid mental images that the aliens had beamed into her brain. At the same time, she was certain that she had not dreamed any of this; it was much too real and had none of the distinguishing characteristics of dreams. See Also: Hybrid beings Further Reading Randles, Jenny, and Paul Whetnall, 1981. Alien Contact: Window on Another World. London: Neville Spearman. 

Artemis 

Artemis hails from the planet Miranda, located in an uncharted region of the Milky Way galaxy. He and the thirteen thousand beings on his team orbit Earth in a giant space platform, focusing their attention on most of the North American continent. Other spaceships from other places attend to the rest of Earth. Artemis, who channeled through Anthony and Lynn Volpe in 1981, said that he seeks to raise humanity’s collective vibration. Coming cataclysms will radically alter the population and surface of the planet. Certain chosen earthlings who are advanced spiritually will be taken up just before the disasters. Others will be left on the surface for a time as they help suffering Earth people. Eventually, spiritually unenlightened but otherwise harmless persons will be taken up and resettled on uninhabited planets, while the truly evil will be left on Earth. Most, though not all, will perish. All of this, Artemis said in 1981, will happen “sooner than most people think” (Beckley, 1989). Further Reading Beckley, Timothy Green, 1989. Psychic and UFO Revelations in the Last Days. New Brunswick, NJ: Inner Light Publications. 

Ascended Masters 

Ascended Masters are human beings who achieved pure spiritual enlightenment before their deaths. Along with that enlightenment, they attained mystical powers that set them apart from their fellows. When their physical bodies died (“ascended”), they continued to oversee the affairs of humanity. They channel wisdom to those who will listen to them. 

One source observes, “It is important for students and people to come to realize that all Ascended Beings are Real, Tangible Beings. Their Bodies are not physical but They can make them as tangible as our physical bodies are” (“Ascended Masters”). The Great White Brotherhood, a spiritual council that exists in the supernatural realm, consists of Ascended Masters. Further Reading “Ascended Masters.” http://www.ascension-research. org/masters.html. 

Ashtar 

Ashtar is among the most popular and most powerfully positioned of all channeling entities. As (according to most contactees who have dealings with him) head of the Ashtar Command he is, in the words of his sponsor Lord Michael, “Supreme Director in charge of all of the Spiritual program” for Earth. From his giant starship in Earth’s general vicinity he gives orders to millions of extraterrestrial and inter-dimensional beings who are trying to reform and enlighten earthlings. His home is in the etheric realm, which means that to visit our physical universe he must descend the vibratory scale, or we would not be able to hear or perceive him at all. He explains his mission thus: 

“We have come to fulfill the destiny of this planet  , which is to experience a short period of ‘cleansing ' and then to usher in a NEW GOLDEN AGE OF LIGHT.  We are here to lift off the surface , . . . during this period of cleansing, those souls who are walking in the Light on the Earth. . . . The souls of Light are you people of Earth who have lived according to universal truths and have put the concerns of others before your own . . . . The short period of cleansing the planet is IMMINENT EVEN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR! " (Tuella, 1989). 

Officially, Ashtar came into the world on July 18, 1952, when George W. Van Tassel, an early and influential contactee from southern California, took a telepathic message from “Portla, 712th projection, 16th wave, realms of Schare” (pronounced Share-ee). Portla pronounced, “Approaching your solar system is a ventla [spaceship] with our chief aboard, commander of the station Schare in charge of the first four sectors. . . . We are waiting here at 72,000 miles above you to welcome our chief, who will be entering this solar system for the first time.” Soon the chief spoke, introducing himself with—“Ashtar, commandant quadra sector, patrol section Schare, all projections, all waves.” He addressed an emerging concern among occultists of the period: that the hydrogen bomb, then in development, would set off a chain reaction that would destroy the planet. Ashtar warned that if scientists did not stop their work on the device immediately, “we shall eliminate all projects connected with such” (Van Tassel, 1952). 

Though Van Tassel would claim contacts with many other curiously named other worldly entities, only Ashtar would make a wider mark in the contactee subculture. Be f o re long other channelers we re receiving material f rom Ashtar as well as his associates, such as Sananda (Jesus), Korton, Soltec, Athena , Monka, and others. So many Ashtar channelings occurred that soon Ashtar was warning some communicants that evil astral entities we re impersonating him. He was also forced to deny allegations that he was “some form of giant mechanical brain” (Constable, 1958). In the 1970s and beyond, as fundamental Christians began writing books on UFOs, Ashtar was represented as a servant of Satan . 

