extraordinary%20encounters

158 Li Sung
the notion that the airship crew consisted of
foreign spies.
Though nothing is known about the incident
beyond what appears in Welsh and English
newspapers of the period, the story
seems suspect. The first chronicler of the
UFO phenomenon, Charles Fort, remarked
that “anybody else [who] wants to think that
these foreigners were explorers from Mars or
the moon” (Fort, 1941) was free to do so, but
he himself suspected a hoax. Because no foreign
spies were engaged in aerial surveillance
of Britain in 1909, it is hard to imagine another
explanation.
Coincidentally or otherwise, during a wave
of UFO reports in France in the fall of 1954,
a railroad worker at Monlucon claimed that
one evening he encountered a tube-shaped
craft. Outside it stood a man dressed in what
looked like a long, hairy overcoat. When the
witness addressed the figure, the latter responded
in an unknown language. The witness
left the scene to report it to his supervisor,
but when the two returned, the UFO and
the hairy-coated figure were gone.
See Also: Close encounters of the third kind
Further Reading
Fort, Charles, 1941. The Books of Charles Fort. New
York: Henry Holt and Company.
Grove, Carl, 1971. “The Airship Wave of 1909.”
Flying Saucer Review 17, 1 (January/February):
17–19.
Vallee, Jacques, 1974. “The Pattern behind the UFO
Landings.” In Charles Bowen, ed. The Hu -
manoids, 27–76. London: Futura Publications.
Li Sung
Li Sung, said to be the spirit of a village
philosopher who lived in northern China in
the eighth century, channeled through Alan
Vaughan. Vaughan, a longtime writer on psychic
phenomena, first experienced Li Sung in
1983, but sixteen years earlier, three British
mediums had told him he would be communicating
with this Chinese spirit. Vaughan
said he did not believe them. But one day,
while he was teaching at a psychic seminar in
Sedona, Arizona, a couple asked him—he was
then editing a publication called Reincarna -
tion Report—if he could divine their past lives.
“ Suddenly a tremendous energy flo o d e d
over the top of my head,” he would recall. “It
was like watching a dream, as the Chinese entity
Li Sung began to speak through me. He
g a ve them some detailed information about
past lives and how they fit into their present life
paths. For me, it was the beginning of an enlargement
of consciousness” (Sh e p a rd, 1991).
Vaughan went on to channel Li Sung in
public on many occasions. Vaughan contends
that anyone can channel if he or she wants to.
It is, he asserts, as easy as learning how to
whistle.
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Klimo, Jon, 1987. Channeling: Investigations on Re -
ceiving Information from Paranormal Sources. Los
Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.
Shepard, Leslie A., 1991. Encyclopedia of Occultism
and Parapsychology: A Compendium of Informa -
tion on the Occult Sciences, Magic, Demonology,
Superstitions, Spiritism, Mysticism, Metaphysics,
Psychical Science, and Parapsychology, with Bio -
graphical and Bibliographical Notes and Compre -
hensive Indexes. Third edition. Detroit, MI: Gale
Research.
Linn-Erri
Linn-Erri introduced herself to Robert P. Renaud
one night in July 1961. A Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, ham-radio buff and General
Electric technician, Renaud heard beeping
sounds from his radio and then heard a lovely
female voice asking him to stay on the frequency
for a while. She told him, “I am called
Linn-Erri, and my associates and I come from
the planet Korendor. We are speaking to you
from our spaceship many miles above your
earth” (Clark, 1986). She and her fellow Korendorians
had chosen to contact him because
they knew of his interest in UFOs, world
peace, and the future of humankind. After
Linn-Erri introduced him to other crewmembers,
she explained how Renaud could construct
a transmitter for easy reception of future
messages from space. Later that year, the
space people helped him convert a television