Part 1 Earth - An Alien Enterprise ... Environmental Survey ... Galactic Guardians ... Italian Developments

Earth - Alien Enterprise

by Timothy Good

FOREWORD 

BY JONATHAN CAPLAN, QC

In any democratic society, a process for the proper evaluation of evidence is essential, usually within the context of criminal or civil proceedings or of public or governmental inquiries. We are used to assessing the credibility and reliability of witnesses and of seeking corroborative evidence where possible. We know that even honest witnesses may be mistaken, and many people have been sentenced to life imprisonment or even the death penalty on the strength of a single uncorroborated witness. 

The history of the UFO phenomenon, going back to Biblical times, is essentially a record of human testimony of lights, objects, or events that cover the spectrum from the unusual to the high strangeness of close encounters. No doubt the same can be said of paranormal phenomena. This record has its share of charlatans, those who are mistaken, and perhaps those who have been deceived by others—or even by themselves. But the fascinating feature of ufology is the core of honest, intelligent people in different eras and from different cultures all over the world, including many who are scientifically or aeronautically trained, who describe very similar objects or similar experiences of high strangeness which on any basis cannot be the product of a “black” research program. In many cases there are multiple witnesses or there is corroborative evidence in the form of photographic images, radar readings, or physical traces. For the lawyer, who too often has to make bricks out of straw, such a body of material represents a refreshingly strong case, particularly if examined in the same way in which we examine evidence in other contexts. 

We cannot, of course, though, accept these accounts at face value. In the world we inhabit, all is often not what it seems, so how much more so in the world of ufology where our reference points, let alone our vocabulary, are wholly inadequate? This was the hard lesson of Shakespeare’s Macbeth who, having interpreted literally the predictions of the three ethereal witches that strongly implied his future safety, was left dejectedly to ponder that the “instruments of darkness” often “win us to our harm” by half-truths and “with honest trifles.” 

And so to the question asked as long ago as 1955 by Captain Edward Ruppelt (the former head of the U.S. Air Force Project Bluebook): “What constitutes proof? Does a UFO have to land at the River Entrance to the Pentagon, near the Joint Chiefs of Staff offices?” The answer is no easier to provide after more than fifty years of further reports and investigations, despite the advent of the digital camera. UFOs seem to be a phenomenon that coexists with us and which is as baffling to an Israelite in the Sinai desert, or a medieval monk, or a modern fighter pilot or astronaut. That we are not alone is no longer in doubt. But at present that still remains an inference rather than a proven fact. 

There are many powerful institutions that would balk at recognizing such proof even if a landing did occur at the Pentagon on prime-time television. The risk of destabilizing organized government and religion would be too great, and the risk of advanced technology falling into the wrong hands would be greater. In that event, who is to call the shots on whether proof exists or not, especially if key evidence is to be concealed or confuted? If we cannot expect official and honest recognition, then maybe only the people can decide on the basis of the “evidence” that is placed before them. Maybe the much-criticized “new age” culture is the only way to combat the clandestine secrecy that certainly surrounds this subject. 

We owe the few reliable researchers like Timothy Good a huge acknowledgment because they keep the record of this phenomenon, which may be all that we can do, and they get it into the public consciousness. I greatly admire the quality of his books and his perseverance. And I strongly suspect that the real value of his work will only be fully appreciated in years to come. 

JONATHAN CAPLAN is a well-known lawyer practicing in London and has acted in many high-profile cases. He was appointed a Queen’s Counsel in recognition of his standing in the profession. He has been interested in ufology for over forty years. 

INTRODUCTION 

Aliens “have landed on Earth, infiltrated British and American nuclear missile sites and sabotaged weapons, according to U.S. Air Force officers,” declared The Daily Telegraph in 2010, citing an extraordinary press conference held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. “Six retired officers and one former non-commissioned officer claim to have gathered witness testimonies from more than 120 military personnel revealing the infiltration of nuclear sites by aliens as recently as 2003. In some cases, nuclear missiles supposedly malfunctioned while a disc-shaped object hovered nearby.” 1 

“We saw this thing—it was coming right at us and was as low as the car and huge,” reported Bruce and Priscilla Wetherill in January 2012, two years after an incident which had occurred between Gainford and Barnard Castle, in the Teesdale area of England’s Northern Pennines. “It was very frightening,” admitted Priscilla. “Bruce kept driving but we both ducked down, expecting it to hit us. I thought, ‘This is it. We’ve had it.’” 

Described as saucer-shaped, dark on top but glowing underneath and soundless, the object also had “steel-like tentacles hanging down.” At the last moment, it lifted up and narrowly missed the car before disappearing into the sky. The couple expected the car roof to have scratches, but none could be seen. “I’m a realist, but I know what I saw and it was unbelievable,” said Mr. Wetherill. “If I lived to two hundred I would never see anything like it again.” The couple came forward two years after the event, following a spate of sightings in Teesdale. 2 

Roy Shaw did not believe in aliens, ghosts, flying saucers—or anything he could not touch or explain. That is, until 2010—around the same period as the Wetherills’ experience. At about 21:30 on February 6th, he encountered a large craft of unknown origin while walking his dog in Phear Park, Exmouth, Devon. 

“The object was round in shape and about thirty feet in diameter and a hundred feet long, with blue and red flashing lights on its perimeter, and it appeared to land at the top end of the park by the bowling green,” he described to local reporter Becca Gliddon. “My dog started to growl when what I can only describe as a white shape came toward us. It was about four feet high and seemed to be translucent, and moved very slowly toward us. I was transfixed because it made a droning sound…. I didn’t know where the sound was coming from but it was coming straight toward me. I immediately ran back down through the park.” 

Mr. Shaw said the UFO seemed to hover over the hedge of the bowling green, then flew horizontally from left to right before immediately shooting off at high speed back to the left, at a 45-degree angle. It had “appeared from nowhere”—he did not see it actually land or fly overhead. His normally placid border collie dog ran away from it after baring its teeth at the approaching object. “I twisted my ankle when I ran like hell. My dog Syd kept whimpering and looking out of the bedroom window toward the park until at least two in the morning. 

“I still can’t believe what I saw and I am still in a state of shock. Syd doesn’t like going back up there. Something put him off. Everybody thinks you are a crank when you report something like this. I am an engineer. I like to touch and feel things. If I can touch it, it exists, but there’s no way I can explain this.” 3 

Another dog-walker told Roy Shaw the following morning that he had also witnessed the incident. 4 

In August 2010, the Ministry of Defence released another of its voluminous (if often innocuous) files on reported UFO sightings and related correspondence. True to form, The Times remains behind the times—at least from an editorial standpoint—debunking the subject in its tendentious commentary on leading articles: 

“In reality, there is exactly no evidence that Earth has ever been visited by spacecraft from other worlds, but reports of UFO sightings do form a pattern. They manifest the boundlessness of human credulity, which takes shifting forms in different ages but has a stubborn irrationalism at its core…. A culture of pseudoscience impoverishes the condition of the masses as well as the life of the mind.” 5 

In late December 1980, an extraordinary series of incidents occurred in Rendlesham Forest, adjoining the twin U.S. Air Forces Europe NATO bases of Bentwaters and Woodbridge (81st Tactical Fighter Wing), near Ipswich, Suffolk. This well-known case—now dubbed “Britain’s Roswell”—was first revealed in a front-page story in 1983. 6 On several nights, security patrolmen observed small, remotely controlled probes, which at one stage beamed rays of light at the Bentwaters nuclear weapons storage area (where at the time more nuclear weapons were stored than anywhere else in Europe). Lieutenant Colonel Charles I. Halt, a deputy base commander at the time, witnessed a number of these events. Most dramatically, an elongated triangular-shaped craft (associated with the smaller probes) landed in the forest in full view of a couple of security personnel, Staff Sergeant Jim Penniston and Airman First Class John Burroughs. 7 In response to Col. Halt’s official memorandum to the Ministry of Defence at the time, detailing some of these events, the MoD has gone on the record stating repeatedly that the incidents were of “no defence significance.” At the Washington conference cited earlier, Halt hit back: 

“The security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted, both then and now, to subvert the significance of what occurred at RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practiced methods of disinformation. The UFOs I saw were structured machines moving under intelligent control and operating beyond the realm of anything I have ever seen before or since. I believe the objects I saw were extra-terrestrial in origin.” 8 

As admitted in Ministry of Defence documents released in early 2011, certain intelligence papers relating to the Rendlesham Forest incident have gone missing. “The files reveal the MoD received a request for its own records of the incident in 2000, but when officials looked they discovered a ‘huge’ gap where defence intelligence files relating to it should be,” reported Neil Henderson of BBC News. “The hunt generated a series of notes, with one official speculating that ‘it could be interpreted to mean that a deliberate attempt had been made to eradicate the records covering this incident.’” 9 [ If it is not Sherlock Holmes! dc]

In 2011, U.S. Air Force Colonel Theodore “Ted” Conrad, base commander of Bentwaters and Woodbridge at the time of the multiple Rendlesham Forest incidents, provided David Clarke, a skeptic and adviser on UFO matters to the National Archives, with a series of statements condemning Halt’s testimony. “We saw nothing that resembled Lt. Col. Halt’s descriptions either in the sky or on the ground,” he claimed. “We had people in position to validate Halt’s narrative, but none of them could.” There was no “hard evidence” of anything suspicious, he continued, adding that the Geiger counter radiation readings at the landing site were later found to indicate “normal” levels of radiation. All of which is strongly disputed by the witnesses and by Nick Pope, a former MoD UFO investigator who later requisitioned the relevant data proving otherwise. 

Halt “should be ashamed and embarrassed by his allegation that his country and England both conspired to deceive their citizens over this issue,” Conrad’s diatribe—revealed in The Sunday Telegraph—continued. He also disputed the subsequent testimony of Penniston, a security policeman who was in the woods on the first night of the sightings and has since claimed he touched the alien spacecraft. “Although he cannot explain the subsequent accounts of his subordinates,” reported Jasper Copping, “Col. Conrad said he thought the incident may have been a hoax.” 

“I don’t think anyone, least of all Conrad, doubts that Halt and his men saw ‘something,’” said Clarke. “They had an extraordinary experience [which] would remain extraordinary regardless of whether ultimately it was a lighthouse or poachers’ lanterns—which has also been suggested. But Col. Conrad is responsible for the only proper investigation of this incident. He went to look and if there was anything to be seen, I cannot see how he could not have seen it.” 10 

I have remained in contact with Col. Charles “Chuck” Halt periodically since the Rendlesham case was first revealed in 1983. “The fact is, [Conrad] never investigated,” he told me when the article was published: 

“I took Penniston, Burroughs and the others to him and then took him out into the forest (with his whole family). He didn’t even know where the site was but now claims he was out there the day before…. Up until now he denied being in contact with me on that night and now he says he was, and was out in the yard. I guess he fails to remember telling me on the radio he could see something. He also doesn’t know U.S. and U.K. radar picked up an object and the Bentwaters Tower Operators saw the object streak by and go down into the forest. My memo was typed in our office and he reviewed it and showed it to [Colonel Gordon] Williams before it was given to [Squadron Leader] Don Moreland. He and Williams wanted to stay at a distance….” 11 

“Ted Conrad is either having memory problems, has his head in the sand, or continuing the cover-up,” wrote Halt (in part) to Jasper Copping. “When I talked with Gordon Williams, neither he nor Conrad wanted their name mentioned with the incident. Thus, I was directed to get with Don Moreland (RAF) and see what he wanted as it was to become a British affair. I did so and he asked for a memo. I wrote it and it was typed by Conrad’s Secretary. Conrad read it, showed it to Williams, and both approved. It was never meant for public dissemination…. I suppose having to look for details or the truth is less important than the ‘story.’ It’s sad, but I’ve come to understand how the mainstream press works. Truth gives way to the ‘Story.’ Prove me wrong.” 12 The letter was not published. 

