|
In 1954, a second wave of UFO books were published that introduced a new term, 'contactee'. Men like American George Adamski and British Cedric Allingham reported on colorful meetings with friendly space aliens who took them for rides to the Moon and planets.
California became the home for an entire culture hailing the interplanetary brothers. Alien music was even recorded and one contactee later ran for president! The serious UFO community distanced themselves from such stories, but the public took to them for a while. Even Ruppelt was made so uncomfortable that he began to question his stance on UFOs. However, in April, Ruppelt published an article for True magazine which revealed some of the unexplained cases that Blue Book had discovered. Some UFO researchers think that the contactee craze was fostered by the CIA. Did they plant stories to help fulfil that controversial Robertson panel plot to make UFOs look ridiculous?
A secret CIA memo reporting on the first year following the panel's top secret decisions says that these plans had worked. However, by the autumn a new wave of sightings struck, this time in Europe. Many strong sightings described aliens alongside UFOs. These were not wild contactee stories, but extraordinary meetings with strange beings described by seemingly credible witnesses.
On 10th September at Quarouble, France, an oval object landed on a railway track. Strange beings under four feet tall stood beside the craft and fired a beam of light which 'froze' witnesses to the spot. Heavy imprints on the railway sleepers left tangible evidence of the encounter.
At Ranton in Staffordshire, Britain's first alien encounter followed on October 21st. Jessie Roestenberg and her children hid under a table as humanoid figures with blond hair gazed down pitifully from above.
This wave lasted three months and produced 40 cases where alien pilots were reported - four times as many as during all previous years since the first flying saucer was described.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed