Woody Derenberger, Hamburgers, and Indrid Cold
The only image that comes up under a search for “Indrid Cold”
Over at the Church of Ufology is a great reprint of an old article from Ray Palmer’s Flying Saucers magazine of October, 1967. It’s about Woodrow Derenberger and his experiences with a space brother named Indrid Cold from the planet Lanulos. Derenberger’s story was made famous by author John Keel after he was written up in The Mothman Prophecies.
An excerpt from the article is so full of symbolic import that I almost can’t stand it:
“They aren’t making contact only around here,” Mrs. Derenberger told me. “They are doing this all over the country. But they find the people in West Virginia more receptive.”
“It was at that second meeting, the night of November 4, that Cold told me about himself. He’s from a planet called ‘Lanulos,’ located near the galaxy ‘Genemedes.’ They have woods, streams, fields, oceans, the same as we do. They’ve taken samples of our vegetation, our animals. Ours are much like theirs. Cold is married, his wife is named Kimi and he had two sons at that time. Has three children, now, one was born right around Christmas time, a little girl.”
“They’re Time Travelers,” Mrs. Derenberger injected.
“That’s right,” Woody said. “In the fourth dimension. One reason they can’t stay here too long at a time is because they get younger down here instead of older. Their life span is 125 – 175 years, but if they stayed here too long I think they’d go back in years and possibly forget how to manipulate their craft.”
Surprisingly, Mrs. Derenberger seemed to support her husband’s story, in stark contrast to many contactees and UFO witnesses, who’s spouses generally seemed to freak out and occasionally leave when confronted with stories that made them the butt of ridicule.
Putting this up against Keel’s portrayal of Cold as a malevolent presence, somehow connected to the Mothman phenomenon and Keel himself I am struck by the strange good/evil dichotomy that arises. There is still argument as to whether Keel experienced any actual torment at the hands of Cold, or if he simply borrowed the tale for adaptation to his own story.
Derenberger’s own tome on his experiences (actually written by a man named Harold Hubbard) is titled Visitors From The Planet Lanulos, and is available from various booksellers at prices ranging from $170 to $180. I have never read it, but I’d like to.
A more recent Lanulos contactee claimant named Tom Steele (great name for a comic book character, BTW) spoke to a Cleveland UFO group in 2006:
Tom claims to have been “taken†by beings from Lanulos to the moon and many different planets.
In 1973 or 1974 Ray Steele, his grandfather, took him to a UFORD meeting in Sebring, Ohio to learn about other worlds. It was after that meeting, Tom was visited by Billie Jo, a young female alien who looked exactly like his childhood sweetheart and was asked if he would like to go for a ride. In a matter of seconds,Tom was taken to the moon where he was able to view earth.
The peaceful and loving inhabitants of Lanulos look like us, and eat food like us. The food even tastes better, “like Burger Chef.â€
If Steele’s right, we’re going to have to get the Burger Chef people to get back in business to offer Derenburgers and Indrid Cold drinks.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 6:55 am and is filed under Alien Encounters, Beliefs, Contactees, History, Occult/Esoteric, UFOlogy, Wake Up Down There. You can follow responses via RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response or trackback from your site.
- Related News Stories:
- John Keel In Hospital »
- The Silver Bridge Returns! »
- More Details On John Keel’s Last Days »
- Mothman Phone Home »
- Keel is Gone »
- Rare UFO Audio »
- Russian Sun God Politician Killed By Lightning »
- Mothman in the UK? »
- John Keel Health Update »
- John Keel Interview From 1992 »
|
Dec 16 2008 
December 16th, 2008 at 10:50 am
I’m sure that Nandor Fodor was a Lanulosian.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
““It was at that second meeting, the night of November 4, that Cold told me about himself. He’s from a planet called ‘Lanulos,’ located near the galaxy ‘Genemedes.”
‘Genemedes’ sounds awfully similar to Ganymede, the Jupiter moon.
Incidentally, in the annals of South American Ufology, there have been several individuals claiming to have been in contact with beings from Ganymede; the most notorious one is Sixto Paz Wells, who founded the ‘Misión Rama’ organization. He claimed that the beings from Ganymede looked like us, but their eyes were slightly slanted as if they were of Asian descent; and of course, I don’t have to remind you that in the early reports of MIBs some of them looked Asian…
December 16th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Mmmm…burgers…
Seriously though, this is a fascinating subject! I just burned an hour reading up on this. I must admit I am a n00b regarding Mothman esoterica and there is a ton of info on the web speculating about who or what was Indrid Cold. Go listen to the story of Indrid Cold, stright from Woody’s mouth the day after the incident:
http://www.freewebs.com/weirdtales/thetruthonindridcold.htm
December 18th, 2008 at 2:58 am
Thank you very much for that link, awdsmirk. I included it on my daily News brief @ The Daily Grail
December 18th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
rpj, awesome! hope you liked it as much as I did.
December 19th, 2008 at 11:30 am
RPJ,
I’m almost certain that if Derenberger’s experiences were not completely confabulated, his mental filters and other “noise” we contribute to anything from outside our heads had a lot to do with the final product. He had probably heard of Ganymede in a book or from a newspaper or something.
December 19th, 2008 at 11:32 am
awd,
I saw that when I was looking for Derenberger material, but since I couldn’t download it as a sound file, I sort of ignored it!