extraordinary%20encounters

soft and silky as the hair of an infant”
(Bullard, 1982). The sight so unsettled one of
the men that he was driven mad. He
promptly hurled himself off into the sea,
where he drowned.
The survivors retreated from the scene, and
it took them two days to restore their courage
sufficiently to return. They rummaged for
food and then dragged the giants’ bodies off
the cliff and into the water. Using pieces of
the spaceship, they built a raft and set out on
the now-still ocean. Sixty hours later, they
came upon a Russian vessel heading for Australia.
Before they could reach port, however,
three more of Oleson’s companions died from
their injuries and shock.
“Fortunately as a partial confirmation of
the truth of his story,” Leander wrote, “Mr.
Oleson took from one of the bodies a finger
ring of immense size. It is made of a compound
of metals unknown to any jeweler who
has seen it, and is set with two reddish stones,
the names of which are unknown to anyone
who has ever examined it. The ring was taken
from the thumb of the owner and measure
two and one-quarter inches in diameter.”
L e a n d e r’s yarn was one of many told in
the spring of 1897 about airships and their
supposed crews. Newspapers all over America
carried comparable tall tales, including
one alleging a Ma rt i a n’s crash-landing and
his subsequent burial in a small nort h - Te x a s
t ow n .
See Also: Aurora Martian; Michigan giant; Wilson
Further Reading
Bullard, Thomas E., ed. 1982. The Airship File: A
Collection of Texts Concerning Phantom Airships
and Other UFOs, Gathered from Newspapers and
Periodicals Mostly during the Hundred Years Prior
to Kenneth Arnold’s Sighting. Bloomington, IN:
self-published.
Olliana Olliana Alliano
Speaking at a contactee conference in 1982,
Dave Schultz, an electrician from Louisville,
Colorado, related a lifetime of interactions
with extraterrestrials, among them the Olliana
Olliana Alliano. The Olliana Olliana Alliano
Orthon 195
are forty inches tall, humanlike in appearance
except for a slightly larger head. Schultz called
them “the good people,” guardians of the
Earth. It was Olliana Olliana Alliano who
died in the 1948 spaceship crash at Aztec,
New Mexico, chronicled in Frank Scully’s Be -
hind the Flying Saucers (1950).
This alien group is here to “get the vibrations
of the planet up to a level in which we
can join the space federation.” Before that
happens, humans have to shed their violent,
warlike, greedy ways. The Olliana Olliana Alliano
have contacted every political leader on
Earth to deliver this message.
See Also: Contactees; Mersch
Further Reading
Sprinkle, R. Leo, ed., 1982. Proceedings: Rocky
Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation.
Laramie, WY: School of Extended Studies, University
of Wyoming.
Orthon
Orthon was the name George Adamski—or,
more accurately, his ghostwriter Charlotte
Blodget—gave to the Venusian Adamski met
in the desert of southern California on November
20, 1952. Space people, Adamski explained,
never call themselves by name when
interacting with human beings because they
have “an entirely different concept of names as
we use them” (Adamski, 1955). In that first
encounter, Adamski communicated with the
being he called Orthon via gestures, sign language,
and snatches of telepathy, during
which the Venusian expressed concern about
earthlings’ warlike ways. Adamski saw Orthon
again briefly when he flew overhead in his
scout craft the following December 13.
He next met Orthon in the early morning
hours of February14, 1953, when two spacemen
picked him up at a Los Angeles hotel and
drove him into the desert to an awaiting
saucer. As he approached the ship, he saw Orthon,
who was finishing some repair work.
Seeing “a very small amount of molten metal
that he had thrown out,” Adamski scooped up
the object. When his companions asked him
why he was doing that, he said he wanted