An Early Contactee?
In the most recent issue of his Saucer Smear newsletter, Jim Moseley reveals an intriguing story about the early years of the so-called Contactee controversy.
As Jim says: “Here’s an obscure fact of some interest: According to a recent Net posting, the first of the 1950s UFO contactees was not George Adamski but a now-forgotten man named Samuel Eaton Thompson.”
Jim continues: “In March of 1950 – more than two years before Adamski’s first interplanetary exploit – Thompson was walking along a forest trail near Mineral, Washington, when two Venusians landed in their flying saucer and invited him on board for a chat. The had long blonde hair and perfect features (of course!), but the most interesting thing about them was that they were both stark naked. It is not stated what sex they were, if any.”
Jim rounds up the story thus: “There was the usual talk about the other inhabited planets in our solar system and the beautiful philosophy of the Space People. Kenneth Arnold, the renowned 1947 private pilot who saw ‘nine gleaming objects’, was sent by Fate Magazine to interview Thompson, but he decided against writing this story, as it was ‘just too unbelievable’. We honestly believe it was the nudity aspect that spoiled Thompson’s ‘15 minutes of fame’! He was apparently never heard of again.”
Of course, Thompson’s story is a veritable classic of Contactee lore, filled as it is with bizarre, outrageous and (probably unintentional) humorous “facts.”
But there may be an even earlier Contactee-style report than that of Thompson.
It is a matter of historical UFO lore that throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, many of the so-called Contactees of that era who claimed face-to-face contact with long-haired, human-like aliens asserted that their cosmic visitors expressed deep concern about our burgeoning atomic arsenals, and desired that we all lay down our weapons and live in peace and harmony with one another…man. That’s right: hippy stuff.
The FBI in particular took a keen interest in a number of the Contactees, including the aforementioned George Adamksi, as well as George Van Tassel and George Hunt Williamson. Yep: if you wanna have a Contactee-style experience, you stand a much better chance if your parents named you George.
That, however, is beside the point.
The FBI has declassified via the terms of the Freedom of Information Act its files on the above-Contactees, as well as those on several other, lesser known figures in the field.
However, all of the relevant documents date from the early 1950s onwards, when people like Adamski really came to the fore. All of the relevant documentation, that is, aside from an intriguing five-page collection of papers from 1949.
Those same papers detail what may be the bare bones of a Contactee-style account that dated from the summer of 1947 – the same time period in which the Flying Saucer controversy kicked off, following the sighting of our hallowed lord, Kenneth Arnold.Â
The strange saga all began – as far as the FBI was concerned, at least – on 9 July 1949, when the columnist Walter Winchell brought to the attention of Hoover’s G-Men a report that he had received from a “Mr. Jones of Los Angeles” who was claiming a striking UFO encounter in the summer of 1947.
Winchell told the FBI that Jones had sent him a letter which – according to official FBI memoranda – was “very well written, obviously by a man of intelligence.”
As a result, the FBI dug deep into the man’s story, as the following report from FBI Assistant Director D.M. Ladd to J. Edgar Hoover reveals:
“In this letter, Jones stated that in August of 1947 he left Los Angeles for the mountains and started hiking through the mountains. About 10:00 a.m. he was laying on the ground when he observed about one-half block away from him a large, silver, metal object, greenish in color, shaped like a child’s top and about the size of the balloons used at Country Fairs.”
The FBI’s report continued:
“He stated that there appeared to be two windows in the object and portions of metal appeared transparent and that he gained the impression that there was some life within this object although he saw no persons. The object appeared as though sealed as a pressure chamber. He stood up and waved toward this object and this so-called Flying Saucer was off the ground in a second, knocking Jones to the ground. In its flight he stated that its power was silent and he raised the question as to whether this was an inter-global landing on our planet. He thought that it might be a device to land on our planet because the occupants of another planet had become curious as to the reaction caused by the atomic bomb causing trouble in an expanding universe. He asked the question as to whether it was possible that the occupants of another planet might have solved the theory of negative energy.”
An unnamed source within the scientific arena informed the FBI that Jones’ letter indicated “a very good knowledge of physics,” and stated that it would benefit the FBI to “check into” Jones’ background and to secure a full interview with him to ascertain the complete picture of events.
All attempts to do so ended in failure, however, and it was initially suspected that perhaps the whole thing was nothing more than a hoax. There are, however, a number of issues that are worth commenting on.