Though to nearly all who experienced him, Ashtar existed only as a disembodied voice, a very few claimed to have seen him. One woman, Adele Darrah, even alleged that she saw him before she had ever heard of an Ashtar. One night in the early 1960s, after she had gone to bed, Darrah found herself suddenly awake and in her downstairs living room, where a striking-looking stranger stood in front of the fireplace. He was tall, slim, and erect and was wearing a uniform with a high collar. “His eyebrows were slim and delicate, the nose was thin, the mouth was rather straight, the lips thin,” she reported. “His eyes were brilliant and penetrating, almond shaped with a slight oriental appearance.” When she introduced herself, he smiled and indicated that he already knew her name. Then he squared his shoulders and announced, “I am Ashtar.” Everything that followed faded from her memory, and only a few years later, Darrah claimed, would she learn that others knew such an entity. 44s

Typically, however, contactees and channelers report seeing Ashtar in psychic perception or in out-of-body journeys to his starship. Perhaps not surprisingly, descriptions vary, some calling him dark, others fair, some estimating his height at less than six feet, others at more than seven.

In the 1980s and 1990s, more and more of the messages from Ashtar and his associates focused on the “Ascension,” the removal of “Lightworkers”—those doing the Command’s work on Earth, many if not all of them extraterrestrials in earlier incarnations—from Earth just prior to the Cleansing (the natural and other catastrophes that will afflict Earth, killing millions, before the space people land). The failure of either the Ascension or the Cleansing to take place discouraged many followers. In a channeling in the 1990s, Ashtar explained that, in fact, the Lightworkers had effected huge changes, which, though now invisible, will become apparent in due course. In the meantime, according to Ashtar associate Soltec, the human race will continue to be educated subtly through dreams, popular culture, and growing numbers of spacecraft sightings. Unfortunately, “there will be many ones who will confuse us with negative ET encounters. Indeed, the greys will take advantage of the opportunity to confuse the populace and attempt to tarnish our image. Ones must be made aware of the distinction between the ships of Light and the ships of abduction” (Soltec, n.d.). 

In 2000, Brianna Wettlaufer of Van Tassel’s organization, the Ministry of Universal Wisdom (Van Tassel himself died in 1978), put out a statement that sought to separate Ashtar from the Ashtar Command. Van Tassel, it was said, communicated only with Ashtar; the Ashtar Command, on the other hand, was a concept promulgated by another early contactee, Robert Short. He and Van Tassel had been friends but parted company when Short decided to make Ashtar’s communications “commercial and mainstream, in order for personal notoriety, not for a truth to the public.” Wettlaufer insisted that “Ashtar is not a metaphysical philosopher or rambler” and moreover, he cannot be reached via channeling (though Van Tassel’s own method of communication seemed indistinguishable from channeling to most observers). The statement goes on, “The Ashtar of Ashtar Command is a real personality . . . a clone of the original Ashtar, and is dangerous . . . a disobedient angel” (Wettlaufer, 2000). 

The name “Ashtar” may owe its inspiration to a nineteenth-century work, Oahspe, the 28 Ashtar product of alleged angelic dictation to New York occultist John Ballou Newbrough. In this complex alternative history of Earth and the universe, “ashars” are guardian angels who sail the cosmos in etheric ships. Oahspe had a wide readership among devotees of the early contactee movement. See Also: Athena; Contactees; Korton; Monka; Portla; Sananda; Van Tassel, George W. Further Reading Alnor, William M., 1992. UFOs in the New Age: Extraterrestrial Messages and the Truth of Scripture. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House. James, Trevor [pseud. of Trevor James Constable], 1958. They Live in the Sky. Los Angeles: New Age Publishing Company. King, Beti, 1976. Diary from Outer Space. Mojave, CA: self-published. ———, 1976. A Psychic’s True Story. Mojave, CA: self-published. Soltec, n.d. “Ashtar Command and Popular Culture.” http://www.eagles wings.com ./au/ soltec 1 .html Tuella [pseud. of Thelma B. Turrell], ed., 1989. Ashtar: A Tribute. Third edition. Salt Lake City, UT: Guardian Action Publications. Van Tassel, George W., 1952. I Rode a Flying Saucer! The Mystery of Flying Saucers Revealed. Los Angeles: New Age Publishing Company. Wettlaufer, Brianna, 2000. “A Brief Ba k ground between Ashtar and Ashtar Command.” http://www. george van tassel.com/Pages/ 005.1 ashtar.html 

Asmitor

In Revelation: The Divine Fire (1973) Brad Steiger reports a story related to him by Robert Shell of Roanoke, Virginia, concerning a malevolent entity that attached itself to a young man experimenting with psychedelic drugs. The being called itself “Asmitor” even as it explained that this was not precisely its name, but the closest approximation that the human voice could manage to pronounce. 

Shell said that he met Mark while both were living in an apartment building in Richmond, Virginia, in 1969. Shell and a friend were pursuing an interest in ritual magic. Mark, then eighteen years old, expressed no interest in such things; his interests were in electronics and occasional use of hallucinogens. Thus, Shell was surprised and skeptical when Mark began speaking of contact he was beginning to experience with what he called an “entity” that gave him certain things in exchange for periodic occupation of his physical body. Around this time Shell and his wife observed poltergeist like manifestations in their apartment. 

These experiences led Shell to be more open-minded about Mark’s claims. Mark confided that the entity was a multidimensional energy being. It extended across the entire universe, though by force of will it could focus on a particular place for purposes of communication. It never explained why it sought such contacts, but Mark came to sense that it had a deep interest—again for reasons it would not clearly divulge—in this level of reality. As time went by, Mark came to see the entity, now calling itself Asmitor, as evil and deceitful. It also would not let him alone and more or less possessed him. 

