extraordinary%20encounters

the contactees and channelers who came
along in the late 1940s and 1950s amid popular
speculation about visitation from other
planets. The Pacific lost continent played a
prominent role in George Hunt Williamson’s
speculative books Other Tongues—Other Flesh
(1953), Secret Places of the Lion (1958), and
Road in the Sky (1959), which laid out an ancient
history in which Lemurians and Atlanteans
interacted freely with a variety of extraterrestrial
races.
Now an assumed reality in just about any
metaphysical, New Age, hollow earth, or
saucerian worldview, Lemuria sooner or later
enters just about any discussion predicated on
the assumption that everything humans think
they know about the ancient history of Earth
and the human race is wrong.
See Also: Atlantis; Contactees; Hollow earth; Mount
Shasta; Shaver mystery; Williamson, George
Hunt
Further Reading
Blavatsky, Helene P., 1889. The Secret Doctrine. Two
volumes. London: Theosophical Publishing
Company.
Churchward, James, 1926. The Lost Continent of
Mu. New York: Ives Washburn.
De Camp, L. Sprague, 1970. Lost Continents: The At -
lantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature.
New York: Dover Publications.
Kafton-Minkel, Walter, 1989. Subterranean Worlds:
100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost
Races and UFOs from inside the Earth. Port
Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited.
Scott-Elliot, W., 1925. The Story of Atlantis and the
Lost Lemuria. London: Theosophical Publishing
House.
Shaver, Richard S., 1945. “I Remember Lemuria!”
Amazing Stories 19, 1 (March): 12–70.
Williamson, George Hunt, 1953. Other Tongues—
Other Flesh. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.
———, 1958. Secret Places of the Lion. London:
Neville Spearman.
———, 1959. Road in the Sky. London: Neville
Spearman.
Lethbridge’s aeronauts
In the spring of 1909, the British Isles were
inundated with sightings of enigmatic objects
that some people called “airships.” Popular
and official opinion concurred that German
Lethbridge’s aeronauts 157
spies were involved, though it is now known
that no such German surveillance was occurring
or, for that matter, was even technically
achievable. One man claimed to have seen an
airship land and to have observed its crew.
Press accounts identify this witness as C.
Lethbridge, described in a press account as
“an elderly man, of quiet demeanor, [who]
did not strike one as given to ro m a n c i n g . ”
During the winter, Lethbridge was a dock
w o rker in Card i f f. In the warmer months, he
p e rformed puppet shows in the towns and
villages of Wales. Around 11 on the eve n i n g
of May 18, returning home across re m o t e
Caerphilly Mountain, he rounded a bend at
the summit and was taken aback to see something
unusual lying along the side of the
road. His first impression was that it was
“some big bird.” Standing next to it we re two
tall men clad in heavy fur coats and tight-fitting
fur caps. Their bearing and smart appearance
led him to think of them as military
officers. They we re working at something,
but Lethbridge was not close enough to see
what it was.
When he got within twenty to thirty yards
of them, they reacted to the rattle of his
spring-cart and jumped up as if startled. They
“jabbered furiously to each other in a strange
lingo—Welsh or something else; it was certainly
not English.” Retrieving something on
the ground, they ran to a carriage underneath
the object, which then ascended in a zigzag
motion. Two lights on its side suddenly came
on. Emitting an “awful noise,” the craft flew
higher and set off in the direction of Cardiff.
After Lethbridge told his story in that city,
investigators rushed to the site. If not for that
circumstance, the episode would have the appearance
of an early close encounter of the
third kind. Indeed, it is published in some
UFO literature as just that. Most accounts
leave out what the investigators found at the
site: a variety of artifacts including parts of letters,
a spare part for a tire valve, papier-mâché
wads, blue paper containing figures and letters,
and clippings about airships. All of this
suggests, or at least seems intended to convey,