“I’ve heard many people say that it’s time for the government to appoint an agency to investigate,” said Halt during a conference on the subject at the National Atomic Testing Museum, New Mexico, in association with the Smithsonian Institution, in September 2012. “Folks, there is an agency, a very close held, compartmentalized agency that’s been investigating this for years, and there’s a very active role played by many of our intelligence agencies that probably don’t even know the details of what happens once they collect the data and forward it…. In the last couple of years, the British have released a ton of information, but has anybody ever seen what their conclusions were or heard anything about Bentwaters officially? When the documents were released, the timeframe when I was involved in the incident is missing. Nothing else is missing….” 13 

In September 2010, a major airport in China was reportedly forced to close down following an intrusion by a UFO. The “flat and tubular” object hovered two miles from Bootee in Inner Mongolia. “Astonished officials say it then zoomed in to circle the airport before suddenly vanishing,” reported The Sun. “Three flights from Beijing and Shanghai were diverted to nearby airports. It is the third mysterious UFO sighting this year to have resulted in Chinese airfields being closed. Xiaoshan, in Zhejiang province, shut for a few days in July after an ‘oddly-shaped, twinkling bright light’ was seen nearby. Another scare was reported in the summer at Hong Kong. 

“The latest UFO was spotted by air traffic controllers in Inner Mongolia’s capital Hoot on radar screens. But they could not make radio contact with it and immediately warned Bootee. A spokeswoman said: ‘Aircraft had to land at secondary airports to avoid a collision.’ The airport was closed for around an hour last month. The Chinese authorities have refused to comment but some experts believe the three sightings could be evidence of a new Chinese military aircraft.”

 Asked for a comment, Nick Pope declared: “Whatever you think about UFOs, there are serious national security and air safety issues involved.” 14 

On August 3, 2011, Mike Sewell, a sports journalist for BBC Radio 5 Live, described his encounter with a flying craft while driving through the village of Cottered, near Buntingford, Hertfordshire, at 04:15 that morning. “There was this big bright light in the sky descending toward the road,” he reported to Radio 5 Live presenter Nicky Campbell via his cell phone shortly afterwards. “It was certainly a kind of —and I dread saying this—disc shape. As it got closer, it then banked to the left [and] went across the countryside and just sat or circled a certain area above the field. I could see underneath it. It wasn’t an aeroplane, and it wasn’t a helicopter…. It had several lights flashing all around it.” Underneath could be seen at least two large, soft white panel lights. A driver in front also observed the craft. 15, 16 A few hours later, I was interviewed by Nicky and offered my opinion that the craft might have been “one of ours.” 

On June 16, 2012, two glowing unidentified objects were reported to have buzzed the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft a few minutes after its launch in the Gobi Desert. The objects were recorded by an infrared video camera monitoring the launch and spotted on a screen at a control center in Beijing about four minutes after the Long March-2F rocket had blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China’s Gansu Province. According to Wang Sichao, an astronomer and UFO expert at Nanjing Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the objects “couldn’t be planes, meteors, birds or separated parts from the rocket.” The Shenzhou-9’s crew of three included China’s first female astronaut, Liu Yang. 17

In November 2012, several international news outlets reported numerous sightings of UFOs by Indian Army troops in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir. And between August 1 and October 15 that year, an Indo-Tibetan border police force unit deployed in Thakung, near the Pangong Tso Lake, reported over a hundred sightings of “unidentified luminous objects” (ULOs). Apparently neither the Indian Army, the Indian Space Research Organization, the Defence Research Development Organization, nor the National Technical Research Organization were able to identify these objects. By day and night, the “yellow spheres” were seen to rise up on the horizon from the Chinese side of the border, gliding across the skies for three to four hours before disappearing. “Something is clearly wrong if our combined scientific resources can’t explain the phenomena,” said a senior Army official in Delhi. “These objects may be a crude psychological operation put forth by the Chinese or sophisticated probes to gauge India’s defense preparedness in Ladakh.” However, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and Chinese drones, at least, were ruled out. 18 To me, the most likely explanation could be the ubiquitous “Chinese lanterns,” though their candle-powered flight duration is normally a great deal shorter than is described in the above report. 

According to Pravda (ПрaBдa—“Truth”), half of the entire Chinese population believes in UFOs. 19 And hundreds, possibly thousands, of Chinese scientists are involved in research. Sun Shili, a former foreign minister official and chairman of the Beijing UFO Research Society, firmly believes extraterrestrials are living among us. 20 I share that view. In common with thousands of people around the world, I have had personal experiences, described herein. 

In 2011, Nick Pope openly admitted to having been part of an official U.K. policy to ridicule UFO reports, in commenting on the release by the MoD in August of yet another huge batch of previously classified (mostly at a low grade) UFO-related reports, typically from members of the public, totaling about nine thousand pages covering the period from 1985 to 2007. During that period (1991–94), Nick was in charge of the official MoD unit. “What’s abundantly clear from these files is that while in public we were desperately pushing the line that this was of no defense interest,” he told the Huffington Post, “we couldn’t say ‘There’s something in our air space; pilots see them; they’re tracked on radar; sometimes we scramble jets to chase these things, but we can’t catch them.’ This would be an admission that we’d lost control of our own air space, and such an admission would be untenable…. 

“To really achieve our policy of downplaying the UFO phenomenon, we would use a combination of ‘spin and dirty tricks.’ We used terms like ‘UFO buffs’ and ‘UFO spotters’—terms that mean these people are nutjobs. In other words, we were implying that this is just a very somewhat quaint hobby that people have, as opposed to a serious research interest…. Another trick would be deliberately using phrases like ‘little green men.’ We were trying to do two things: either to kill any media story on the subject, or, if a media story ran, ensure that it ran in such a way that it would make the subject seem ridiculous and that it would make people who were interested in this seem ridiculous.” 

Nick Pope further admits that he may have been the one who drafted actual MoD statements contributing to the ridicule policy. “If it was my words, then I apologize, I’m very sorry for that,” he confessed. “I believe in open government and freedom of information. I believe that the UFO phenomenon does raise important defence, national security, and air safety issues, and if I helped kill any initiative on that, I’m deeply sorry….” 21 

As Stephen Bassett, director of Paradigm Research Group, quips: “It’s not just about lights in the sky: it’s about lies on the ground.”

In recent years, by way of demeaning the subject, the media frequently belittles those involved in UFO research as “conspiracy theorists.” But conspiracies there are, and researchers are justified in theorizing thereon.

In 2012, Nick Pope commented publicly on an extraordinary photo of a UFO received at the MoD. “The saga began on 4 August 1990 when two members of the public out walking in the vicinity of Calvine, near Pitlochry, in Scotland, sighted a massive, diamond-shaped, metallic UFO. The UFO was virtually stationary and hovered silently for what the witnesses believe was several minutes, before accelerating away vertically at massive speed. During the sighting, a military aircraft, believed to be a Harrier, was seen, but it wasn’t clear if it was escorting the craft, attempting to intercept it, or whether the pilot was ever aware of it at all. 

“A number of color photographs were taken and passed to the Scottish Daily Record, who in turn contacted the MoD, probably because they were seeking a comment for the story. It’s not clear what happened next, because I didn’t join the MoD’s UFO project until 1991 and this investigation was handled by my predecessor. It seems that, somehow, MoD managed to persuade the reporter to part with not just the photos, but the negatives. 

“The photos were then sent to the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) who then sent them on to imagery analysis at JARIC (Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre). Yet at the time, MoD hadn’t even publicly acknowledged that there was any intelligence interest in UFOs at all. The whole situation was positively Orwellian. On the one hand, our line to Parliament, the media, and the public was that UFOs were of ‘no defence significance.’ We implied and sometimes stated that we didn’t ‘investigate’ UFOs, but merely ‘examined sightings to see if anything reported was of any defence interest’—as if the two were somehow different! 

“So why the MoD interest and secrecy? Though we’d never say so publicly, the bottom line was that we wanted the technology…. I first came across this story in 1991, when I joined the UFO project. A poster sized enlargement of the best photo was prominently displayed on the office wall [and] I asked my DIS opposite number about the image. I was told that the official assessment was that the photos were real and the craft had a diameter of around 25 meters (over 80 feet). At one particularly surreal briefing on the UFO phenomenon, my DIS opposite number indicated the photo and pointed his finger to the right: ‘It’s not the Americans,’ he said before pointing to the left and saying ‘and it’s not the Russians.’ There was a pause, before he concluded ‘and that only leaves….’—his voice trailed off and he didn’t complete the sentence, but his finger was pointing directly upwards…. 

“What happened next? The suspicion was that someone had shredded the photo, but whatever the truth of the matter, it was never seen again…. Despite the various media interviews that I did on this story, and associated public appeals, the witnesses have never come forward. Neither has anyone at the Scottish Daily Record (or any other Scottish newspaper) come forward to say that they worked on this story back in 1990…. In their desperation to acquire the photos/negatives (and maybe kill the story), maybe DIS staff somehow tricked the journalist into handing over all the material and never gave it back. If the journalist hadn’t briefed the editor, he may have stayed silent out of embarrassment. Similarly, maybe the witnesses were told that it would be better if they didn’t discuss what they’d seen and took this as a threat….

 “I don’t know if the photos or negatives will ever turn up, but I certainly hope they do. Because whatever people’s views on UFOs, these are the photos that changed the minds of numerous skeptical civil servants, military personnel, and intelligence specialists. I should know. I was one of them.” 22 

The Ministry of Defence claims that it no longer investigates UFO reports. 

Interestingly, on November 5, 2012, a “diamond-shaped” UFO in Pitlochry was filmed several times on video and mobile phone by Adrian Musat, a Romanian chef. At 07:30, while looking out of the window of his flat, he spotted the object hovering above Clunie Wood. “I saw this light pulsing about a mile away,” he told a reporter. “It wasn’t on the ground but floating above the trees and moving left to right, [then forty minutes later] just disappeared, as if it ‘switched off.’” 

Later that day, at around 17:00, Musat saw the object again. “For about twenty-five minutes I saw a small red cloud above the object. All the other clouds were moving across the sky, but this one stayed above the object all the time. It stayed until after 6 P.M. It didn’t make any noise.” He described the craft as being around five meters wide and changing color. 

“I’m a little skeptical on this one,” commented Nick Pope. “Many diamond-shaped UFOs turn out to be caused by a camera effect. When people zoom in on a bright light source, the iris opening creates a diamond-shaped image which is effectively superimposed on to the light.” 23 Correct—in some cases. But the fact remains that an unknown craft was seen on two occasions that day by several witnesses. And some of the images clearly reveal a structured craft. 

“Belief in the alien phenomenon is now more widespread than ever, with many wondering how we and our governments would react to the news that aliens existed,” declared Nick in October 2012, during his promotion of a new video game. He also maintains that figures show that twenty percent of the U.K. believe UFOs have landed. 24 

It is unfortunate that the acronym “UFO” has become synonymous with “alien spacecraft.” Hence, the commonly asked question “Do you believe in UFOs?” is redundant in this context. A UFO is an “unidentified flying object” per se. It may be an alien craft, but in the vast majority of cases—90% or more—it turns out to be nothing of the sort. Conventional aircraft (and/or their landing lights), balloons, planets (such as Venus), stars and satellites, the International Space Station, and so on account for many observations. And in recent years, a proliferation of “Chinese lanterns” is responsible for the large percentage of sightings appearing in the local and national newspaper reports I regularly receive from my press-cutting agency and other sources. I should also mention here the presence of “USOs”—unidentified submergible objects—which continue to be reported in our seas. 25 

This book examines in-depth claims that the United States in particular, and some other countries, including the U.K., have developed advanced spacecraft, thanks partly to the recovery of a number of crashed alien vehicles and, more comprehensively, an alien liaison program. I also feature numerous reports of encounters and contacts with aliens of varying types, many of them published here for the first time. As will become evident, some of these aliens have our best interests at heart. Others do not. We are not the only ones with a vested interest in Earth. 