Before that happened, however, Shell accepted Mark’s endorsement of Asmitor’s essentially benign intentions and asked for a personal contact. One night he underwent a frightening experience in which he awoke with a crushing sensation on his chest, which he interpreted as a visitation from Asmitor, though the sensations he describes are classic characteristics of sleep paralysis. The next day Mark, passing on Asmitor’s words, told Shell that Asmitor had found him—Shell—unfit for contact. 

Asmitor claimed to be in conflict with another entity, with the climactic battle imminent. The other entity was just as malevolent as Asmitor, but the two were deadly enemies, their conflict having been set up, for inscrutable reasons, by a “higher ruling force.” Mark was to create a “landmark”—a “specific, easily accessible point for it to hold onto”— consisting of a pentagram with symbols drawn around it. 

Though Asmitor had promised Mark complete physical protection, the young man learned otherwise when he was arrested for possession of LSD and marijuana and sentenced to jail. After serving three months, he was released. By this time Shell had moved to another city and out of direct contact with Mark, though the two exchanged some letters and talked on the phone on occasion. Mark expressed growing desperation about his plight. He was certain now that he could escape Asmitor’s grip only by destroying himself. Thus, Shell said, “It came as a shock, but not really a surprise, to hear from a mutual friend . . . that on April 1, 1970, Mark had committed suicide.” 

Shell noted that not long afterward, while perusing a book of medieval magic, he came upon the name Asmitor, though he could not tell Steiger exactly where. “I am convinced that Mark had never read this book,” he remarked, “and I am also convinced that Mark did not simply make up this name.” Steiger, on the other hand, suspected that the tragic episode came out of “paranoid schizophrenia, or some other illness.” Further Reading Steiger, Brad, 1973. Revelation: The Divine Fire. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 

Athena 

In Project Alert, a self-published monograph, an Indiana contactee known as Tuieta provides  a transcript of a three-day conference held at “the Tectonic base that is on planet Earth. ” The gathering brought together “specific commanders  . . . under the immediate supervision, guidance, and counsel of Commander Ashtar.” Among the speakers, who included such familiar figures  in the Ashtar Command as Korton, Monka, and Soltec, was the here to fore obscure Commander Athena. At h e n a spoke of the role of Earth women in the coming “period of great tribulation.” During this crisis many people would not survive. The woman most likely to get through the catastrophic Earth changes, according to Athena , was one who recognized “the importance of providing for loved ones and providing for those that need nurturing and counsel.” 

Athena is described as a small, reddish gold haired , beautiful woman with deep blue eyes . She exudes “great love and great compassion and tremendous strength.” Her name, coincidentally or otherwise, is the same as that of the Greek goddess of wisdom, the arts, and warfare. Athena was also the name of a space commander in the television series Battlestar Galactica , which aired on ABC in 1978 and 1979. 

According to the late Thelma B. Turrell (who was also known as Tuella, a name given her by the Ashtar Command), “Athena is the twin flame of Ashtar. He has said to me that he could turn over the whole command to her and no one would even miss him” (Beckley, 1989). See Also: Ashtar; Contactees; Korton; Monka Further Reading Beckley, Timothy Green, 1989. Psychic and UFO Revelations in the Last Days. New Brunswick, NJ: Inner Light Publications. Tuieta, 1986. Project Alert. Fort Wayne, IN: Portals of Light. 30 Athena Maren Jensen as space commander Athena in the 1978– 1979 ABC TV series Battlestar Galactica (Photofest) 

Atlantis 

Atlantis, the fabled lost continent, almost certainly never existed in the real world, but it has long captured the imaginations of human beings. A vast literature—scholars estimate conservatively  that more than two thousand books address the subject—has tackled Atlantis from a wide range of perspectives. Some writers have sought to establish, with what most scholars hold to be inconclusive results, that the legend arose from the mythologizing of a real event, though almost every theorist has proposed a different one. Most writing, however, has taken an alternative - history approach , paying little heed to mainstream archaeology history , and science, while taking Atlantis into the realm of unfettered speculation. 

The legend of Atlantis begins in two works, Timaeus and Critias (written circa 355 B.C.), by the great Greek philosopher Plato. As in his earlier work The Republic, Plato wrote these works as dialogues among four wise men, including Plato’s teacher Socrates. In the course of a long discourse on philosophical issues of various kinds, Critias, a historian and Plato’s great-grandfather, tells of a story that he ascribes to his grandfather, who heard it from his father. Around 600 B.C., while traveling in Europe, Solon (a historical figure remembered for his legal and poetic genius) learned of a great civilization that existed nine thousand years earlier. It was located in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the present-day Straits of Gibraltar) on an island larger than North Africa and Asia combined. According to Solon’s informant, an Egyptian priest, Atlantis had grown arrogant and warlike. It ruled many other islands and parts of what is now Europe. But when it attacked Athens and other Greek city-states, those communities joined forces to repel the invaders and drive them back to Atlantis, freeing other islands from Atlantis’s tyranny in the process. But when the battle was brought to Atlantis’s own shores, cataclysmic earthquakes and floods destroyed the island continent over a single night and day. The Greek soldiers died along with the Atlanteans, and Atlantis sank to the bottom of the ocean, to rise no more. 

