extraordinary%20encounters

230 Sister Thedra
“constellation”), housed other space people
who kept Martin’s arm and hand in furious
motion with automatic writing as they made
good on their promise to teach her cosmic
wisdom. The Elder Brother promised that he
would return “soon. . . . They that have told
you that they do not believe shall see us when
the time is right” (Festinger et al., 1956).
Martin’s messages were attracting attention,
and a handful of followers soon came
together in the Chicago area. Among those
who spoke with Martin was John Otto, a
UFO lecturer of national reputation and notable
credulity. Visiting Detroit to hear a lecture
by Adamski, Otto met the Laugheads,
who informed him of their saucer interests
and experiences. Otto in turn urged them to
get in touch with Martin. Soon afterward,
they wrote and introduced themselves. All of
this seemed particularly significant to Martin
when she received a message urging her to go
to East Lansing to seek “a child . . . to whom I
am trying to get through with light.” When
informed, Mrs. Laughead immediately concluded
that she was the “child” (Festinger, et
al., 1956).
After the Laugheads met Martin in Oak
Park in early June 1954, the three formed a
close association that would profoundly affect
their lives and fortunes in the months and
years to come. By this time, Martin was receiving
as many as ten messages a day, all of
them ominous, all warning of imminent disasters
and cataclysms. The news was not entirely
bad: Those who would “listen and believe”
would enter a New Age of knowledge
and happiness. The messages got more specific.
Spaceships would land soon, and selected
individuals would be flown to other
planets, along with space people who had
been on secret Earth assignment.
On August 1, Martin, the Laugheads, and
nine believers showed up at a Chicago-area
military base, where they had been told a flying
saucer would land at noon. No ship
showed up, but the next day Sananda informed
her through automatic writing that he
was the stranger the group had observed pass-
ing by during the wait for the landing. It
would not be the last time Martin would inflate
a mundane incident into a signal from
the cosmos. Nor would it be the last of the
unfulfilled prophecies.
In that same message on August 2,
Sananda warned that soon a tidal wave off
Lake Michigan would wash over Chicago and
cause enormous destruction. Subsequent
communications spoke of enormous geological
upheaval that would break North America
in two, sink much of Europe under the ocean,
and raise Mu from its underwater grave.
Martin and the Laugheads reported these
revelations to the larger world in a seven-page
mimeographed document, “Open Letter to
American Editors and Publishers,” sent out
on August 30. A handwritten addendum appended
at the last minute cited December 20
as the “date of evacuation,” in other words,
the final day on which human beings living in
the affected area could save themselves. A second
mailing two weeks later concerned the
“terrific wave” that would rise from Lake
Michigan at dawn on December 21 and engulf
Chicago.
Soon the group found itself featured in a
tongue-in-cheek newspaper story. The publicity
brought followers, curiosity-seekers, and
practical jokers to Mrs. Ma rt i n’s door. It also
b rought her and her group to the attention of
the Un i versity of Mi n n e s o t a’s Laboratory for
Re s e a rch in Social Relations, which enlisted the
s e rvices of five psychologists, sociologists, and
graduate students. The volunteers we re to obs
e rve—as participants and self-identified bel
i e vers—a prophetic movement at work and to
see what happened when the anticipated eve n t s
did not occur. In due course, Leon Fe s t i n g e r,
He n ry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, the
p rofessors who had directed the experiment,
c h ronicled the episode in When Prophecy Fa i l s .
Though Ma rtin, Laughead, and the others
h a r b o red ambivalent feelings about the publicity
and proselytization, it would have been impossible
to conceal what was going on. T h e
g roup now claimed followers not only in the
Chicago area but also in East Lansing and De-