Earth: An Alien Enterprise is dedicated to Professor Stefano Breccia, who sadly died prematurely in March 2012. One of the most remarkable men I have ever met, Stefano magnanimously provided me with an abundance of information relating to the “Amicizia” group of aliens and those humans collaborating with them, described herein. His extraordinary acumen has widened my horizons, as no other, to the complex panoramas of this multi-faceted subject…. 

PART ONE I 

Chapter One 

ENVIRONMENTAL SURVEY 

It was a late afternoon in the summer of 1932. A mile and a half east of Killdeer, North Dakota, two farm boys, twelve-year-old Leo Dworshak and his younger brother Mike, had finished their chores for the day and were exploring a grassy hilltop near the farm. It was little Mike who first spotted a strange object in the valley below. 

“It was a huge, round thing,” Leo recounts in his remarkable book, UFOs Are With Us—Take My Word. 1 “We just stood there gaping at it and began excitedly discussing what it was doing down there and trying our best to understand just what we were seeing. It was silvery, and although it was probably more than half a mile away, we could tell it was certainly as big as our barn, maybe even bigger. It appeared to be perfectly round [and] I counted many different colors of light on it that came from a band around the edge. 

“I thought it must be a machine because it was rotating in a complicated way. The flashing colored lights formed an outer shell, like a band or belt that went completely around it at the widest point and was turning one way. The inner shell seemed to be standing still or perhaps turning the other way…. It was totally silent and produced no cloud of exhaust fumes or smoke. 

“We stood there on the hilltop for some time, just watching that incredible machine…. Then we decided to try to get closer for a better look. As we began to walk downhill toward the machine, we were still more amazed to find our way blocked by an invisible force that would not let us get any closer. It was as if we were bumping up against an invisible fence or wall. We encountered that invisible ‘something’ again and again, sliding to one side and the other against its unyielding surface. Finally we gave up our efforts to approach it and just sat on the hillside next to the barrier, watching the machine and debating the situation….” 

The boys renewed their efforts to penetrate the invisible barrier by approaching it from different directions. To no avail. “Finally we just sat back down and watched,” Leo continued. 

“Before too long, we saw the curious rotation slow and eventually stop, and the colorful lights stopped blinking at the edge of the machine. We also noticed that the outer shell now had an opening [that] had somehow opened up in the side of the machine. Out of it came three people who walked down a sort of ramp that, just as miraculously, sprouted out of the side of the machine. They stood in the dry weeds beside their enormous, silvery machine…. 

“We watched the distant figures very closely and saw that they were all wearing the same type and color of suit or coverall. These people walked only a short distance from the machine and moved around near it…. They finally returned to the machine and closed the door, and the ramp just went away again.” 

The boys were anxious to return to their farmhouse near Kildeer, a long walk away, in time for dinner. They refrained from telling the rest of the family what had happened. The next day, they hiked directly back to the hillside, but the huge machine was nowhere to be seen, nor did they see it again until two weeks later. 

“It was mid-afternoon as we stood in the same valley, looking at the ground, and puzzling about how there was no sign that anyone had even walked here,” wrote Leo. “I cannot explain why, but our senses somehow told us to look up. There, high in the sky and almost straight above us, we saw the machine. It was flying! It was an airship! We quickly moved back up the hillside and out of the way behind some bushes. The airship we had spotted was now slowly nearing the valley floor. It was clearly coming in for a landing. 

“We could sense a strange stillness that grew about us. This stillness gave us the first hint I can remember of a feeling that these people could stop all movement around them at any given time…. I am certain we were the only witnesses to the ship’s landing. The appearance of the ship was the same as we remembered from our first sighting—a mirror-like exterior with a central rotating band that emitted colored lights. When the ship came to rest, the rotating band slowed to a stop, and the lights went out as before.” 

Once the craft had landed—on four legs with pads at the end of each—the boys were again prevented by the mysterious invisible force from approaching. “We noticed nothing was moving, not a blade of grass or the branches on the bushes,” Leo continued. “While we sat by the barrier and watched this huge machine, the strange door started to open again…. 

“A total of six men emerged from the door and walked down the ramp. They were dressed in a different kind of uniform than when we first saw them, but we were somehow certain they were the same men as we saw before. We were close enough to see that they now wore a shirt-slack type of clothing that looked quite comfortable. We wished we had such fine clothes, instead of our ragged overalls and patched cotton shirts. 

“The men began doing something that looked peculiar. We couldn’t figure out what they were up to. All six men would repeatedly reach down to the ground and apparently pick up something from the earth. Whether or not they took it with them, we could not tell. I don’t know why, but I was convinced they could see us….” 

The boys stayed for an hour or so but, as before, needed to return home for supper. “Mike and I were not happy about leaving, but the length of the shadows and the position of the sun told us our time that day was up….” 

Leo and Mike decided to tell their parents. “Mom and Dad listened patiently to our excited story,” explained Leo. “They agreed with us that something like this machine, this airship, could exist, but advised us just to forget about everything we had told them. We were very, very disappointed at their response to what was for us the most exciting experience of our lives.” 

The next day, Leo and Mike went into Killdeer, anxious to discuss the matter with their friend Mr. Brooks (described for me by Leo’s friend Barry Potter as “an educated, well-traveled man—Killdeer’s cosmopolitan intellectual”), who operated the grain elevator and who they thought might be able to explain what they’d seen. “One of our theories about the machine,” said Leo, “was that it was a new government plan for killing the hordes of grasshoppers that were eating our crops. We thought these people might be part of a government project to spray the countryside with DDT, a new chemical that was supposed to kill troublesome insects like grasshoppers and mosquitoes.” (DDT, per se, was not introduced until 1939. However, as Barry explained to me, Leo had described spray units driving through Killdeer around this time, fogging the neighborhoods with what he referred to as DDT.) 

“Boys, I don’t think you are crazy,” said Mr. Brooks. “I saw one of those things flying through the air without a sound. It was definitely some kind of airship. What I saw fits right in with what you have seen.” He was mystified, however, that the machine made no sound, such as produced by Zeppelins, for example. 

“In those days, people did not even mention things like what we had seen,” Leo explained. “The talk was about the drought and the depression and the government and local doings. Many families went broke in those times and gave up, auctioning the farm to pay the bills and then leaving town. That is part of the reason Mike and I were not afraid when we first saw the ship and the men. I felt that they would do us no harm and might, in some way, help us out. I don’t know why I felt like that, but I was convinced we were safe with them….” 

Although the boys visited the site repeatedly, it was weeks before they had another encounter. “One afternoon,” Leo recounted, “our persistence was rewarded and we again watched the ship come in for a landing. This time, we were about 800 feet from the spaceship when we encountered their invisible wall, the closest we had been to them yet. I still figured there must be some way we could get closer, and somehow get to talk to these men. We waved and hollered, but to no avail.” 

Many return trips proved uneventful, though others brought insights about the strangers. The boys would check the actual landing area for signs of the landed machine, but found no markings of any kind. “The earth was completely undisturbed,” observed Leo. “I thought it was mighty strange that there was no sign of any heavy object having landed there [and that] surely those four mighty prongs beneath the ship would have left some holes in the ground.” 

One afternoon the boys watched a jackrabbit bounce off the invisible “force field.” “The rabbit [then] nuzzled up against the ‘wall’ with what must have been a sore nose, moved along it one way and the other, and then just hopped off…. 

“We got a peaceful feeling from [the men]. Their movements near the ship were peaceful and purposeful. I got the feeling they probably were making a survey of some kind. We always thought of them as men, people, humans like us…. Neither of us could quite accept the fact that these people might be from a very distant planet, yet both of us were able to sit there and think about the possibility.” 

Leo describes the departure of the spaceship. “There was no sound, but we could distinctly feel the earth vibrating,” he explained. “This vibration continued for long moments until we wondered what was going to happen. Then we heard a slight hum, and the vibration ended. It was the first time I ever heard anything like a mechanical sound associated with the ship. The outer shell of the ship started turning, rotating faster and faster with perfect smoothness. Then it suddenly started rising…. 

"Those four tremendous prongs, which were maybe four feet by eight feet, began receding into the body of this flying machine. Again the earth started vibrating and we heard this slight hum. It was not loud enough to draw attention for any distance at all. Then the ship started lifting higher, going straight up. A tremendous amount of colored light flashed out from the ship. It kept going straight up. The speed was so great that when it got about ten or fifteen feet off the ground, it completely vanished….” 

“It is significant,” Barry pointed out to me, “that although the ship was literally as big as a barn, it did not exert enough force on the earth to leave ‘footprints.’ The four-foot eight-foot prongs would imply four contact points with earth, each the size of two coffins side by side. Perhaps the prongs served an electrical grounding function rather than providing mainly structural support. Vibration ended when the prongs left the earth.” 2 

Leo wished they could have taken photographs, but the cost of a camera, films, and processing was beyond most adults in those difficult times. Leo also expressed doubt that the unusual men would want any photographs taken. Attempts to obtain proof were further stalled when the boys failed to persuade some of their playmates to accompany them on their trips. 

Another landing occurred toward the end of August 1932. On this occasion the brothers were a little closer than before. “As the ship approached the ground, we found ourselves immersed in the invisible field of force. It came over us like a flood of water that got thicker and thicker as the ship dropped lower and lower until we could not move. Always before, we couldn’t get any closer. Now we couldn’t get out. We were caught inside the shell of force and were unable to free ourselves, no matter how hard we tried…. 

“We were just sitting on the ground and watched the door open and the men appear again. The door was so different from any doors we had ever seen, and it opened in such a very unusual way, I have no words to describe it. Anything capable of traveling at such a great speed, I reasoned, would have to be very complex…. We thought if we could get close enough to them, we might be able to talk with them. I knew this wouldn’t be easy and I was a little scared to try it … but they held us in their forces. We could not get any closer to them [so] we just sat there keeping an eye on that ship. They had come here for some other reason than just advertising. 

“Here we were, trapped maybe two or three hundred feet from the ship, fighting our feelings of panic. I wish I could adequately convey the way we were rapidly alternating from feelings of fear to safety, from doubt to curiosity, from wonderment to speculation. The great intensity of the experience is very memorable to this day…. They gave us the feeling that they were very interested in what was happening with the plants and creatures in the countryside. These impressions were entering our minds just like our own thoughts.” 

Three days later, on August 28, at around eight in the evening, the craft returned to the valley. “As we approached the ship, moving carefully down the brushy, uneven hillside, we could see them moving about, strangely illuminated in the growing shadows. We again found ourselves blocked by that invisible force, but we were now far closer than we’d ever been. By this time, we had concluded the barrier was like a magnetic force that affected people and animals instead of iron and steel…. 

“Six men were outside the craft, all about the same build and size, between five and six feet tall, wearing a similar light coverall or jumpsuit. They appeared to be smooth-faced, with no sign of a beard or moustache. The men near the ship often bent down and touched the ground. From a distance of no more than forty feet, Mike began waving and yelling at them and shaking the bushes to attract their attention, which resulted in the invisible force-field preventing any further approach.” 