That is not all the dialogues have to say, however. Most of the discussion, much of it intricately detailed, describes a civilization that was nearly perfect before pride corrupted it. Atlantis is supposed to be the place of model governance. In its prime it operated by the principles set forth in The Republic. 

No other ancient document contains an independent treatment of Atlantis. All references to the lost continent cite Plato as the source. Some accept Plato’s account as historical, while others see it as an allegory never meant to be taken literally. Plato’s own student Aristotle took the latter view. 

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as European explorers found their way to the Americas, several writers, most prominently Sir Francis Bacon (1551–1626), revived the myth of Atlantis and theorized that its remains could be found in the New World. That would be only the beginning of a new round of speculation. “At one time or another,” a modern chronicler of the legend observes, “Atlantis has been located in the Arctic, Nigeria, the Caucasus, the Crimea, North Africa, the Sahara, Malta, Spain, central France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the North Sea, the Bahamas, and various other locations in North and South America” (Ellis, 1998). 

Among the most influential books ever written on the subject, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882) was the creation of a former Minnesota congressman named Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901). Donnelly surveyed what he presented as evidence from such disciplines as archaeology, geology, biology, linguistics, history, and folklore to argue vigorously for the proposition that Atlantis not only existed but was the place where human beings became civilized. Atlantis sent its people all over the world and seeded the earth. The great gods and goddesses of the ancient world were based on the leaders and heroes of Atlantis; worldwide legends of a mighty deluge owe their origins to dim memories of the catastrophe that overwhelmed Atlantis. The historical civilization influenced most directly by Atlantis was ancient Egypt. 

These revelations sparked international interest, and Donnelly's  book went through  many printings. For a time even some reputable scientists were willing to consider the possibility that the legend was true, after all. Indeed, Donnelly was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Before  long, however, as critics exposed the book’s errors, exaggerations, and assorted scholarly shortcomings, belief in Atlantis moved to the occult fringes, to be championed by the likes of Theosophy founder Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and other philosophers of the esoteric. Before  the end of the nineteenth century, a growing body of occult literature  attested that Atlantis was advanced, not just by the standards of their time, but by modern times as well; it possessed a super science that, among other marvelous accomplishments, had invented  airplanes and television. 

The Scottish folklorist and occultist Lewis Spence, who took a relatively more conservative approach, wrote five books on Atlantis between 1924 and 1943, citing Donnelly and his methodology as his principal inspiration. Bowing to the consensus view of historians and archaeologists, who held that human beings were living in caves nine thousand years before Plato’s time, Spence held that Atlantis had existed nine hundred years before Plato. Meanwhile, allegations, rumors, and outright hoaxes of archaeological “discoveries” of Atlantean artifacts filled the popular press and kept the “mystery” alive. 

The much-circulated channelings of Edgar Cayce  (1877–1945), called the “sleeping prophet” because of the state of consciousness in which he vocalized his psychic readings , often concerned Atlantis. Many who came to him for psychic guidance learned that they had been Atlanteans in previous lives. In Cayce's comprehensive reenvisioning of the lost continent, Atlantis was essentially where Plato had placed it: between the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean. Unlike Plato's, Cayce's Atlantis  was as advanced as mid-twentieth-century  America, and in a number of ways more advanced. The Atlanteans, according to Cayce, at first were spiritual beings. They eventually evolved into flesh-and-blood ones. Their society came undone when civil war erupted. A combination of natural disasters and the misuse of Atlantean technology caused the continent to break apart and sink under the ocean waters. But by the late 1960s, Cayce predicted, the western part of Atlantis would reemerge in the vicinity of Bimini, in the Bahamas. When  the time came, more than two decades after Cayce’s death, several expeditions searched for Atlantean ruins in the area, at one point trumpeting what proved to be natural undersea rock formations as roadways and architectural artifacts.  

Atlantis has been thoroughly absorbed into fringe belief, theory, and practice. In the age of flying saucers, some writers tied UFOs to an extraterrestrial technology that the Atlanteans knew because of their frequent interactions with friendly space people. Hollow-earth  enthusiasts believed that Atlantean machinery and even Atlanteans themselves could be found inside certain cavern entrances around the world. New Age channelers communicated with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of disembodied Atlanteans. A century of occult lore holds that Atlanteans and Lemurians (from Lemuria, the Pacific equivalent of Atlantis) maintain colonies inside Mount Shasta on the California-Oregon border. 

