extraordinary%20encounters

Vadig
Vadig is an extraterrestrial invented by selfconfessed
hoaxer Thomas F. Monteleone. In
March 1968, as a psychology student at the
University of Maryland, Monteleone heard
West Virginia contactee Woodrew Derenberger
talking about his space contacts on
Washington, DC, radio station WWDC.
Derenberger claimed to have traveled to the
planet Lanulos. Convinced that Derenberger
was lying, Monteleone decided to play a practical
joke and to assert that he, too, had been
to Lanulos. He called the station under the
name “Ed Bailey” and added new details
about the planet and its people. Derenberger
readily agreed with what the caller said.
To Monteleone’s chagrin, the station was
able to trace the call. Derenberger’s manager
Harold Salkin phoned him and learned his
true identity. A week later, Salkin, Derenberger,
and the latter’s wife called on Monteleone,
who tape-recorded the interview. In
the interview, the young man reported that
while driving home on an interstate highway
he witnessed a UFO landing. Two aliens
emerged, and one introduced himself as
Vadig. Two months later, Vadig showed up at
the Washington restaurant where Monteleone
worked part-time. He arranged a meeting,
ending the encounter, as he had before, with
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the enigmatic words “I’ll see you in time.”
The following Sunday night, Vadig drove the
young man into rural Maryland where they
boarded a spaceship and flew to Lanulos,
where the inhabitants walk about naked. One
week later Monteleone met Vadig and another
Lanulosian for the last time.
Not long after the initial interv i ew the
De renbergers and Salkin returned to talk
once more, bringing along with them occult
journalist John A. Keel. Keel, who thought
Monteleone had re vealed information only a
real contactee would know, wrote about the
Vadig encounter in later magazine art i c l e s
and in a book. When Vadig said he would
“see you in time,” according to Keel, he was
hinting that UFO beings “originate outside
of our time frame. . . . UFOs are from another
time cycle vastly different from our
ow n” (Keel, 1969).
Monteleone went on to a short career as a
public contactee. His story appears in a book
Derenberger wrote with Harold W. Hubbard
in 1970, cited as evidence of the authenticity
of Lanulos and the author’s experiences with
it. In 1979, in a short article in Omni, Monteleone
confessed the hoax, noting, “I contradicted
Mr. Derenberger’s story on purpose.
But on each occasion, he would give
ground . . . and in the end corroborate my