Although convinced the craft was an airship of some kind, at no point did Leo and Mike think the operators were from another planet. “I had to agree with Mike that I didn’t think they were Americans,” said Leo. “Maybe they were Canadians, though most of the Canadians we had seen looked like ordinary North Dakota Americans to us.” However, once the ship had taken off with the familiar spectacular display of brilliant colored lights, and the boys were walking home under the stars, having been released from the force-field, they began to wonder what place the travelers called home. 

The boys revisited the landing site the following day at dawn, hoping for another encounter, but nothing happened. They went home, returning to the site in the early afternoon. Again, nothing. But following a hunch, Leo told Mike that they should wait for a while. “After we spent only a short time on the hilltop, our ship approached,” said Leo. “We could not understand how, but we felt they had some way they could land the ship and depart again without being seen. We had experienced this before. When we watched them take off, the minute they got a few feet above the ground, we lost sight of them. They were just gone. The feeling was growing in us that they were instantly moving so fast that they were just invisible to us [and] if they could move out that quickly, they could certainly slow their ship just as quickly.” 

As the boys tried to approach the ship, they were blocked as usual by the force-field—but this time while they were still very near the hilltop. Mike worried that the men might have lost some confidence because of the way he’d acted the previous night. “They did not want us any closer,” said Leo, “but again we finally managed to draw their attention. They raised their hands and then mostly ignored us. As we stood watching and speculating about them, we could feel them looking us over, examining us in some way I could not quite define. We felt they were definitely interested in us in a friendly way…. 

“Whatever it was they were doing, they were very busy about it, coming and going from the ship with small parcels and odd gadgets we couldn’t quite see. There could have been dozens of them inside, but we never saw more than six of them outside at one time. As before, they all wore similar clothing, the coveralls I admired. There were no visible buttons or even a seam in front that might be hiding the buttons…. 

“After a time, the activity near the ship died down until only one of them remained outside, wandering here and there with no pattern. He came quite close to us, maybe ten or twelve feet away. Whatever was holding us seemed to have no effect upon him. He looked directly at us and smiled in a peaceful and friendly way, raising his hand with the palm open toward us. Then he turned and walked directly back to the ramp and entered the ship. Although the ramp retracted into the ship and the strange door closed, nothing else happened.” 

After the door closed, the boys were released from the force-field. Though tempted to approach the ship, they decided it would be unwise.

On arriving back at the farm—this time late for supper—so engrossed were the boys with the day’s encounter that they were unable to eat. “There was no thought of mentioning what happened to us that night,” explained Leo. “Our parents still thought we were imagining all these things and Mom was unhappy and worried because we did not eat…. 

“When I think back now, I know their huge ship was the key to our interest in them. As individuals, they were not all that much different from ordinary people. If you dressed them in ordinary clothing, you would pass one of them in a strange town without blinking an eye. We were quite convinced that if they could build and fly this amazing airship, they could do many other exciting things we could only imagine. By now, we had begun to suspect they could somehow control the weather, 3 because the conditions were always calm and clear each time they landed … I knew that one day we would come into closer contact with them, but did not know if we would ever be allowed to enter that spaceship.” 

One day, worried about becoming involved in some kind of serious situation with the men in the airship, the brothers felt compelled once more to tell their parents. “I am sure they noticed how we had developed knowledge they could not account for,” said Leo. “They listened to our excited words, but watching them, I don’t think they quite believed us.” 

FIRST CONTACT 

Early one evening, following numerous unsuccessful trips to the site, the boys had another close encounter with the mysterious men and their flying machine. “As we started down the hill,” said Leo, “we found ourselves in quite a different situation than before. The magnetic force they used to keep us at a distance was behind us and we were free to walk cautiously up toward the landing site…. 

“As we approached the ship, these people were outside with smiles on their faces. They were very calm[and] just went about their exercises and made us feel welcome, like we weren’t in the way. We stopped our approach at maybe eight or ten feet from the nearest of them, and just stood there watching…. We could hear no sounds in the strange stillness so near the tremendous ship. 4 This close, we were nearly overwhelmed by its huge dimensions….

 “These men were so ordinary looking in one way and so exotic in another. I noticed that they had light brown hair that was cut much the same as Mom cut ours. Their complexion was very light beige, resembling a good tan. Their eyes were blue with a dark pupil. I would guess their weight to be about 140 pounds, since they were a little taller and more heavily built than my father…. All of them looked to me to weigh about the same and be about the same size and build. Their hands and feet were shaped like ours, but their shoes were totally unlike our own, without laces or soles. 

“The fabric of their clothing was very unusual, with a subtle pattern visible only when the light was just right. The color and cut of the uniform was the same from a distance, but that subtle pattern was different from one to another of them. Their otherwise identical uniforms looked like they were neatly pressed, but did not have badges or any other insignia that might show rank, like our soldiers did. These men were as alike as peas in a pod. 

“Now that we were up close to it, we found the color of the ship to be a light blue that blended smoothly into the color of the sky. When viewed against the sky, the ship was strangely difficult to detect, either close up or from a distance. There was sort of a haze to it. We just stood there and looked back and forth from the ship to the men. They occasionally looked at us and smiled, then continued with their exercises. I was able to talk German probably better than English at that time, although our tongues were tied and we just couldn’t speak. 

“There were three of them, and they stood there and looked at us. They appeared to be very relaxed with that unusual smile on their faces. Their smile was like ours [and] maybe more gentle than any smile I have ever seen.” 

When Mike tried talking (in a mixture of English and German) to the closest man, they all merely continued with their “exercises.” Two of the men walked back into the ship and another came out, walked over to the boys and said, in German, “I can speak your language,” and then, in English, “We speak all languages of all people on your planet.” 

“We asked them some questions, not very deep questions, because we felt curiously tongue-tied,” explained Leo. “We had meant to ask a million questions, but in the end we asked very few. The conversation with him lasted for only a few minutes.”

Leo now noticed that the men were wearing thin, light-colored gloves. No women were on board. I asked Leo why this was so. 

“There are women,” he responded, “but I never met them.” 5 

The brothers were hoping to be invited on board. But it was not to be. Finally, one of the men approached the boys and addressed them, in perfect German: 

“You have had quite an experience with us [and] shown great determination in coming to visit us again and again. You have seen much, you have learned much, and you know more about us than most people in your world. No one will believe you when you tell them about us,” and, addressing Leo, “not until you are an old man…. In your own minds, you will always know the truth about what you have experienced and felt.” The man repeated this in English, then continued in German: 

“We are very real and we are from another galaxy. We have traveled to your planet for over five thousand years. We are from a place far beyond your world by millions of years in time. We continue traveling to your planet because it is part of our responsibility. We are showing you a small part of what you can expect in the future. You cannot learn everything at one time without rest. You will see us again before long….” 

“Leo used the term ‘galaxy’ very loosely,” Barry advised me. “I got the impression that, in his mind, the term would apply to the planetary system of another star or perhaps to a different dimension or time as easily as to another star cluster beyond the Milky Way. He often called the visitors ‘time-travelers.’” 6 

“I did not ask them any more questions and we did not get into the spaceship,” Leo continued. “When we wanted to know something, it was clear we had to be able to ask the right questions before we could get any answers. He stood before us for a few seconds more with that gentle smile on his face, then turned and joined the others…. 

“I was now certain that they were far older than anyone we had ever met before,” explained Leo. “They had very old, wise eyes in bodies that appeared to be young and fit. I decided that they must have far better methods to protect their health and must live in a much better environment than we do. They glowed with perfect health. I also knew they deeply respected our Earth…. This was why they didn’t leave rubbish about, why their area was always clean. 

“I was now firmly convinced that these travelers from the spaceship could definitely read our minds. They responded to the questions, thoughts, and desires in our minds, and in turn were able to place their own thoughts, intentions and beliefs in our minds without using words….” 

When viewed close up, the craft appeared to be constructed of one single piece of material without individual component parts. The ramp and supports beneath the ship appeared to join to the main body of the ship with no visible seams. 

Another encounter occurred in the same valley, late in the day on September 19. Again, the boys were not prevented from approaching the craft. “I do not know why, but I had the impression that the force-field was still there, but they ‘tuned’ it somehow to allow us to pass through,” Leo asserts. 

The craft did not reflect light like ordinary objects; rather, it seemed to absorb the light around it and produce its own subtle light of any color or pattern of shades. “Sounds did not echo off it like the wall of a barn or the face of a cliff. You could stand right next to it and not even notice it was there…. It was more like a living thing that watched and reacted to its surroundings, than a machine or building. Maybe they were putting on a show for us, because the appearance of the ship began doing the most amazing things. 

“One moment it would blend into the sunset, matching every color and pattern. Then it would go like oily water and abruptly change to a polished mirror or a dark, non-reflective surface like a hillside. It took many minutes for us to work our way to the clearing near the ship….” 

At first, the boys did not notice anyone near the ship as they walked up to it, nor the silent lowering of the ramp. But they became aware of a man standing next to one of the huge legs that supported the ship. The man made eye contact with the boys and had started to speak before they suddenly realized there were two men. 

“The one who had started to speak to us continued, turning to the other as he spoke [in flawless German]. ‘These boys would like to touch our ship. Make sure it is well grounded, for we probably have developed some [electrostatic charge] in our travels.’ There was no greeting. I think he simply picked the top item off the jumbled pile of our thoughts and responded to it. Then we were given the opportunity to touch something from another galaxy for the first time. The feeling of touching the ship, which definitely sent a chill up my spine, is also very difficult to explain. 

“I expected it to be hard and metallic, but to this day, I find it hard to believe the feeling I had touching something that was so smooth and exchanged no heat with my hand. It was neither warm nor cold, and was definitely smoother than glass or polished metal, which will stick to your hand. It was like trying to press one magnet against the same pole of another, like I was not really touching anything at all…. 

“The colors were somehow projected from inside it, or emanated from it, instead of reflecting as from a painted surface or a mirror. At that particular moment, the colors seemed to match the sky and even the clouds…. The ship was made in such a way, or of such a material, that once it rose several hundred feet in the air, it looked just like the sky…. 

“We accomplished our next goal in short order when we found ourselves shaking the hand of one of the visitors. It was his actual hand, not through a glove like I had often seen them wear…. The hand was soft and warm, the grip firm. Although I was right in the middle of what was probably the biggest thrill I ever had, I found myself thinking, ‘Sure would like to get into that ship.’ … 

“I think that can be arranged,” came the reply to Leo’s unspoken thought. 

“But first, you will have to go through a ‘process’ to enter the ship. There is nothing to be afraid of [and] you will have to go through the process again to leave the ship.” 

The man explained that this process was controlled by what today might be termed an invisible energy beam or field of radiation, comparing it with the energy field that prevented approaching the ship. “I understood that it was a modified form of the invisible shield,” said Leo. 

“I finally began to recognize that they were giving us information in some way other than by just what they had told us [and that] they were communicating with us, not so much by what they were saying and we were hearing, but more by what we were feeling.” As Leo explained to me: “They can open up areas of the brain that we don’t use. And they made it clear that we have twelve senses, not five. 7 

“They seemed to realize that our world was in trouble, and understood about the depression and the drought as we talked about failed crops and the grasshoppers that were invading our country. They [also] gave us the indication that Man would soon bring terrible wars and suffering upon himself….” 

INSIDE  THE  SPACESHIP 

Finally, the boys were invited aboard the spaceship. “The huge ramp descended silently [and] almost before we knew it, we were escorted up the ramp by the man we had been speaking directly with and at last found ourselves entering the ship. 

“There was an inner and an outer door. When one door opened, the other door closed. Some kind of mist would go across the door. We asked him what it was. He told us that [it] was a ‘disinfectant,’ as we would call it…. One moment there was a wall, the next it was an open door. I could see no hinges or handle, not even a joint where the door met…. 

“After we had entered the compartment and the door had closed behind us, our guide told us we had to remove our clothes so the disinfecting process would be effective. Mike and I were both a little nervous about taking off our clothes in front of these people, but felt a little better about it when we saw that we would get to wear some of their clothing. 8 I was glad we had both taken baths the night before…. 

“I was looking around for light bulbs or fixtures or switches, but there was nothing on the walls or ceiling. There weren’t any shadows, either. The light just seemed to come from everywhere at once. After we had dressed in their clothing, which opened at the back like one of those hospital gowns, we passed into another compartment which contained some kind of haze that went over our entire bodies. 

“They had given us some light jackets to put on that, compared to any clothing we had ever seen, were just beautiful. They were made from a material of a very slick texture [and] when the edges of the fabric were brought together, they attached themselves without buttons…. When the inner door eventually slid open, we came into what must have been their main compartment. The first thing I noticed was their chairs. They were wonderful, just out of this world. 

“Our host invited us to sit in these great chairs [which] were completely adjustable, though the travelers were all so similar to each other, I am certain one size of chair would fit them all … like the ship itself, they didn’t seem to have any individual parts. A force of some kind made them move toward you when you were about to sit without anyone appearing to touch them [and] Mike had a great time trying to outwit the chairs, to the great amusement of our friendly hosts. When I sat, the chair subtly and automatically adjusted to fit and support my body from my heels to my head.” 

A screen measuring about five by four feet appeared, showing pictures of “a place or process” that the boys simply could not fathom. Opposite the screen were other types of machine, described as “magnetic sensors.” 

“Their meals and the cooking thereof are impossible to explain, although they were very nice about trying to explain it to us. We saw what I would call sleeping compartments with unusual beds, but we asked no questions about their sleeping customs. The toilet facilities were fully automatic; things like towels and toilet tissue were not there. It all seemed to be operating by the ‘magnetic’ force, or maybe some chemical reaction…. 

“The largest room we saw was their laboratory or workshop. I saw many different things I could not even begin to grasp [though] I tried to ask some questions about these machines.” The men replied that, no matter how they explained it, it would be impossible for the boys to understand any of it. 

“Why do you keep coming to our valley?” asked Mike. 

“We study the life patterns,” came the simple reply. 

Although the inside of the craft couldn’t be seen from outside, from the inside everything was visible. “We could see clearly through to the outside and observe clouds in the darkening sky,” Leo explained. “We called it glass, but they informed us it was some other type of material which they did not explain to us.” 

Also, images of real-time scenes could be projected from anywhere on to a screen—evidently imagery being fed in from their sensor systems. 

When I interviewed Leo at his home in Helena, Montana, in 2004, he revealed more. “There’s a screen on that panel that shows the entire world, like a map, but it’s different,” he said. “As they travel, the information keeps changing. No buttons are used—it’s done by brain waves, via the eyes, for example.” 9 

“Another of their abilities that we experienced inside that spaceship is just as baffling,” Leo reports in his book. “I sat in one of those wonderful chairs watching the sun go down over the mountains outside and listening to one of our hosts trying to explain something about how far away their galaxy is…. Next thing I knew we are walking on the hillside and he was showing us how the grasshoppers lay their eggs under the dirt. Just like that. I blinked my eyes and there we were, back with the galaxy lecture. Blink again and he was showing us how the magnetic ‘laser’ beam worked. 

“They could [also] stop a bird in flight and hold it motionless in mid-air. Now I saw this done, but I am not sure how. They could catch a rabbit in his jump and stop him in midair [and] they could hold these animals like this for minutes or hours. Then, suddenly, they could just release them. In other words, from the understanding we gained, they had the ability to stop any moving object at any range they desired. Our military men should take note…. 

“These people who we met and talked to in the year 1932 came right out and told us they had traveled to this planet for over five thousand years. They will continue coming to this planet because it is their responsibility. It is important for us to understand that they said the Earth is their responsibility, rather than mankind’s. We were told that they will continue traveling to our planet, to this very spot, and to many other places as our world gets deeper into trouble…. 

“One of the reasons for their great intelligence is their ability to use twelve senses. And they told us that twelve people from their galaxy live full-time on our planet Earth. These people live among us, but we cannot tell that they are different from us. We were also informed that these twelve people have often offered to help our world and were rejected every time….” 

Leo related to me some amusing anecdotal information he acquired that year from a Native Indian chief. “They come from the heavens,” declared the chief. “They’re white, and they dress funny. We got down on our knees to them. They taught us how to plant things. My granddad told me all these things, which he’d learned from his father. They came by season. Then, when the white men came, we originally mistook them for the people who had come from the heavens!” 10 

FURTHER CONTACTS 

Further landings and contacts took place occasionally over the years. “I saw the spaceship off and on after that first year, and even saw it land several times,” wrote Leo. Mike was not present at these events. “In 1933, I had the pleasure of seeing it landing about two miles south and a mile and a half east of Dunn Center, North Dakota. It continued landing at that location from 1933 to 1934…. 

“In August of 1936, about the end of the month, around 9:45 in the evening, I again saw their ship land at the location near Dunn Center and decided to walk up to them. As I approached the ship, I was allowed to enter through their magnetic forces. The ship didn’t look any different from the ship I’d seen in 1932. I was welcomed by three people and was certain they were the same people I had met back in 1932 [and] I did not have to ask to enter their spaceship. 

“They said the world would have many problems, but they would not interfere [and] re-affirmed that this planet was their concern, that Man has his own mind, and that he must learn to take care of his planet if he wants to keep his home. [He] assured me our planet would continue to exist. But I was not assured that Man would continue to exist on it, if he did not learn to take better care of his most valuable possession….” 

In October 1936, Leo enrolled as a laborer with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)—a public work-relief program for unemployed youth during the Great Depression—receiving an honorable discharge in March 1937. 11 

There were no further contacts until 1938, at Watford City, North Dakota, close to the Missouri River bridge. Then, on the evening of September 15, 1939 at around 21:30, as he was en route to Watford City, a spaceship landed about three hundred feet off the side road. Two men—identical to those from the previous encounters—alighted and greeted Leo. Expressing their pleasure at seeing him again, they added that he had changed a lot since 1932. Leo said he was bemused that they, on the contrary, had not changed at all. 

“We are several thousand years ahead of your time. We are germ-free and our life expectancy is quite different from yours. At this time, it would be impossible for us to explain to you how we have accomplished all this in our lives…. But we can assure you, if your scientists would devote their time to increasing your life span, people on Earth would be capable of living in good health much longer than you do now.” 

In You’re Looking Very Well: The Surprising Nature of Getting Old (Faber, 2010), author Lewis Wolpert states his belief that one day human beings may have a lifespan of six hundred years. 

Leo was puzzled to note that, although it was now about ten o’clock at night, the area around the spaceship was not dark. “Some type of glow kept shadowless light in the area,” he observed. As Barry Potter pointed out succinctly to me: “The alien light is always described as ‘shadowless,’ which is directly contrary to our understanding of light as a radiant effect, i.e. proceeding in a straight line from source to a reflecting surface.” 12 I concur. Additional evidence for this technology is provided later, particularly relating to the Amicizia saga (Chapter 13). 

Asking if they were worried about people noticing the glow, Leo received an interesting reply: 

“… We have stopped all movement for three miles around us. There is no way that anything can move within that area. No person can approach the ship unless we allow them entrance. It will be some time, well in the future, before people will be able to understand and do much, if any, of what we are capable of doing now. This new understanding will make a tremendous change on your planet Earth.” 

Leo was invited aboard, involving the same “disinfection” process and change of clothes as before. Six men, seated in the main compartment, were watching an image on the large TV-like screen, which Leo learned was of their galaxy. Again, he marveled at the lack of any visible light fittings in the ship, and inquired how the light was generated. “Our lighting system is in our metal,” he was told. “The power for our machines is also generated in our metal. This is all we can tell you, for it would be impossible for you to understand how our energy system works.” 

By around 23:30 Leo felt it was time to leave. “The first man put his hand on my shoulder. After hesitating for a moment, I put my hand on his shoulder. In turn, I did this with all six men. After I entered the outer compartment, I removed the jacket and handed it inside to them. The door closed and again the mist covered my entire body … as I finished dressing, the unusual door opened and I stepped out of the spaceship.” 

Heading back to the car, Leo was astonished to find his way illuminated in some way by the same shadowless light all the way to his car. 

In 1941, Leo was called to service with the U.S. Navy and eventually participated in the invasions of Okinawa and Iwo Jima. Most of this period was spent with the Amphibious Unit in the South Pacific, serving, for example, in the minesweeper USS Skirmish (AM-303). He also served in the USS Missouri, witnessing the surrender of Japan to General Douglas MacArthur on that ship. I surmise that he probably served with either the Office of Naval Intelligence or Office of Strategic Services—though he never confirmed as much—as he was involved, for example, with the occupation force in Japan, interrogating prisoners, and also served in Africa, 13 mostly related to counter-intelligence. 

Following the war, Leo moved to Bozeman, Montana, working as a salesman, returning to Killdeer in 1948. In 1950, he saw a spaceship landing in the high hills along the highway between Norris and Sappington Junction (some thirty miles from Bozeman). He planned his business trips so as to pass through that area regularly, in the evenings, and observed the craft on a number of occasions. “Because the ship was usually well back from the highway in very difficult terrain,” he explained, “I had no real chance to make a personal contact with them.” 

Leo does not provide dates of these events, but it is worth noting here that on the late afternoon of April 12, 1950, in Helena—some sixty-five miles from the landing site described by Leo—a Mrs. Ida Welch reported an object that looked like “two soup plates put together,” larger than a bomber, flying so close to the ground that “anyone could have shot it down with a rifle.” Three months later, five Helena residents in different locations reported an object, described variously as cigar-shaped, a flaming disc, or wing shaped. 14 

Sadly, Leo’s younger brother Mike was reported killed in action in 1950, during the Korean War. 

In 1962, while driving with his three young daughters and two of their friends at Sappington Junction, Montana, Leo saw a spaceship moving through the evening skies. Perhaps this was an ideal opportunity to secure supportive evidence. 

“It was difficult to pick my way over the dark mountain roads, but finally I drove my car within about two hundred feet of the spaceship. It was hovering about twenty feet off the ground, producing all the colors I had witnessed before…. It was very hard to contain my disappointment when I saw [that the girls] were all frightened. There was no way to convince them no one would hurt us. We watched the ship for only about half an hour. Several times, I flashed my headlights at them, certain they knew the girls were with me and were scared…. I was convinced it was the same spaceship I had seen back in 1932 and again in 1939, and had no doubt that the same people were aboard.” 

In 2010, Leo’s only surviving daughter, Frances Dworshak Hankinson, provided a testimonial to this event for me: 

“The only experience that I have had with UFOs is when Dad took me, my two sisters, and two of their friends over to Sappington Junction. It was late evening. He told us there was something he wanted us to see. He parked out in the middle of nowhere, and had us watch the sky for lights. It was getting late and darker and we wanted to go home. When we spotted lights in the sky—to the best of my recollection the lights were auburn, green, and yellow—the lights were flashing but stationary. Dad flicked the headlights in their direction, and they repeated the same pattern back at him. He did this several times, then it was gone. I have never seen anything like it since.” 15 

One summer’s evening in 1963, Leo was driving from Ennis to Sappington Junction when he spotted a craft in the process of landing in the foothills about six or seven miles off the main highway. He stopped the car to watch. Another car drew up and a couple got out and confirmed what Leo was seeing. He then asked the man to follow him, planning to drive as close as they could, then walk the remaining distance to the ship. The man refused, explaining that he’d experienced a close encounter with a craft in California which had alarmed him. 

While driving through the same area on the evening of October 21, 1963, Leo decided to try to initiate another contact. At around 20:15, he parked his car and set off on what he guessed would be a very long walk to the landing site. Arriving in the vicinity, he could see the ship, parked down a rugged slope. “When I was about halfway down, I noticed the area around the spaceship was lit up with the soft, indirect light I remembered so well. I could see about six people moving about on the ground. As I came closer, I saw two of them were moving my way….” 

The men greeted Leo enthusiastically in the same manner as before. They confirmed that they had monitored him, for instance, during his experience with the couple in the car. “You should have known, after all these years,” they said, “that most people will not believe you. But this time was different. This man knew of our existence. He had seen us before [but] had allowed his fear to convince him that we are a threat….” 

On board the craft, sitting in the extraordinary chairs, a lengthy discussion ensued. Part of the information on board referred to attempts by our military to capture one of the aliens’ ships. 

“Your science and technology have advanced enough to pose a threat to our ships, as well as to the entire planet. If your military leaders continue their efforts to damage our ships, we will be forced to defend ourselves…. Our actions to protect and defend ourselves are governed by a simple principle: Anything that is thrown at us will be thrown back to its source.” 

In this connection, Leo related to me that when he owned some petrol stations in 1974, a man was filling up his car when another customer asked him about UFOs. Leo joined in the ensuing conversation, relating some of his own experiences. The customer—a recently retired Army colonel—revealed an incident that had occurred in the U.S. Southwest. “We had 240 guys out in the desert and we tried to shoot down a craft,” he said. “But they returned every shell back into the guns.” 

“This man had just retired,” Leo told me. “He would not talk dates.” The colonel advised Leo not to reveal what he had said. 16 

Barry Potter independently confirmed this story, adding that “the rounds fired reversed direction in flight and returned to the guns they were fired from, where apparently they exploded, killing troops on the ground.” 17 Those soldiers had no choice; they were simply obeying orders. If true—and assuming this was the same group which contacted Leo—such an egregious retaliation would seem contrary to their declared ethics. Barry, however, emphasized that this was not quite the case. “Leo always maintained that the aliens’ concern was with protecting and preserving the planet Earth, not mankind,” he told me. “He often hinted darkly that the aliens would not hesitate to sacrifice human life to defend their activities or to assure the survival of life on Earth.” 18 

I should mention here that since the 1940s, a number of craft—evidently of different origin from those encountered by Leo—have successfully been shot down, resulting in the destruction of a large number of our aircraft by alien craft, as reported in my previous book. 19 “After we left the ship,” Leo continues in his book, “we sat on the ground for a while, all seven of us, looking up at the stars [and] talking about different things for perhaps another two hours.” 

“I hope we will see you again,” said one of the men, as they bade Leo farewell. “It will be quite a while, though, because we are traveling back to our own galaxy. There will be another one of our spaceships traveling about your world, but they will make far fewer landings than we have. They will be more interested in what man is doing in outer space….” 

“We separated then with very deep feelings,” wrote Leo, “and I started back for my car. Light was provided for me all the way back. I was about half a mile from the ship when I began to notice how warm the area around me seemed to be, although it had grown quite cold out. As I approached my car, I heard the motor running. I never understood how or why they had started my car [but] it was nice and warm as I climbed into it….”

Leo Dworshak died in April 2007, aged eighty-six years. 

In my meetings with him in Helena, Montana, and in subsequent communications, Leo came across as genuine—a “no-nonsense” man. I also learned that he was very well connected. 

In his business dealings, Leo proved to be a formidable opponent, Barry Potter told me. “I consider being a rough opponent a positive character trait. His competitors saw this primarily in his behavior while estimating, bidding, and completing jobs, for which he often served as what we call a general contractor, overseeing several sub-contractors involved in the overall job. Leo did no advertising, relying upon word-of-mouth recommendations from his customers … his philosophy was to do many jobs with a lower profit margin rather than fewer jobs with a high margin, as was common among his competitors.” 20 There is a wealth of additional information in Leo Dworshak’s book. To conclude this chapter, the following is excerpted from the last two pages: 

“If their intent is to eliminate humanity, I have no doubt the easiest course would be to step back and allow us to destroy ourselves. Yet they continue to return, year after year, century after century, and work very hard while they are here. We never saw them in the winter months when insects and plant life are dormant…. I think part of their work here was related to the study of how we were poisoning the environment in those times. I think they were analyzing the grasshoppers, which eat a large amount of foliage, for chemical poisons in our environment. 

“I know they are very concerned about our nuclear and chemical weapons and our warlike nature. What a problem we must be for them, always threatening the health and safety of this beautiful planet, which is their responsibility to protect. The picture that comes to mind is a crowd of unruly children fighting and playing in a carefully tended garden with no regard for the problems they are causing for the gardener….”

Chapter Two 

GALACTIC GUARDIANS 

Nineteen-year-old Pierre Monnet lived in Orange (Vaucluse), France, at the time of his first encounter with extraterrestrials. This occurred in the small hours one night in July 1951 while cycling home after a visit to his fiancée, who lived in the little village of Courthézon, eight kilometers from Orange—a fifteen- to 

twenty-minute journey he made twice a week, on the same days. Monnet had the habit of checking the town clocks before leaving and on arrival, to compare his journey time. “That night was no exception,” he pointed out, “and after the normal check I got on my bike.” It was 01:30. But this time, something different happened—something that was to become increasingly common in abduction scenarios reported years later. 

“I was astonished to find myself instantly transported five kilometers further on, at the entrance of a large, deep pit of sand and gravel, 10–15 meters from the side of the road. Between the road and the pit were a thick hedge, high undergrowth, and bushes. 

“My mind felt blank. I was dazed. Then, like an automaton and as though I was being directed by an irresistible force, I followed the large gravel slope which led down to the right and further into the pit. I don’t know why, but I got off my bike and continued on foot. I felt very tired and had the impression that my feet weren’t touching the ground; but that was only an impression. I was very calm and relaxed. Little by little, a kind of peace came over me. 

“The further I went on, the more I had the feeling that one has when getting into water for the first time, up to one’s shoulders; a gentle pressure on the lungs … and I was short of breath. Then, at a bend in the pit where I moved as though I knew exactly where I was going, I saw a luminescent light about sixty meters in front of me, behind a mound of earth. 

“I kept on and then saw in front of me, fifteen meters away, floating between fifty and eighty centimeters above the ground, a disc fifteen to twenty meters in diameter, topped with a central bulge in the form of a dome. From top to bottom the machine must have been about three meters high. The disc pulsated with a white-silver-blueish light, clearly illuminating the walls of the pit ten meters away. This radiation seemed to radiate from the ‘soul’ of the ‘metal’ of which this strange machine was made, with a fascinating beauty [and] the metal seemed at the same time to be both material and ethereal, with constant inner movement—almost alive. 

“As I came closer, I noticed that the surrounding noises had dimmed. When I was about six meters fromthe disc, I could no longer hear the noise of traffic [even at that time of night, there was still traffic, owing to the Festival]. As I approached, total silence fell. I could no longer hear the crickets or even the sound of my footsteps on the gravel. It was impressive. I felt great, amazed at what I was seeing….” 

I should point out at this juncture that Monnet had no recourse to the Dworshak brothers’ experiences, which were not published until 2003. 

THE FOUR EXTRATERRESTRIALS 

“Probably because I was so fascinated by the machine,” Monnet continued, “I had not noticed, in front of it and a little to the side as it still hovered above the ground, four extraterrestrial human beings in tight fitting catsuits of shiny silver-gray metal which lit up an area of five meters around them. I was no more than a few meters away from them and I went calmly toward them. I was no longer aware of my body. 

“Arriving three meters in front of these beings, I stopped and looked at them. They were barefoot. They were tall; they must have measured at least 1.85 meters [over six feet]. They were perfectly proportioned and identical in build. Their hair was blond-white and reached almost to their shoulders. Their faces were beautiful and very refined. They had a light, frank, and gentle expression which I have never seen in Earth people. They were so beautiful, but at that moment I was not sure if they were men or women, since they did not have breasts. But after a brief while there was no doubt—they were certainly men. They gave an impression of great strength and they were built like athletes. Despite that, they were smiling and radiated calmness, gentleness, and goodness…. 

“They then raised their arms in my direction, almost horizontally, the palms of their hands turned upwards. They made this movement almost in unison, and in silence. I made a gentle movement backward: I wanted to escape, and shivered from head to toe. They made themselves clear to me without opening their mouths: I heard their thoughts very clearly in my head. It was extraordinarily precise and clear. Moreover, while admitting that in our language we have precise words capable of translating perfectly what was said during this contact—which I now describe as telepathic—the quantity of what was said to me in such a short time (I estimated about half an hour) could not be expressed in our language if we were to speak for eight hours a day for a year or two….” 

THE MESSAGE 

“Given to me were not words but coded thoughts in the form of impulses, for which I could find no words of translation at the time, apart from a few isolated phrases that I could translate instantly,” claimed Monnet. “The realization of the concepts which were given to me that night did not become apparent to me until two years after my contact. Here are a few scattered phrases that I could understand immediately as they were ‘pronounced.’ 

“‘We want the best for all living beings, especially if they are not aggressive…. Do not come any closer to our vehicle. It is dangerous for human beings not in tune with its wavelength: the vibrations it emits would destroy the cells of your body. 

“‘This meeting will cause you troubles which will affect your health; you will have nervous problems for a certain time, then that will pass. Later, our conversation will become clear and you will be able to let the people of your planet know what we have told you … but take care not to allow your own concepts to interfere…. 

“‘You are not the only person on your planet to have spoken with us. Unfortunately, most people do not want to speak about us and the others are not believed…. Your life would not be long enough: for this reason, we propose to regenerate the cells of your body so that you will live the value of 120 human years…. We will carry out this regeneration inside our vehicle after our meeting, and forgive us that we think it necessary for you not to remember the operation.’ 

“Then,” said Monnet, “the beings stopped emitting their thoughts. I was so intent on receiving these that I hadn’t noticed that an opening had appeared in front of the dome, wide enough to allow two men to enter. Inside was a white-orange light almost unbearable to look at. The four beings were there. Then—silence. 

“Without saying good-bye, I turned, picked up my bike, and wheeled it back up the slope to the main road. Instantly, I was transported to the outskirts of Orange. I looked at my watch and was amazed to see that it was still 1.30 A.M. I went to compare the time with the town hall clock, which read 1.35 A.M. My watch also read 1.35 A.M. For me, it was incredible. But what was more, I could not remember the journey of eight kilometers [five miles]: it seemed as if I had not traveled at all. Also, unusually, I was not tired or out of breath because of the journey. I hadn’t noticed anything; not the headlights of passing cars, nor the passing countryside….” 

MISSING TIME 

“I had to rationalize it. Time could not have passed. Time had stopped during the journey and the meeting—which I thought had lasted about twenty minutes. If you take into account that normally I took twenty minutes to cover the whole distance, theoretically that made forty minutes unaccounted for. The thing seemed so fantastic that during the long days and sleepless nights that followed, I tried to work out what had really happened and posed myself all sorts of questions and proceeded to check it out from the beginning. 

