Contactee
Contactees are persons who claim to have experienced contact with extraterrestrials. Some claimed ongoing encounters, while others claimed to have had as few as a single encounter. Evidence is anecdotal in all cases. As a cultural phenomenon, contactees achieved their greatest notoriety during the 1950s, but individuals continue to make similar claims in the present day. Some contactees have shared their messages with small groups of believers and followers, and many have written books, published magazine and newspaper articles, issued newsletters or spoken at UFO conventions. The accounts of contactees generally differ from those who allege alien abduction, in that while contactees frequently describe positive experiences involving humanoid aliens, abductees usually describe their encounters as frightening or disturbing.
Overview
[edit]Astronomer J. Allen Hynek described contactees thus:
The visitation to the earth of generally benign beings whose ostensible purpose is to communicate (generally to a relatively few selected and favored persons) messages of "cosmic importance". These chosen recipients generally have repeated contact experiences, involving additional messages[1]
Contactees became a cultural phenomenon shortly after the modern era of UFO sightings began at the end of the 1940s. The contactees often gave lectures at UFO conventions and wrote books and articles about their alleged experiences. Though the contactee phenomenon peaked during the 1950s, it still exists today. Skeptics usually consider such "contactees" as charlatans, con artists or deluded in their claims. Susan Clancy wrote that such claims are "false memories" concocted out of a "blend of fantasy-proneness, memory distortion, culturally available scripts, sleep hallucinations, and scientific illiteracy".[2]
Contactees usually portrayed aliens as more or less identical in appearance and mannerisms to humans. The aliens are also almost invariably reported as disturbed by the preponderance of violence, crime, and wars that occur on earth, and by the possession of various earth nations of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons. Curtis Peebles summarizes the common features of many contactee claims:[3]
- Certain humans have had physical or mental contact with seemingly peaceful and benevolent, humanoid space aliens.
- The contactees have also flown aboard seemingly otherworldly spacecraft and traveled into space and to other planets.
- The Aliens want to aid mankind in solving its problems, stop nuclear testing and prevent the inevitable destruction of the human race.
- This will be accomplished by the brotherhood spreading a simple message of love and brotherhood throughout the world.
- Other sinister beings, such as the Men in Black, use force and coercion to continue to cover-up the government's knowledge of UFOs and suppress the message of peace and hope.[3]
History
[edit]Early examples
[edit]As early as the 18th century, people like Emanuel Swedenborg were claiming to be in psychic contact with inhabitants of other planets. 1758 saw the publication of Concerning Earths in the Solar World, in which Swedenborg detailed his alleged journeys to the inhabited planets. J. Gordon Melton notes that Swedenborg's planetary tour stops at Saturn, the furthest planet discovered during Swedenborg's era, he did not visit then unknown Uranus, Neptune or Pluto.[4]
In 1891, Thomas Blott's book The Man From Mars was published. The author claimed to have met a Martian in Kentucky. Unusually for an early contactee, Blott reported that the Martian communicated not via telepathy, but in English.[5]
1900s
[edit]George Adamski, who is probably the best known UFO contactee of the 1950s, had an earlier interest in the occult and in the 1930s founded the Royal Order of Tibet, a neo-theosophical organization. Michael Barkun wrote of Adamski: "His [later] messages from the Venusians sounded suspiciously like his own earlier occult teachings."[6]
Christopher Partridge noted significantly that the pre-1947 contactees "do not involve UFOs".[7]
Contactees in the UFO era
[edit]To support their claims, the early 1950s contactees sometimes produced photographs of the alleged flying saucers or their occupants. A number of photos of a "Venusian scout ship" by George Adamski and identified by him as a typical extraterrestrial flying saucer were noted to suspiciously bear a remarkable resemblance to a type of once commonly available chicken egg incubator, complete with three light bulbs which Adamski said were "landing gear".[8]
For over two decades, contactee George Van Tassel hosted the annual "Giant Rock Spacecraft Convention" in the Mojave Desert.[9]
Response to contactee claims
[edit]Even in ufology— the study itself limited to sporadic or little mainstream scientific or academic interest—contactees were generally dismissed as charlatans or regarded as the lunatic fringe by serious ufologists. Many ignored the subject altogether, out of possible harm to serious study of the UFO phenomenon.[10][11] Jacques Vallée notes, "No serious investigator has ever been very worried by the claims of the 'contactees'."[12]
Carl Sagan has expressed skepticism about contactees and alien contact in general, remarking that aliens seem very happy to answer vague questions but when confronted with specific, technical questions they are silent:
Occasionally, by the way, I get a letter from someone who is in "contact" with an extraterrestrial who invites me to "ask anything". And so I have a list of questions. The extraterrestrials are very advanced, remember. So I ask things like, "Please give a short proof of Fermat's Last Theorem." Or the Goldbach Conjecture. And then I have to explain what these are, because extraterrestrials will not call it Fermat's Last Theorem, so I write out the little equation with the exponents. I never get an answer. On the other hand, if I ask something like "Should we humans be good?" I always get an answer. I think something can be deduced from this differential ability to answer questions. Anything vague they are extremely happy to respond to, but anything specific, where there is a chance to find out if they actually know anything, there is only silence.[13]
Some time after interest in the contactee phenomenon had waned, Temple University historian David M. Jacobs noted a few interesting facts: the accounts of the prominent contactees grew ever more elaborate and as new claimants gained notoriety, the older contactees often backdated their first encounter, claiming it occurred earlier than anyone else's. Jacobs speculates that this was an attempt to gain a degree of "authenticity" over later contactees.[14]
List of contactees
[edit]Prominent UFO contactees include:
References
[edit]- ^ Hynek, J. Allen (1972). The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, p. 5. Henry Regnery Company. ISBN 978-0809291304.
- ^ Clancy, Susan (2005). Abducted, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0674018796.
- ^ a b Peebles, Curtis (1994). Watch the Skies: A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth, pp. 93–108. Smithsonian Institution, ISBN 1560983434.
- ^ Melton 1995, pp. 2–4.
- ^ Melton 1995, p. 7.
- ^ Barkun, Michael (2003). A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. Los Angeles: University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 0520238052
- ^ Partridge 2003, p. 8.
- ^ "Profiles in Pseudoscience: George Adamski!". Archived from the original on 27 September 2011. Retrieved 18 September 2010.
- ^ Lewis 2000, p. 238.
- ^ Sheaffer, Robert (1986). The UFO Verdict: Examining the Evidence, p. 18. Prometheus Books. ISBN 0879753382
- ^ Sheaffer, Robert (1998). UFO Sightings: The Evidence, pp. 34–35. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1573922137
- ^ Vallee, Jacques (1965). Anatomy of a Phenomenon: Unidentified Objects in Space, A Scientific Appraisal, p. 90. Henry Regnery Company. ISBN 0809298880.
- ^ Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism"
- ^ Jacobs, David M. (1975). The UFO Controversy In America. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253190061.
- ^ a b c Lewis 2000, p. 86.
- ^ a b Lewis 2000, p. 138.
- ^ Curran, Douglas (1985) In Advance of the Landing, Abbeville Press, ISBN 0896595234
- ^ Story 2001, Angelucci, Orfeo.
- ^ Lewis 2000, p. 53.
- ^ Story 2001, Bethurum, Truman.
- ^ Clark 2001, p. 356.
- ^ Watson 2020, p. 65.
- ^ Clark 2001, p. 357.
- ^ Lewis 2000, p. 61.
- ^ Lewis 2000, p. 255.
- ^ Lewis 2000, p. 98.
- ^ Lewis 2000, p. 222.
- ^ Watson 2020, p. 72.
- ^ Lewis 2000, p. 181.
- ^ Lewis 2000, p. 15.
- ^ Clark 2001, p. 358.
- ^ Tumminia 2007, p. 161.
- ^ Tumminia 2007, p. 27.
- ^ Story 2001, alien iconography.
- ^ Lewis 2000, p. 266.
- ^ Clark 2001, p. 354.
- ^ Lewis 2000, p. 289.
- ^ Lewis 2000, p. 249.
- ^ Lewis 2000, p. 317.
- ^ Clark 2001, p. 355.
Works cited
[edit]- Clark, Jerome (2001). "The UFO Contactee Movement". In Lewis, James R. (ed.). Odd Gods: New Religions and the Cult Controversy. Amherst: Prometheus Books. pp. 353–358. ISBN 978-1-57392-842-7.
- Melton, J. Gordon (1995). "The Contactees: A Survey". In Lewis, James R. (ed.). The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds. Albany: State University of New York Press. pp. 1–13. ISBN 978-0-7914-2329-5.
- Lewis, James R., ed. (2000). UFOs and Popular Culture: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Myth. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-57607-265-3.
- Partridge, Christopher (2003). UFO Religions. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-26324-5.
- Story, Ronald D., ed. (2001). The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters. New York: Perseus Books. ISBN 978-1-78033-703-6.
- Tumminia, Diana G., ed. (2007). Alien Worlds: Social and Religious Dimensions of Extraterrestrial Contact. Religion and Politics. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-0858-5.
- Watson, Nigel (2020). Captured by Aliens? A History and Analysis of American Abduction Claims. Jefferson: McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-1-4766-8141-2.