With the rise of the Internet, web sites devoted to Atlantis and related materials have proliferated. One such site, run by the Hawaii-based Department of Interplanetary Affairs, provides a densely detailed overview of the Atlantis myth as it had evolved by the end of the twentieth century. In this version, Atlantis was literally a golden civilization in which gold was so plentiful that it was as common as steel is today in construction and infrastructure. The Atlanteans traveled around the globe in fantastic flying ships. These same ships took them to other planets, including Mars, where they left evidence of their presence in a gigantic structure (the “Mars face”) and a number of pyramids on the Martian surface. The moon was also a colony of Atlantis. Modern-day astronauts found ruins of walls and roads there but were silenced by a government determined to keep the truth about Atlantis from the public. 

The Department of Interplanetary Affairs describes Atlanteans as living lives of leisure and prosperity, while a “national work force of robots, androids, and humanoids from genetic engineering” did the empire’s heavy lifting. “Atlantean science then fostered some bizarre genetic creations—they discovered ways to cross-breed species to create mermaids and mermen, Cyclops, unicorns and other creatures.” That same genetic engineering gave Atlanteans huge size and great strength. 

It all came crashing down, in both a literal and figurative sense, when the population surrendered  itself to the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures, in the meantime, evil Atlantean scientists cracked the secret of mind control and tried to dominate the world and even the solar system. In due course the abuse of both psychic and material technology led to the geophysical cataclysms that destroyed the continent. 

But that was not all. According to the Department of Interplanetary Affairs, Atlantis’s problems generated a world war that spread into space. Atomic blasts decimated the moon colony. Antimatter rays vaporized nearly all of Atlantis’s buildings and cities. “It is said,” the department reports, “that one of these antimatter rays is still operating in the Bermuda Triangle and has been causing planes and ships to disappear. Today that ray is out of control” (Omar, 1996). 

For all the allure of the Atlantis legend, nothing of substance has come to light in the nearly twenty-five centuries that separate us from Plato’s account to lead reasonable people to conclude that such a lost continent ever graced the Atlantic Ocean. In Imagining Atlantis (1998) Richard Ellis writes, “Plato’s description of Atlantis was of a rich and powerful society that was swallowed up by the sea in a great cataclysm, and every remnant of it destroyed. Like the Iliad and the Odyssey, it has managed to survive for more than two millennia. But unlike Homer’s epic poems, Plato’s tale—rarely considered an important part of his voluminous output—has not only survived as a demonstration of the storyteller’s art, but also has become a part of our own mythology.” See Also: Bermuda Triangle; Channelings; Hollow earth; Lemuria; Mount Shasta; Shaver mystery Further Reading Cayce, Edgar, 1968. Edgar Cayce on Atlantis. New York: Paperback Library. De Camp, L. Sprague, 1970. Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature. New York: Dover Publications. Donnelly, Ignatius, 1882. Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. New York: Harper. Ellis, Richard, 1998. Imagining Atlantis. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Omar, Steve, 1996. “History of the Golden Ages, Volume I.” http://www.nii.net/~obie/historygold.htm Spence, Lewis, 1924. The Problem of Atlantis. London: Rider. Steiner, Rudolf, 1968. Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man. West Nyack, NY: Paperback Library. 

Aura Rhanes 

Heavy-equipment operator Truman Bethurum encountered the beautiful Aura Rhanes, captain of a “scow” (spaceship) from the idyllic planet Clarion, on the other side of the moon, in the early morning hours of July 28, 1952, in the Nevada desert. When male crew members ushered him inside the craft, parked in an area known locally as Mormon Mesa, Bethurum saw Aura Rhanes for the first time. She was small, had an olive complexion, and wore a black and red beret. The two engaged in an extended conversation, during which they asked each other about their respective worlds. The spacewoman spoke, Bethurum would write, “in a swinging, rhythmic tone of voice” (Bethurum, 1954). When daylight came, Bethurum was asked to leave, but they were to meet again. There were eleven meetings between July and November alone. Only on the occasion of the third meeting, on August 18, did she reveal her name. Once he spotted her walking down a street in Las Vegas, but she refused to speak with him, apparently not wanting to be recognized. 

Bethurum participated actively in the 1950s contact movement. Most outside observers believed him to be a hoaxer. His wife, Mary, apparently felt otherwise. She divorced him in 1956 on the grounds that he was having sexual relations with Aura Rhanes. As with many other contactees from that period, it is impossible to judge just what Bethurum believed or did not believe about his reported interactions with extraterrestrials. A privately kept scrapbook published after his death carried a poem titled “Third Visit to Mormon Mesa Aug 18 1952” commemorating the meeting in which Aura Rhanes let him touch her to convince him of her physical reality. Other items in the scrapbook consist of clippings about himself and of materials lending support to his story. Though a skeptic of contact claims, British writer Hilary Evans remarks that “we still have no yardstick whereby we can separate contactees into ‘genuine’ and ‘fake’, and until we can establish some such criteria, we must provisionally extend the benefit of the doubt even to poor old Truman Bethurum and cute little Aura Rhanes from the far side of the Sun” (Evans, 1987). See Also: Bethurum, Truman; Contactees Further Reading Bethurum, Truman, 1954. Aboard a Flying Saucer. Los Angeles: DeVorss and Company. ———, 1982. Personal Scrapbook. Scotia, NY: Arcturus Book Service. Evans, Hilary, 1987. Gods, Spirits, Cosmic Guardians. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: Aquarian Press. 

