Person claiming contact with extraterrestrial beings
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 perhaps had their greatest notoriety from the late 1940s to the late 1950s, but individuals continue to make similar claims in the present. Some have shared their messages with small groups of followers, and many contactees have written books, published magazine and newspaper articles, issued newsletters or spoken at UFO conventions.
The contactee movement has seen serious attention from academics and mainstream scholars. Among the earliest was the 1956 study,
When Prophecy Fails
by
Leon Festinger
,
Henry Riecken
, and
Stanley Schachter
, which analyzed the phenomenon. There have been at least two university-level anthologies of scientific papers regarding the contactee movements.
Contactee accounts are generally different from those who allege
alien abduction
, in that while contactees usually describe positive experiences involving
humanoid
aliens, abductees rarely describe their experiences positively.
Overview
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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 in the 1940s and continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s, often giving lectures and writing books about their experience. The phenomenon still exists today. Skeptics often hold that such "contactees" are deluded or dishonest 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 violence, crime, and wars that infest the 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 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 help mankind solve its problems, to stop
nuclear testing
and prevent the otherwise inevitable destruction of the human race.
- This will be accomplished very simply by the brotherhood spreading a message of love and brotherhood across the world.
- Other sinister beings, the
Men in Black
, use threats and force to continue the cover-up of UFOs, and suppress the message of hope.
[3]
History
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Early examples
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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 System
, 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
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George Adamski
, who later became probably the most prominent contactee of the UFO era, was one contactee with an earlier interest in the occult. Adamski founded the Royal Order of Tibet in the 1930s. Writes Michael Barkun, "His [later] messages from the Venusians sounded suspiciously like his own earlier occult teachings."
[6]
Christopher Partridge
notes, importantly, that the pre-1947 contactees "do not involve UFOs".
[7]
Contactees in the UFO era
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In support of their claims, early 1950s contactees often 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 Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention" in the
Mojave Desert
.
[9]
Response to contactee claims
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Even in
ufology
?itself subject to at best very limited and sporadic mainstream scientific or
academic
interest?contactees were generally seen as the
lunatic fringe
, and serious ufologists subsequently avoided the subject, for fear it would harm their attempts at serious study of the UFO phenomenon.
[10]
[11]
Jacques Vallee
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 the 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, they typically 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" to trump other contactees.
[14]
List of contactees
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Those who claim to be contactees include:
References
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]
- ^
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, Gordon J., "The Contactees: A Survey". In Levin, ed. (1995)
The Gods Have Landed: New Religions From Other Worlds
, pp. 1?13. Albany: University of New York Press.
ISBN
0791423301
.
- ^
Melton, p. 7.
- ^
Barkun, Michael (2003).
A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America
. Los Angeles: University of California Press, Berkeley.
ISBN
0520238052
- ^
Partridge, Christopher. "Understanding UFO Religions and Abduction Spiritualities". In Partridge, Christopher (2003) ed.
UFO Religions
(2003), p. 8. London: Routledge.
ISBN
0415263239
,
- ^
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.
- ^
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- ^
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The UFO Verdict: Examining the Evidence
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ISBN
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- ^
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UFO Sightings: The Evidence
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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
.
- ^
Allingham, Cedric (February 14, 1955).
"Meeting on the Moor"
.
Time
. Archived from
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on September 30, 2007
. Retrieved
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.
- ^
Scott-Blair, Michael (August 13, 2003).
"UFO pioneer inspires site's astronomy theme"
.
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.
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a
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e
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h
Lewis, James R. (2000)
UFOs and Popular Culture
, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc.,
ISBN
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- ^
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In Advance of the Landing
, Abbeville Press,
ISBN
0896595234
- ^
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(1979-07-03)
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(2007-05-06)
- ^
a
b
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The Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters
, New American Library,
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- ^
Bethurum, Truman (1995)
Messages from the People of the Planet Clarion
, Inner Light Publications,
ISBN
0938294555
- ^
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The White Sands Incident
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- ^
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- ^
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"The Mysteries Of Aliens And Area: Atlanta believers keep the faith in the otherworldly"
.
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- ^
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- ^
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Alien Intervention
. Lafayette, LA: Huntington House. pp. 156?7].
ISBN
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.
- ^
My contact with flying saucers
, London, N. Spearman [1959],
OCLC
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Why we are here
, Los Angeles: DeVorss & Co., 1959,
OCLC
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"End of the World in 2012 (Cont.)"
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; Tan.
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The Coming of Tan
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I was but seven years of age in November of 1953, when I first saw the strange lights above the river near my home in Northeastern Arkansas.
- ^
Moosbrugger, Guido (2004).
And Still They Fly!
(Second Edition). Steelmark,
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- ^
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, UFOrum, Grand Rapids Flying Saucer Club, 1956,
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- ^
Binder, Otto O. (June 1970).
Ted Owens, Flying Saucer Spokesman, The Incredible Truth Behind the UFO's Mission to Earth
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- ^
Paz Wells, Sixto (2002).
The Invitation
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- ^
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- ^
Szwed, John F.
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; pp. 28?29
- ^
"Centralian Tells Strange Tale of Visiting Venus Space Ship in Eastern Lewis County",
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- ^
Rael (2006).
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. Nova Distribution. p. 109.
- ^
York, Malachi Z.
Man From Planet Rizq
Study Book One: Supreme Mathematics Class A For The Students Of The Holy Tabernacle p. 23
External links
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