First, Jones apparently lived in California – just like many of the original Contactees.
Second, in the same way that the encounters of Adamski and Van Tassel occurred after they had felt compelled to travel out into the desert, so Jones’ experience took place after he embarked upon a trip into the isolation of the Californian mountains.
Then, there is the issue of the alleged concern on the part of the aliens as it related to atomic weaponry: was this Jones merely speculating? Or, as with the contactees of the 1950s, had some intelligence subtly implanted this idea in his mind?
As people who are aware of my views on the Contactee issue will know, I do not for one single minute believe that any of the Contactees ever had face to face meetings with literal aliens from Venus, Saturn or wherever.
I do, however, accept that we have some form of unknown intelligence among us that can manipulate the human mind, and that the Contactee encounters of the 1950s were merely the then-latest incarnation of a phenomenon that has presented itself in various, multi-faceted ways since we took our first, faltering steps.
Many of the Contactee stories of feeling impelled to visit remote desert and mountainous locations, where they would receive messages and thoughts from higher space beings, have clear and undeniable parallels with certain alleged religious experiences and Shamanic-style episodes.
Given that Jones’s experience occurred in the mountains while he was “laying on the ground,” I have to wonder strongly if Jones was perhaps in some form of altered state during his encounter, and maybe an altered state brought on by whatever it is that lies at the heart of the UFO puzzle.
If that is the case, Jones’ story – that purportedly described events that occurred only weeks after Kenneth Arnold’s sighting in the summer of 1947 – may well represent the earliest Contactee-style case on record from the specific, modern era of ufology.
Â
This post was written by
 Nick Redfern – who has written 1064 posts on UFOMystic.
Punk music fan, Tennents Super and Carlsberg Special Brew beer fan, horror film fan, chocolate fan, like to wear black clothes, like to stay up late. Work as a writer.
Email
• Facebook • Twitter
This entry was posted
on Friday, July 20th, 2007 at 9:48 am and is filed under Alien Encounters, Breaking News, Contactees, Evidence, Eyewitness Accounts, Government Projects, Hoaxes, The Redfern Files, UFO Sightings, UFOlogists, UFOlogy. You can follow responses via RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is not allowed.
- Related News Stories:
- Nude Aliens »
- Clark on Psychic Martians »
- Martian Devil Girls! »
- Space-Brothers at LOWFI »
- Contactees & Venus Synchronicities »
- Dana Howard: Contactee »
- Contactee Seance Church Still Exists »
- Louis Farrakhan’s UFO Abduction »
- The UFO Con-Man »
- New Book on Contactees: Two Golden Age of Flying Saucer Classics »
|
Jul 20 2007 
July 20th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Cool. I supposed Greg will pass on his copy of Best of John Keel to you Nick, wherein Keel relates his attendance of the first global UFO conference. Anyway Keel details how there was a serious E.T.-UFO subculture starting in the early 1940s.
What I found fascinating was how Colin Bennett passes on, in his D.C. UFO flap book, about some secret CIA-NSA “invisible college” type dude conveniently predicting that such an event would be next.
July 20th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Thanks for this one Nick..truly fascinating. However, I feel it important to differentiate between the supposed experiences of the “Contactee’s”, those in contact with blond haired Venusians of the anthropomorphically perfect persuasion, space brother’s and so on and the experience of “Mr. Jones”. It just seems much more generic in nature. He suspected life but never saw any, and from the description, he “thought” and “asked the question” of purpose, rather than being chosen the emissary of pick your alien/planet.
Apples and oranges when it comes to my definition of Contactee’s and the rest of encounter experiences. And that makes this story for me a very early example of what appears to be extremely curious interest in the Human Nuclear initiative. From Roswell and it’s connection to the 509th Bomb Group (the delivery mechanism of the only instance of Nuclear Weapons Tech by humans on humans)several months prior (I am aware of your hypothesis), to the Hills story (there’s the 509th again, now stationed at Pease AFB), Los Alamos, Malmstrom, The Big Sur event and even Rendlesham (illegal storage of Nukes against treaty). One also has to ask, would a species capable of the technology they seem to display really be ignorant of our somewhat primitive foray into such technology. Or rather might it be part of, if this story is true, a larger attempt to somehow express their concern for our warlike ignorance akin to the concern one would express finding a 6 year old with a loaded .357, not with one in the chamber but loaded none the less…
I think Robert Salas expressed much the same hypothesis. My question would be, was that idea somehow planted, as you have suggested may have happened in the case of Mr. Jones, as well???
