extraordinary%20encounters

8 Adamski, George
See Also: Lemuria; Mount Shasta
Further Reading
“Adama,” 1995. http://www.salemctr.com/newage/
center36.html.
Adamski, George (1891–1965)
Though largely forgotten today, George
Adamski was once an international occult
celebrity, perhaps the most famous of all flying-saucer
contactees. His claimed meeting
with a Venusian in the California desert in
November 1952 electrified esoterically inclined
saucer buffs. In three books published
between 1953 and 1961 he recounted his
trips into space along with extensive encounters
with benevolent Venusians, Martians, and
Saturnians. In 1962 he boarded a spaceship
and flew to Saturn to attend an interplanetary
conference. By 1965, when he died, many of
his most devoted followers had broken their
connection with him, convinced either that
he was lying or that evil space people were
misleading him.
Born in Poland, Adamski emigrated with
his parents to upstate New Yo rk when he was
one or two years old. In the early 1920s he
m oved to California, where he eventually established
a role for himself on the local occult
scene as head of the Royal Order of
Tibet, a metaphysical school based on channeled
teachings from Tibetan lamas. W h e n
flying saucers became an object of popular
i n t e rest in the late 1940s, Adamski pro d u c e d
photographs of alleged spacecraft; some of
the pictures we re said to have been taken
t h rough his six-inch telescope. Published in
the popular occult and paranormal digest
Fa t e in 1950 and 1951, the photos along
with accompanying text afforded Ad a m s k i
his first wide exposure. On November 20,
1952, as six others (including contactee and
fringe archaeologist George Hunt Wi l l i a mson)
watched from a distance, Adamski obs
e rved the landing of a saucer and the emergence
of the beautiful, blond-haired Ort h o n ,
a visitor from Venus, who expressed concern
about the human race’s warlike ways. (In
later years Adamski would tell confidants
that his first contacts with extraterre s t r i a l s
o c c u r red in his childhood, but he never said
as much publicly.) T h ree weeks later Ort h o n
returned in his scout craft over Ad a m s k i’s
Palomar Ga rdens residence and allowed the
ship to be photographed. The resulting pict
u res would generate enormous controve r s y
and, for many, virtually define the image of a
flying saucer as a domed disc with a thre e -
ball landing gear.
A fifty-four-page account of Adamski’s
early contacts was added to an already existing
manuscript (on supposed space visitations
throughout history) by Irish occultist
Desmond Leslie and published in 1953 as Fly -
ing Saucers Have Landed. Two years later, in
Inside the Space Ships, Adamski expanded his
claims to encompass further interactions with
extraterrestrials, both on Earth and aboard
saucers. According to Adamski, the “Space
Brothers,” as he called them, had come to
help the human race out of its backward, violent
ways, which were leading inexorably to
nuclear war. They espoused a benign occult
philosophy much like the one Adamski had
taught for many years.
Though revered by many, Adamski also
had bitter critics, none more so than conservative
ufologists who dismissed his stories as
absurd and feared that he was bringing
ridicule to all of UFO research. Some ufologists
actively investigated his claims and uncovered
discrepancies and other evidence of
untruthfulness. One found, for example, that
the weather on a particular day on which
Adamski claimed contact was not as he had
described it. Most photo analysts concluded
that the pictures of “spacecraft” were in fact of
small models. On one occasion skeptical ufologists
proved that one Adamski allegation was
unambiguously false. Adamski had reported
that as he was traveling to Iowa to give a lecture,
the train suddenly stopped en route.
When he stepped out to take a short walk,
space people met him and flew him to his destination.
From interviews with the train crew,
investigators learned that the train had made