Aurora Martian 

An article in the April 19, 1897, edition of the Dallas Morning News told an extraordinary story in a very few words. Datelined Aurora, forty-five miles northwest of Dallas, it related that a mysterious “airship” had crashed into a local windmill at 6 A.M. two days earlier. On colliding, “it went to pieces with a terrific explosion, scattering debris over several acres of ground, wrecking the windmill and tower and destroying [windmill owner Judge J. S. Proctor’s] flower garden,” correspondent S. E. Haydon wrote. Haydon went on to report that citizens who rushed to the scene found the body of a “badly disfigured” being whom one observer identified as a Martian. The story concluded with the news that the funeral would occur the next day. 

The story appeared in the midst of a wave of what today would be called UFO sightings, which had begun in northern California in November 1896 and moved eastward by the following spring, when newspapers all over America were full of strange and often fanciful stories. The Morning News carried no followup, suggesting it did not take the tale seriously enough to dispatch one of its own reporters to the site. In any event, it wasn’t the only wild airship yarn the paper was carrying. The day before it printed the Aurora story, it recounted a Kaufman County sighting of a “Chinese flying dragon. . . . The legs were the propellers.” At Farmersville, the paper stated, the occupants of an airship sang “Nearer My God to Thee” and distributed temperance tracts. 

The episode of the Aurora Martian was forgotten until the 1960s, when public fascination with UFOs led to research into the phenomenon’s early history. In 1966 a Houston Post writer revived the Aurora story, which he apparently took at face value. Investigators went to the tiny town and spoke with elderly residents. Most, if they remembered the episode at all, dismissed it as a joke. One said that Haydon had concocted the tale to draw attention to the town, which in the 1890s was suffering a serious decline in its fortunes. 

Still, rumors persisted that a grave in the Aurora cemetery housed an unknown occupant, perhaps the Martian. As late as 1973, ufologist Hayden Hewes was trying to persuade local people to let him exhume the grave, a notion that Aurora’s residents vehemently rejected. Confusing matters further, two elderly residents were now claiming that they had known persons who saw the wreckage. Analysis of metal samples allegedly of the airship, however, proved it was an aluminum alloy of fairly recent vintage. There is no reason to believe that a Martian died in Aurora, Texas, late in the nineteenth century. Still, the legend inspired the 1985 film Aurora Encounter, a low-budget ET set in the Old West, and it remains one of Texas’s more exotic folktales. See Also: Allingham’s Martian; Brown’s Martians; Dead extraterrestrials; Denton’s Martians and Venusians; Hopkins’s Martians; Khauga; Martian bees; Mince-Pie Martians; Monka; Muller’s Martians; Shaw’s Martians; Smead’s Martians; Wilcox’s Martians Further Reading Chariton, Wallace O., 1991. The Great Texas Airship Mystery. Plano, TX: Wordware Publishing. Cohen, Daniel, 1981. The Great Airship Mystery: A UFO of the 1890s. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. Masquelette, Frank, 1966. “Claims Made of UFO Evidence.” Houston Post (June 13). Randle, Kevin D., 1995. A History of UFO Crashes. New York: Avon Books. Simmons, H. Michael, 1985. “Once upon a Time in the West.” Magonia 43 (July): 3–11. 

Ausso 

Ausso is an extraterrestrial allegedly encountered by Wyoming elk hunter E. Carl Higdon, Jr., on October 25, 1974. Five hours after he called for help, authorities found Higdon inside his pickup in an area inaccessible to all but four-wheel-drive vehicles. Taken to a nearby hospital, the shaken and disoriented Higdon claimed to have encountered a strange being named Ausso who flew him in a spaceship to another world where he was taken to a mushroom-shaped tower. While inside the tower, Higdon saw what looked like normal human beings, who paid no attention to him. Ausso explained that he was a hunter/explorer, and he and his people were visiting Earth to collect animals for breeding purposes and for food. Soon Higdon was flown back to Earth and put back in his truck. 

Polygraph tests given Higdon in 1975 and 1976 produced ambiguous results, but psychological inventories suggested that he did not suffer from mental illness. Higdon did not seek to exploit his alleged experience and soon returned to private life. University of Wyoming psychologist and ufologist R. Leo Sprinkle, who investigated the incident, judged Higdon sincere, even if it had proved impossible to establish the “validity of the UFO experience” (Sprinkle, 1979). Further Reading Gansberg, Judith M., and Alan L. Gansberg, 1980. Direct Encounters: The Personal Histories of UFO Abductees. New York: Walker and Company. Sprinkle, R. Leo, 1979. “Investigation of the Alleged UFO Experience of Carl Higdon.” In Richard F. Haines, ed. UFO Phenomena and the Behavioral Scientist, 225–357. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. 