“First, checking the time of the two clocks and my watch, I made another return journey between Orange and Courthézon. I noticed that the time on the three was exactly the same—the clock at Orange, the clock at Courthézon, and my watch. Not one of the three had stopped, gained, or lost time. 

“Objectively, I thought that all this could have been a particularly vivid dream. To be certain that I did not dream again, that night I woke up my mother, inventing some excuse, in the hope that she would reprimand me. The following morning I was reprimanded. Now I had the proof that I had not been dreaming. In any case, I know the difference between a dream and reality….” 

Monnet also rejected the hypotheses that he may have fallen asleep at some stage of the bicycle journey, or suffered from amnesia. Was his experience entirely subjective? Had the four aliens actually been there, in an objective sense? “To this question, I always reply that the four beings were certainly there in front of me, as large as life,” he insisted. “But on reflection, taking into account the fantastic scientific lead I know they have, my contact could have been only a perfect three-dimensional projection. This hypothesis is frightening and must bring home to us the psychic and scientific potential which they possess…. 

“Although I don’t exactly remember exactly getting into the craft … after they had performed their ‘cellular regeneration’ on me I did not feel at all different. Only this one thing raises a shadow of a doubt. But despite the fantastic aspect of this regenerating operation, certain details lead me to think they told the truth. For example, at the start of the telepathic contact, the craft had no opening; however, at the end of the contact, a large opening was there, on the right of the dome. While I was ‘listening’ to their thoughts, I was perfectly aware of what I could see around me. I didn’t see this opening appear, though through it shone a whitish-orange light which was unbearable to look at. Not one of the four extraterrestrials was absent during the contact … but the telepathic contact had stopped. 

“Logically, all this would imply that I had momentarily lost consciousness; the opening appeared; I was transported inside and protected by some method or other against the deadly vibrations of the machine; the regeneration was carried out, and I regained consciousness in the same place where I had been before losing consciousness….” 1 

According to investigator Jean-Pierre Troadec, a few years after this encounter a man claimed to have seen the same, or a similar, craft, a few kilometers away. He did not know Monnet—who also told no one about his experience until 1962. 2 

Monnet provided further information from the communications received during this initial contact. The aliens said they had the technology to travel faster than light in both galactic and intergalactic space. Their declared agenda: “To profit from the scientific discoveries they had made, with a view to perfecting their knowledge; to look after and protect those civilizations which had lost all wisdom and in so doing had released on their respective planets processes that are sometimes irreversible and which impact on other extraterrestrial civilizations; to educate developing worlds and assist them technologically.” 3 

SUBSEQUENT CLAIMS 

After this adventure, Monnet went on to claim further experiences, including the sighting of a flying disc during his military service in Indo-China. And in France in June 1974, while paying for gas at a service station, he recognized two men filling their car (a new, metallic gray Renault 16) as either his original contacts or their doubles. The men imbued him with a sense of “exceptional well-being,” radiating “tranquility, power, peace, and love”—identical to that recounted by those involved in the Amicizia saga (Chapter 13). They gave him a penetrating look, transmitted a telepathic message, then departed. 4 

As with “follow-up” experiences asserted by many contactees, we run into apparent absurdities and contradictions. To his credit, however, Monnet acknowledged as much himself, and sought explanations. 

While I was performing with the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Orange Festival in July 1978, I interviewed Monnet at his home in Sorgues, together with my friend Ben Cruft (also a violinist with the orchestra). Monnet spoke with conviction about his earlier contact experience. A manuscript with which he presented me—subsequently incorporated into his first book—provides some interesting information. 

Monnet claimed that the group that contacted him originated from “the star you call Vega [which] has fourteen planets, of which nine are inhabited.” He was informed that they had numerous bases within our solar system—on Mars, our moon, on one of Jupiter’s and on one of Saturn’s moons—and a number of bases on Earth. 

While my skepticism regarding much of the information later provided to Monnet endures, I am including the following, supposedly transmitted telepathically to him in July 1977, against the possibility that some important data may be contained therein. We must bear in mind that Monnet, a factory worker with but a scant knowledge of scientific matters, may well have misinterpreted some of the technical data: 

“The surface bases we have introduced on your planet are protected from sight by a powerful magnetic field acting on the molecules of a layer of surrounding air covering the places where the bases are constructed. The principle of this magnetic process is based on bending the molecules of air and taking the form of prisms to avoid the source of light. This process renders invisible every object which isn’t naturally compatible with the place, and renders it invisible in the range of this magnetic field. In parallel with that, we give out a wavelength acting on a precise part of the brain of the occasional person who approaches our installations. Our bases on your planet cannot be seen even from a height, remaining unnoticed by your aerial photographers….” 5 

Pierre Monnet passed away in January 2009 at a hospital in Tarascon (Bouche-du-Rhône), aged seventy-eight—well short of the 120-year lifespan predicted for him by his alien contacts. Perhaps he became disillusioned toward the end—perhaps not. 

“I could not find then, neither can I find today, a single doubt in my mind as to the reality of my physical contact in 1951,” he emphasized in 1978. “For me, it has been the most extraordinary and also the most beautiful experience of my life. The story’s resemblance to science fiction does not make it any less true or real. It constitutes and perhaps shows the way to a marvelous future for mankind.” 6 

“Since the initial appearance of these craft, the entire world’s defence chiefs have hidden the truth,” wrote Monnet in 1974. “From the outset, civil and military pilots, qualified personnel attached to aerial detection units, as well as astronauts, were sworn to secrecy if they spoke of what they had seen in the sky, on radar screens, or the signals coming in from the various artificial satellites revolving around the Moon, Venus, and from modules sited on Mars….

“The phenomenon generates considerable anxiety among the world’s governments, who have only one method of holding back the moment of truth—to maintain the conspiracy. What the public should know is that all over the world, many contacts have been made and continue to be made between the average Earth person and the extraterrestrial representatives of a galactic civilisation which is scientifically, socially, and philosophically very much in advance of our own….” 7

Chapter Three

ITALIAN DEVELOPMENTS 

The proverbial “little green men” have long been associated with aliens, despite the fact that very few encounters relate to such beings. In stark contrast to the Dworshak and Monnet cases is the one reported by Professor Rapuzzi Luizi Johannis, a well-known Italian author and painter in his time. Johannis experienced only one encounter—and it involved little green men. The following is for me the most convincing of such cases. 

On the morning of August 14, 1947, Johannis—a keen geologist—was making his way up a short valley called the Chiarsò, near Villa Santina, Carnia (Fruili) in northeast Italy. He had been following a path along the stream, which wound up through clumps of fir trees and deposits of alluvial rubble, 1 when his adventure began. 

“As I emerged from one of these clumps of fir,” he wrote in his richly detailed report, “I noticed, at a distance of about fifty meters from me, a large lenticular object of a vivid red color. When I had arrived at a spot a few steps from the ‘thing,’ I was able to establish the fact that it was a disc—seemingly of varnished metal [and] having the shape of a lens and a low central cupola with no apertures. At its tip a sort of shining metallic antenna, of telescopic form, was protruding…. 

“The object, some ten meters wide, was embedded, to the extent of about a quarter of its length, in a great transverse cleft in the friable rock of the mountain side, and was at a height of about six meters above the bed of the stream. I decided that I would climb up there and see what it was…. I looked round to see whether there was anybody about who—should the need arise—could help me. It was then that I perceived, at a distance of fifty meters or so from me, two ‘boys.’ At any rate, that is what they seemed to be, at first. I shouted to them and pointed to their disc. And then I started toward them. When I had halved the distance between them and myself, I stopped, petrified. 

“The two ‘boys’ were dwarves, the likes of which I had never seen nor even imagined. They were coming toward me slowly, with tiny strides, their hands at their sides and their heads motionless. When they had come to a few paces from me, they halted. I had no strength left. I seemed to be paralyzed, or to be dreaming. But I was able to observe them in every detail. And those details have remained impressed upon me. However, I must confess that the dominating sentiment in me then was one of enormous astonishment combined with fear…. 

“They were no more than 90 centimeters in height, and were wearing dark blue-colored overalls made of some material that I would not know how to describe. ‘Translucent’ is the only term for it. They had collars and rather deep belts, all of a vivid red color. Even the cuffs and the shins of the legs ended in ‘collars’ of the same type. Their heads were bigger than the head of a normal man, and gave them a caricaturish aspect. But I think the sight of their ‘faces’ would have put an end to anybody’s desire to laugh. 

“At this point, I am obliged to explain that the terms I have used in this description are purely indications, and are of a purely anthropomorphic nature, because I don’t know, today, whether those things that I have defined as nose, mouth, eyes, and hands were like that…. 

“They had no signs of hair, but in place of it they were wearing a sort of dark brown tight-fitting cap, like an Alpinist’s bonnet. The ‘skin’ of their faces was an earthly green. The only colour that comes close to it is the plasticine commonly used by sculptors, or of clay dipped in water. The ‘nose’ was straight, geometrically cut, and very long. Beneath it was a mere slit, shaped like a circumflex accent, opening and closing again at intervals, very much like the mouth of a fish. 

"The ‘eyes’ were enormous, protruding, and round. Their appearance and color were like two well ripened yellow-green plums. In the center of the eyes I noticed a kind of vertical ‘pupil.’ I saw no traces of eyebrows or eyelashes, and what I would have called the eyelids consisted of a ring, midway between green and yellow, which surrounded the base of those hemispherical eyes, just like the frame of a pair of spectacles. 

“I remained there in astonishment, for what seemed an interminably long time, gazing at the two extraordinary creatures. I think the silent confrontation lasted no more than two or three minutes. Then I raised my arm with the [geologist’s] pick and waved it in their direction and then in the direction of the disc and, in an agitated voice, I shouted and asked who they were, where they came from, and if I could be of any help. They wheeled round very quickly and I can’t remember what I said after that, for things began to happen fast. I now believe that the two beings had interpreted my precipitate gestures as being threatening…. 

“One of them raised his right hand to his belt, and from the center of the belt there came something that seemed as though it might be a thin puff of smoke. I now think it was a ray or something of the sort. Anyway, before I had time to move or do anything, I found myself laid out full length on the ground. My pick shot out of my hand, as though snatched by an invisible force. Only once in my life have I had the experience of a violent electric shock [and] as soon as I was struck by that ray, I felt a similar sensation. Moreover I felt myself deprived of all strength and all my efforts to raise myself meant an expenditure of energy that was beyond me. 

“Meanwhile, the two midgets were coming toward me, and they halted at a spot two meters from me, where my pick had fallen. I managed to roll over on to one side and saw one of them bend over and pick up the tool, which was longer than he was. And this is how I was able to see his green ‘hand’ quite distinctly. It had eight fingers, four of them opposable to the others! It wasn’t a hand: it was a claw, and the fingers were without joints. I also noticed the chests of the two beings were quivering; like a dog’s chest when it pants after a long run.” 

Johannis finally was able to manage a sitting position. “Meanwhile, the two entities had arrived beneath the disc. I saw them climb up, slowly but surely, to the cleft in the rock and disappear into the disc itself, which was embedded almost vertically in the rock. A few more minutes elapsed, and then the strange object shot straight out from the rock and rose into the air. A cascade of stones and earth fell down on to the bed of the river…. 

“The disc remained there stationary in the sky, like an enormous suspended gong. I could distinctly see its sharply cut flange four or five meters from me, and for a moment I was seized with terror that it was going to come down and cut me in half…. I think I shouted at the top of my voice. At any rate, I am certain that I made every effort to get up and escape. The result was that I kept falling back again, supine and racked with pain. Meanwhile, the disc had tipped slightly away from its vertical position, then tilted slightly. Then it suddenly grew smaller, 2 and vanished. 