Again, this one was appreciated…
July 20th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Fascinating stuff. You knew I’d be looking in on this one. The name “Jones” sounds a little pat, but perhaps that was his real name.
Guy Ballard claimed to have met various “ascended masters,” notably someone he identified as “Count St. Germain” in a cave on Mount Shasta in 1930. Based on this claim, he founded the I AM movement. He was a follower of Helena Blavatsky, who said that her masters resided on Mars and Venus, among other places. The convention of locating spiritual masters on other planets was established early in the 20th century, if not before. Perhaps Mr. Jones was aware of this, and used it in his fabricated, or partially fabricated, or possibly actual account.
I thought I’d heard of Thompson before and realized that I posted something about this on June 8th.
July 20th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Hi, Nick,
Three things interested me about this blog entry:
1. The similarity between the blonde-haired Venusians and the Nordics that Eisenhower supposedly met and with whom he alledgedly signed a treaty.
2. FATE sent Arnold to investigate Samuel Eaton Thompson? This is Ray Palmer, who also sent Arnold to investigate Maury Island. What, was Arnold Palmer’s regular investigator? What other stories did he look into?
Of course, this is coming from Jim Mosely, who seems to think “a recent internet posting” constitutes reportable investigation.
3. In support of the commonality of contactee visionary experiences happening in remote mountainous and desert regions: I’ve done work on the life of a civil rights activist in St. Louis named Ernest Calloway who had a contactee-type experience in the Baja mountains in 1933 (pre-dating Thompson by many years). When he returned to Kentucky, his ambition was to get an article published on what contributed to his altered state: marijuana. Instead, he could only find a market for article on the labor conditions in Kentucky coal mines.
July 21st, 2007 at 7:56 am
Yes, I too thought of those Nordics when reading about the Venusians. And, it also occurs to me that back in those days the contactees, (and then later the abductees), were being warned about earth’s nuclear activities. But now, abductees say they’re being given warnings about global warming and the environment. Strange how the warnings change according to which “danger†seems to be uppermost in society’s mind.
July 21st, 2007 at 8:46 pm
It is extremely rare in the literature that I’ve read that abductees are given specific warnings such as Kithra described. Rather, they tend to display scenes of possible potential destruction which could be the result of either (or an interstellar mishap of some sort for that matter). Much of it is then framed by the mindset of the witness. Back then, Nukes were the issue (and they remain a concern). Today, because of our technological advancement, there are more of us than ever which then leads to the idea of sustainability (or lack thereof). Therefor, both interpretations of the more general message are essentially correct. The difference between the messages brought back by Contactees vs Abductees tends to be “we’re here to help or save you” vs “your on a dangerous path and we don’t plan to do a thing about it, here are the possibilities if you fail to take heed – you’ve been warned”.
I tend to suspect the reality may be the latter of the two. The genetic aspect of the abduction scenario and the collection of specimens re: biodiversity (possibly just in case reseeding is necessary) as sometimes witnessed tend to support this hypothesis.
I know I’m going the extra mile here, but if you’ve never considered this, well then, now you will.
July 24th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Yes, there is a tradition of going to the desert or isolated places to establish some sort of contact. And we should refrain on just assuming that for interstellar travellers who wish to mantain a low profile, it is easier to meet people away from populated areas, as this has clearly not been the case in many reports. You might be right on especulating about altered states of conscience on “places of power”.
In Latin America we have the case of Sixto Paz, who back when he was a young man began receiving messages in the form of automatic writing from beings who lived in Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. After a while they (he and his friends and brother) established contacts with the “space brothers” in the desert of Chilca, Peru (deserts once again). The beings he described were not the typical “nordics”, he claimed they bore asiatic or mongoloid features (slanted eyes, etc). The story became famous after a young spanish reporter named J.J. BenÃtez wrote a book about it; this reporter went then to investigate a lot of UFO cases and then to write the famous (at least in spanish-speaking countries) series of books Caballo de Troya, in which he describes beings that have a strong resemblance with Adamski’s venusians, but in this case they are depicted as angels in the times of Jesus of Nazaret. He even used the location of Adamski’s tomb in Arlington in the 1st book’s plot.