Avinash 

On March 3, 1986, an extraterrestrial spirit entered the body of a man identified only as John. Till then, John, a channeler from Bellevue, Washington, had been communicating with another entity, Elihu. However, on this date the space being Avinash took control of John’s consciousness. Soon thereafter, Avinash moved to Hawaii with another walk-in (a person under the control of a spirit or other-intelligence that has claimed his or her body), a woman named Alezsha. In due course, a third walk-in, Ashtridia, joined them. Avinash, however, did the channeling, teaching a doctrine that said essentially that conscious could affect reality; thus, both personal and societal reality can be altered if one rearranges one’s perceptions. 

Overseen by an immense extradimensional spaceship, the three moved to the popular New Age community, Sedona, Arizona, where Avinash met Arthea, and the two became a couple. They were brought together, they believed, by divine guidance. The walk-in group expanded to a dozen members in 1987, but as most members eventually moved away, only three remained by the end of the year. Those three, Avinash, Arthea, and Alana, began to host new occupying entities that would manifest for a time, then depart. While the entities occupied them, the humans would take on their names. Other members who later came into the group, now calling itself Extraterrestrial Earth Mission, experienced the same (to outsiders) bewildering change of names and identities. 

Extraterrestrial Earth Mission became an international movement. Outside the United States, it was particularly successful in Australia. The organization’s headquarters are now in Hawaii. See Also: Walk-ins Further Reading Melton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of American Religions. Fifth edition. Detroit, MI: Gale Research. 

Ayala 

Ayala is a deva, a divine energy, who claims to represent the animal kingdom and, beyond that, “All That Is.” She appeared first on February 2, 1994, to two Sedona, Arizona, New Age women, both of them channelers. Subsequently, she directed other devas, including Shiva and Gaia, who communicated psychically on the subject of human-animal relations. 

Ayala made her presence known when two psychics, Toraya (Carly) Ayres and a woman identified only as Sarafina, happened to be engaged in a discussion of nature spirits. Suddenly, Sarafina started shivering and breathing oddly. Then she lapsed into a trance, during which she voiced animal-like sounds. Soon Ayala was speaking through her, proposing that she and the two women work together on a project. The project required Ayres to be at her computer at three o’clock each afternoon to write down the messages as they came forth. When Ayres protested that this was not a good time for her in terms of her job responsibilities, Ayala insisted that that was the only time the communication could be effected, owing to the vagaries of planetary vibrations. She said, “We will meet you in your dreamtime, and you will be more aware of what your role is in the inter-planetary connection with All That Is. . . There is an energy that needs to form. We have to contact all the devas, and it is not always up to us just which time we can do this.” 

For the next two days Ayala communicated with Ayres before relinquishing her spot to another entity, Shiva, “the blood, the muscle, fur, bone, and spirit of animals.” Ayala told Ayres that animals are evolving spirits just as human beings are. Once love and trust had existed between people and animals. Then the ice ages came, and animals became wild, and humans began using them for food. Then humans started mistreating animals in all kinds of other ways, and they also abused nature generally. Even so, after enduring thousands of years of cruelty, animals continue to love humans, “whether in this dimension or any other.” Humans and animals will be reconciled during this time of transition, when people are beginning the process that will take them out of the third—physical—dimension into higher dimensions. 

In the meantime, Ayala urged human beings to communicate through meditation with animal devas. For example, someone having trouble with ants should visualize the ant deva and express a polite request, first stressing reverence for ants and all they do for the world, then asking the ants to leave the building. If human beings interact with animals in this fashion, there will be no need for environment-damaging poisons or needless slaughter of wild creatures. See Also: Shiva Further Reading Ayres, Toraya, 1997. “Messages from the Animal Kingdom.” http://www.spiritweb.org/Spirit/animal-kingdom-ayres.html 

Azelia 

Azelia is allegedly the half-extraterrestrial offspring of a Brazilian man and an alien being with whom he was forced to undergo sexual intercourse. 

Just after returning home from work around 3 A.M. on June 18, 1979, night watchman Antonio Carlos Ferreira of Mirasol, San Paulo, was startled to see a UFO land outside his house. Three humanoids entered and paralyzed him with red lights that emanated from boxes they carried on their chests. They and he floated into the craft, which eventually took off. Ferreira passed out. Later he vaguely recalled a mother ship. Under hypnosis his “memories” grew sharper, and he saw himself inside a mother ship, looking at the distant Earth through a porthole. Approximately twelve different aliens, of two different but seemingly related types, occupied the same room. One group consisted of green-skinned humanoids with smooth dark hair, thin lips and noses, big eyes, and pointed ears. The others looked somewhat similar except they had brown skin, thick lips, and red, crinkly hair. All stood four feet tall and were clad in white uniforms and gloves. A green being seemed to be in charge. 