"Immediately afterward, I was struck by a tremendous blast of wind which rolled me over and over on the ground and filled my eyes with dust. I ended up against the stones in the river-bed and remained there for I don’t know how long. Finally I managed to get into a sitting position again, and it was then that I looked at my wrist watch. It was 09:14. But it was only at about midday that I was in a fit state to get back home. In the meantime, I even slept for an hour. All my bones felt as if they were broken and my legs were weak and trembling…. 

“I looked in my rucksack for my thermos flask of coffee and was not surprised to find it shattered to pieces, but what did surprise me was not being able to find any trace of its metal casing. Also gone were my aluminum fork and an aluminum can that had contained my cold lunch. I had to be content with bread soaked in coffee and throw away the salami and all the rest. Finally, I should add that I searched in vain for my pick, which would have been very useful to me at that point as a walking stick.” 

AFTERMATH 

Johannis reached Raveo at 14:00 and promptly went to bed, explaining to the proprietress at the inn where he was staying that he’d fallen from a rock. The following morning, armed with another pick—and a revolver—he returned to the spot. 

“Naturally, there was nobody there,” he said. “I climbed right up to the cleft in the rock since I thought the two creatures might have thrown my old pick—to which I was very attached—in there, but I found nothing.” 

Later, he made inquiries in Raveo as to whether anyone had noticed any kind of “aeroplane” in the sky. Two people told him, independently, that they had: in one case at 08:30 and in the other at approximately 10:00. One of the witnesses said he noticed a “red globe being carried aloft by the wind” behind the mountain on the slope on which the village lies. 

“At that time,” wrote Johannis, “I tried to explain my strange adventure in many different ways, but none of them having anything whatever to do with flying saucers or other craft of extraterrestrial origin. At first I thought the ‘saucer’ was an experimental machine of the Allied Forces which were then in occupation of the Campoformido aerodrome in the Fruili area. My next thought was of some device of Russian origin. Finally, I wondered about some unknown civilization still hidden away in some unexplored regions of the world like the Matto Grosso of Brazil. The most absurd hypotheses could be adapted to fit my extraordinary adventure. But not one of them was satisfactory, since not one of them could account for the presence of the two men.” 

Although pilot Kenneth Arnold’s famous sighting of what were dubbed “flying saucers” by the press in the United States—which occurred in the state of Washington on June 24, 1947—had been reported worldwide, flying saucers generally were not known about in Italy in the summer of 1947. Johannis decided therefore to tell no one of his experience. It was not until two months later, when he sailed for the United States, that he heard about the Arnold sighting. During a subsequent five-year stay in America, he read everything he could about the subject and in 1950 decided to relate his experience to two trusted friends, whose names and addresses were given to the Italian group which published this account. In 1952, on returning to Italy, he decided to approach a newspaper office. 

“I went to Milan and called upon the director of L’Europeo. There I was told that the subject was an interesting one but that, in order that it could be published, authenticated, it was necessary for me to furnish ‘proofs’ of its authenticity. I replied that, if on that morning in August 1947 I had imagined that I was going to encounter creatures from another world, I would certainly not have hesitated for one moment to take along a whole troop of journalists, cinematographers and (why not?) a company of soldiers too….” 3 

In a letter in 1964 to Gianni Settimo, director and founder of the Centri Studi Clipeologici in Turin, Johannis enclosed sketches he had made to illustrate his report, published for the first time in their journal, 4 adding some relevant remarks: 

“… As I told you, at such a distance in time, many of my recollections—exact enough at the time—have weakened and have consequently become a little confused. I refer particularly to the exact appearance of the ‘bodies’ of the two ‘beings’ met by me, as well as the shape of the eyes, since I am no longer certain whether they were vertical or horizontal slits or whether there weren’t any pupils at all. 

“When I sent my account of the episode from America to the Italian weekly L’Europeo, I sent it with a sketch of the ‘pilots,’ but when I came back to Europe that sketch was not returned to me because their editorial office had lost it. That sketch was done by me two months after the encounter, and consequently was much more faithful a reproduction than the ones done by me now. 

“However, generally speaking, the front view of the ‘head’ can be taken (apart from the pupils) as corresponding to the absence or not of ears or something similar that I can’t recall absolutely. The sketches of the complete figures are to be considered as rough and approximate outlines and consequently of purely general value….” 5 

In assessing Professor Johannis’s report, we have to take into consideration the fact that, in addition to being well known as a painter, he was a prolific author who wrote at least fifteen books of science fiction. Of course, he could have invented the story. Though to what end? As far as I am aware, the story was never marketed separately nor incorporated into any of his books, and it did not appear in print until 1964, in a relatively obscure Italian UFO magazine.

 “I am at present inclined to believe that the two pilots were nothing more than two robots, whereas in 1947 I was convinced that I had met real and actual extraterrestrial beings,” wrote Johannis in 1964. “I believe that old pick of mine is now in a museum on some other planet. And I hope that somebody up there is trying to decipher the marks cut in the handle….” 6 

 

A FLYING SAUCER LANDS IN THE ITALIAN ALPS 

As Britain’s distinguished researcher Gordon Creighton pointed out in his accompanying notes to this report, there are striking resemblances—disc shape, low central cupola, and shiny metallic antenna—to the disputed photographs of a flying disc and its humanoid occupant taken in 1952 by the thirty-year-old Italian engineer Giampiero Monguzzi, in the presence of his wife, on the Alps (see photo section). 

Many researchers have arbitrarily confuted the photos, insisting that models were used. Having a particular prejudice to antennae sticking out of flying saucers and aliens wearing Apollo-type spacesuits (if long before such were used), I initially thought the same. But later, as an experienced photographer, I noted that the depth of field and everything else in the pictures appear proportionately correct in comparison with his written report. And in addition to parallels with the Johannis case, there are others. 

Monguzzi’s pictures are widely known among students of the subject. His actual report, however, is not. On the morning of July 31, 1952—a few days after a second wave of flying saucer sightings was reported that month and tracked over Washington, D.C.—Monguzzi and his wife were on a climbing trip near the Cherchen glacier on the Italian side of the Bernina massif, a little to the south of St. Moritz. 

“Suddenly, I felt something uncanny around us,” begins his account. “A cold wind had been blowing all the time from the summits, and we had just remarked that it sounded like a music chord, similar to that heard in the sails of a boat. But quite suddenly, this noise had stopped completely although we could still see the wind blowing up snow on the mountain rims. And then we noticed that we couldn’t even hear our own heavy footsteps on the gravel and icy ground, and we could no longer hear our voices, though we were quite near each other. I saw my wife’s mouth move but failed to detect a sound. It was an uncanny, compact silence which surrounded us, a strange kind of vacuum. 7 

“Suddenly, my wife grasped my arm with a frightened look in her eyes, and I also got a real shock, because no farther than 200 meters from where we stood, an enormous object had settled on the rim of the glacier, silently. It appeared to have come from below, from the valley beneath the glacier—certainly not from above. My first guess was that of a plane trying to land, but the object had no wings. Looking at it, I grew more and more uneasy. The ice around us reflected the light, blinding me, as did the sun’s rays coming from my right. I turned away, trying not to look at the object again. We both hid ourselves behind a rock. The uncanny silence around still prevailed. I did not even try to talk again—I wouldn’t have dared to open my mouth. 

“After some moments I gathered enough courage to cast a glimpse over the rock. The strange craft was still there. I now dared to approach it and slithered down on the gravel for about 50 meters. I couldn’t go any farther without losing my foothold on the ice. 

“I now recognized clearly that it was a round silvery disc with a diameter of approximately ten meters and a height of about three meters. As usual, I had my camera 8 over my shoulder and, becoming bolder, looked through the viewfinder and shot my first picture. But as I failed to hear the usual click, I felt uncertain and shot a second one. For a few more moments the disc lay there in front of me without showing any sign of life.

 “But then suddenly I noticed a man beside the craft, wearing a kind of diving-bell which reflected the sun’s rays like metal. The figure seemed to move toward me. Instinctively, I shot another picture, although my legs felt as though glued to the ground, as if paralyzed. 

“The man seemed not to notice me. He now changed direction and started walking slowly around his disc, as if inspecting it. After every two or three steps he stopped, looking upward to the perimeter of the vehicle. His movements seemed to be hindered somewhat by his dress. In his hand he held an instrument like a flashlight. The figure was not clearly outlined and gave the impression that his dress was of a furry material. 

“I fail to remember how long this procedure took, but I would estimate that no more than five minutes had elapsed since the landing of the craft. From the spot where I stood, I was unable to see the whole object; rather, I was seeing its lower part. Nonetheless, I could observe an antenna coming out on the top, and there seemed to be another antenna on the man’s ‘rucksack.’ The pilot, having finished his inspection, showed up once more on the other side of the disc. I presumed that there was an entrance on the side hidden from me. I shot some more pictures. 

“After a while, I noticed that part of the completely smooth-surfaced hull seemed to be turning around: the movement might have involved a third of the hull. And suddenly, the craft shot up in the air, noiselessly, hovering a few seconds at a height of approximately ten meters. Then, like a lift, it shot upward toward the summits of the Bernina massif. I had had enough time, however, to note that the antenna had retracted and that the upper part of the craft seemed to have a number of portholes or hatches. I managed to shoot another two pictures of the departing disc, and while the distance grew, I felt life coming back to my legs. My voice also returned. 

“I looked at my watch. It was exactly 09:27. Still very confused, and with shaking knees, I went to the rock where my wife was hiding. She had followed everything with her own eyes and was still pale and disconcerted. After a while we went to the landing spot, looking for traces or tracks on the ground, but found none. The snow was absolutely icy. For a while I wondered, however, why the disc, with quite a weight of its own, had left no imprints, but then I remembered that it had hovered at a height of ten meters, and I realized it could also have done this at ten centimeters off the ground. Our own shoes left no marks either, by the way….” 9 

In 1958, my Swiss friend Louise (“Lou”) Zinsstag, a distinguished researcher, sent a letter to the Swiss military airfields administration, enclosing a copy of an article which included one of the Monguzzi photos. She received a reply from the operations unit a few days later: 

“It is with great interest that we read the article…. Above all, we are astonished and surprised by the revealing photographic material, especially the picture taken by the Italian engineer Monguzzi in the Bernina massif which shows a landed flying machine with a human figure beside it. 

“As we were looking at that photo we asked ourselves if engineer Monguzzi was able to witness the take-off of this flying saucer. Do we know whether he might have had the opportunity to locate some other witnesses who observed the machine before it took off? 

“We must strongly emphasize that our question implies no doubt about the genuineness of the object photographed; it arises from a sincere and intense interest in all the questions it raises, and we would be very grateful if you could reply to us. 

“We look forward immensely to your reply and thank you for your trouble….” 10 

A copy of the original letter in German appears on p. 44. Unfortunately, I do not recall the outcome of this correspondence, but I am sure that Lou sent the administration copies of all seven photos, together with a copy of the article written for Epoca, which would have resolved their questions. 

Feeling certain of having taken the pictures of the year and planning to sell them at a good price, Monguzzi and his wife went to Milan. The engineer—a member of the Edison Society of Italy—showed them to his friends, to his manager, and to some newspaper reporters. But nobody believed him: all were certain that they were clever fakes. A heated controversy arose in the Edison Society with the result that Monguzzi lost his membership—and later his job. 11 

Would a hoaxer have gone that far?

next

EISENHOWER AND THE EXTRATERRESTRIALS

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