extraordinary%20encounters

254 Val Thor
own falsifications. He even claimed to know
personally the ‘UFOnaut’ who contacted me!”
A fuller account of the episode appeared in
1980 in a Fate article by ufologist Karl T.
Pflock. By this time Monteleone had embarked
on what was to prove a successful career
as a science-fiction writer.
See Also: Contactees; Keel, John Alva
Further Reading
Derenberger, Woodrow W., and Harold W. Hubbard,
1971. Visitors from Lanulos. New York:
Vantage Press.
Keel, John A., 1975. The Mothman Prophecies. New
York: Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton and
Company.
———, 1969. “The Time Cycle Factor.” Flying
Saucer Review 15, 3 (May/June): 9–13.
Monteleone, Thomas F., 1979. “Last Word: The
Gullibility Factor.” Omni 1 (May): 146.
Pflock, Karl T., 1980. “Anatomy of a UFO Hoax.”
Fate 33, 11 (November): 40–48.
Val Thor
Val (or Valiant) Thor, a Venusian, met Frank
E. Stranges, evangelist and contactee, in the
Pentagon one morning in December 1959. At
the time Stranges was conducting a Christian
crusade in Washington. An anonymous Pentagon
official of his acquaintance invited him
to the building. In one room he met a handsome,
tanned man with wavy brown hair. In
the course of a half-hour conversation, the
stranger informed him that he was from
Venus. Over the course of years, Stranges flew
on spacecraft with Val Thor and wrote two
books about their experiences together.
Stranges reported that Venusians are physically
like humans in all ways, except that they
do not have fingerprints. Fingerprints “are a
sign of fallen man,” according to Val Thor
(Stranges, 1974). Venusians, who are without
sin, are devout Christians, but they have no
need for the Bible because of their closeness to
its author. In their first meeting Stranges
learned that seventy-seven Venusians were living
secretly in the United States, but that
number was subject to constant change because
the Space Brothers were always coming
and going. Val himself was scheduled to re-
turn to Venus on March 16, 1960. The Venusians
had come to Earth to “help mankind return
to the Lord.”
On the morning of Fe b ru a ry 5, 1968, Va l
Thor phoned Stranges and instructed him to
meet at the San Diego Airport. From there ,
the two drove across the border into a coastal
t own in Sonora, Me x i c o. Near there, they
b o a rded a flying saucer with a large crew, including
a woman named Teel. Inside Va l’s
c o m p a rtment, Stranges learned that his friend
had spoken with Sen. Ro b e rt F. Ke n n e d y, then
running for the Democratic nomination to the
p re s i d e n c y. Kennedy had written Val a letter
requesting a meeting, and Val had re s p o n d e d .
Val found Kennedy “n e rvous and suspicious.”
That evening aboard the spaceship, as they
watched a large televisionlike screen, St r a n g e s ,
Val, and several dozen Venusians sorrow f u l l y
o b s e rved Ke n n e d y’s assassination.
On another occasion, in January 1974,
Stranges flew to Las Vegas to meet Val and
friends. At the airport, two young men
dressed in black called him by name. Assuming
they were the space people who were to
take him to Val Thor, he followed them into a
black Cadillac. Suddenly, they and a third,
similarly clad man turned on him and were
beating him severely when two men—space
people—came to the rescue. They caused the
Cadillac and the three men in black, agents of
dark forces opposed to the Venusians’ benevolent
mission, to disappear. They then took
Stranges to the scheduled conference with Val
inside a flying saucer.
Still an active lecturer and saucer personali
t y, Stranges claims to have photographic pro o f
of Va l’s existence. The photographs, re p roduced
in his books and shown at his lecture s ,
depict a man dressed in a suit and surro u n d e d
by other persons in what look like ord i n a ry social
situations. Val Thor resembles a Ho l l ywood
bit player more than an extraterre s t r i a l .
See Also: Contactees; Men in black
Further Reading
Stranges, Frank E., 1974. My Friend from beyond
Earth. Second edition. Van Nuys, CA: International
Evangelism Crusades.