Ferreira was taken into another room, which was dimly lit, and made to lie on a couch. A naked female walked in and approached him as the other beings tried to remove his clothing over the abductee’s resistance. The woman, about a foot taller than the others, was essentially human, with a larger than usual head, thin lips, chocolate skin, and narrow nose. Her breath was foul. Ferreira inferred that the beings wanted him to engage in sex with the woman, a notion he found repellent. Only after the humanoids subdued him with a sharp-smelling chemical were they able to disrobe him. Even then, he continued to fight, until one of his arms was placed in a device and the other numbed with an injection. The beings spread an oily liquid all over him, and intercourse followed. At the conclusion of the act, oil was spread over him again, and they removed him from the apparatus and redressed him. 

The beings, who addressed him via telepathy but spoke an “incomprehensible” language to each other, explained that they had conducted an experiment. He would father a male child. At some point, after three unspecified signals had been given, they would return to show him his offspring. After giving him an unpleasant-tasting liquid to quell his appetite, they took him to the disc that had brought him to the mother ship and flew him home. Ferreira suffered from a variety of small punctures and wounds, and for the next twenty days he had a burning sensation in his eyes. 

There were other incidents. In one he was shown the child. In another, on board a UFO, he saw the child with its mother. On March 30, 1983, one being came to his workplace to inform him—notwithstanding what they had told him earlier—that the child was a girl. Her name was Azelia. Further Reading Granchi, Irene, 1984. “Abduction at Mirasol.” Flying Saucer Review 30, 1 (October): 14–22. Marsland. Robert, 1983. “Two Claimed Abductions in Brazil.” The APRO Bulletin (November): 1–2.

Back 

In the 1970s, a middle-aged Italian woman, Germana Grosso, told a Turin newspaper about her two decades of contact with an alien race that calls itself Back. She became aware of its existence twenty years earlier, when a Tibetan lama’s telepathic messages explained to her how she could communicate with extraterrestrials. Soon the Back were showing her scenes of themselves and their lovely home planet, Lioaki. Grosso “saw” them as images on a sort of mental television screen. They also informed her that they have bases on Earth: under the Atlantic Ocean, in the Gobi Desert, and in a valley in northern Italy. Earth is nearing disaster, and the Back are here not to interfere but to warn those who will listen. Further Reading Beckley, Timothy Green, 1989. Psychic and UFO Revelations in the Last Days. New Brunswick, NJ: Inner Light Publications. 

Bartholomew

The channeling entity Bartholomew first spoke through Mary - Margaret Moore  in the mid-1970s. She was visiting friends in Socorro , New Mexico, and undergoing hypnosis in an effort  to relieve back pain. Suddenly, somebody was speaking through her. For the first year of their association, Moore feared that Bartholomew  was a dramatic delusion. But over time she became convinced of his wisdom and prophetic talents. She came to think of him as “the energy vortex” or “the higher and wiser level of energy” (Moore, 1984). 

During the New Age boom of the 198s, Bartholomew known for his gentle, kind manner—was something of a channeling superstar; his messages of comfort and self-love we re taken to heart. He addressed a wide range of subjects, from sex and AIDS to prayer and ego surrender . Before  his popularity waned, he was the subject of two books by Moore . See Also: Channeling Further Reading Moore, Mary-Margaret, 1984. I Come as a Brother: A Remembrance of Illusions. Taos, NM: High Mesa Press. ———, 1987. From the Heart of a Gentle Brother. Taos, NM: High Mesa Press. 

Bashar 

After two close encounters with large, triangle-shaped UFOs over the course of one week in 1973, Californian Darryl Anka—the brother of singer and composer Paul Anka— began reading UFO literature in search of answers. Through his reading about UFOs, he was led to paranormal subjects such as psychic phenomena, channeling, and spirit communication. In 1983, Anka sat in with a channeler and spent several months absorbing information from discarnate sources. The entity offered to teach whoever might be interested in learning how to channel, and Anka decided to take a course from the channeler. Midway through the course, Anka first heard from “Bashar,” who said he was the pilot of the spaceship Anka had seen a decade earlier. 

Bashar claimed to have come from a planet where  all communication is done through telepathy. The people there do not have names as such. He called himself Bashar—Arabic for “commander ”—for Anka’s convenience. 

After a period of telepathic communication with Bashar, Anka started to channel, in other words, to speak with his (or Bashar’s) voice so that others could hear. In due course, Anka has become an internationally known channeler who has taken Bashar (as well as another entity, Anima) to a variety of nations on several continents. Bashar has told Anka that he and his people live on the planet Essassani, five hundred light years from Earth but in a different dimension. Bashar was speaking not just for himself but collectively expressing his society’s sentiments. 

“I have no way of proving ‘Bashar’s’ existence to anyone,” Anka concedes. “The most important  thing is that the information, wherever it’s coming from, had made a difference in many people’s lives, including my own” (Anka, n.d.). Anka’s organization, Interplanetary  Connections, coordinates the channeling efforts and circulates tapes of their recordings . See Also: Channeling Further Reading Anka, Darryl, 1990. Bashar: Blue Print for Change, A Message for Our Future. Simi Valley, CA: New Solutions Publishing. “A Message from Darryl Anka,” n.d. http://www. bashartapes.com/about/message2.htm

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Being of Light

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