extraordinary%20encounters

confessed that he produced the effects fraudulently.
Later psychical researchers, however,
used variants of the fourth-dimensional idea
to explain the fate of the soul after death.
See Also: Bermuda Triangle
Further Reading
De Camp, L. Sprague, 1980. The Ragged Edge of Sci -
ence. Philadelphia, PA: Owlswick Press.
Layne, N. Meade, 1950. The Ether Ship and Its Solu -
tion. Vista, CA: Borderland Sciences Research
Associates.
Frank and Frances
Strolling through his rural property near Quebec
City, Quebec, one night in 1941, inventor
Arthur Henry Matthews encountered two
men, each six feet tall, blue-eyed, and goldenhaired.
After introducing themselves as Venusians,
they expressed interest in Matthews’s
work with electrical genius Nikola Tesla.
Matthews was taken to a waiting spacecraft, a
giant saucer-shaped structure called “Mother
Ship X-12,” which housed twenty-four
smaller craft as well as living quarters for crew
members. At one point, the visitors showed
Matthews the control room. Contrary to his
expectations, it was bare except for a circular
table in the middle and four “pilots,” two men
and two women, each facing one of the four
directions. The Venusians explained that the
craft flew on mental power alone. In subsequent
contacts, Matthews learned that one of
his hosts was the captain, who called himself
Frank. He also met Frank’s “life companion,”
introduced as Frances. Frank said the names
stood for “Truth.”
Further Reading
Bord, Janet, and Colin Bord, 1991. Life beyond
Planet Earth? Man’s Contacts with Space People.
London: GraftonBooks.
Fry, Daniel William (1908–1922)
Daniel Fry was among the leaders of the early
contactee movement. He claimed to have had
his first contact with a flying saucer—a “remote
controlled cargo carrier”—in the New
Mexico desert on July 4, 1950, and to have
Fry, Daniel William 105
Daniel William Fry (Fortean Picture Library)
boarded it for half an hour. In that time he
was whisked to and from New York, all the
while conversing with the voice of Alan, a
spaceman communicating from a mother ship
nine hundred miles from Earth. When Fry
met Alan in the flesh eleven years later, the extraterrestrial
turned out to have a purely
human appearance. Intelligent and articulate,
Fry was often described by his followers as a
“scientist,” though in fact he had been no
more than a missile mechanic and technician
at the White Sands Proving Ground prior to
his contactee career. He founded Understanding,
Inc., a forum for the space people’s metaphysical
and scientific teachings. After the
1950s, when the initial excitement generated
by the first contactees had waned, Fry became
less visible, though he remained quietly active
until his death in Alamogordo, New Mexico,
in 1992.
Fry recounted his early saucer adventures
in the widely read The White Sands Incident
and Alan’s Message: To Men of Earth, both published
in 1954. That same year, he spoke at