extraordinary%20encounters

258 VIVenus
three-inch-wide belt around his waist. Lights
shone from little holes in the belt, and he was
holding a helmet under his arm. He had fine
features and a penetrating stare. He had
shoulder-length gray hair and his face was
hairless. He was four feet tall.
Too stunned and frightened to speak, Vi ll
a n u e va could not find the words to respond to
two questions, spoken in fluent Spanish, about
what was wrong with the car. Fi n a l l y, he managed
to ask if the man was an aviator. The little
man replied in the affirmative, then added an
odd re m a rk about “my machine which yo u
people call an airplane.” He indicated that it
was parked behind a mound not far away.
Feeling more comfortable, Villanueva invited
him to sit down in the car. But at that
moment the lights on the belt started to flash,
and a buzzing noise sounded. The stranger
donned his helmet and walked toward the
hill. The driver returned to his business with
the car, and not long afterward two motorcycle
police officers came by and ordered him to
take the vehicle off the road. Afterward, he lay
down to sleep inside it.
Sometime later, knocks sounded on the
w i n d ow. Groggily Vi l l a n u e va sat up, assuming
that his passengers had returned. He was surprised
to see instead the “a v i a t o r” and a companion,
the latter a taller version of the fir s t .
They entered the car and conversed with the
d r i ve r. The shorter one did most of the talking.
As they described their home, Vi l l a n u e va re a li
zed that they we re space people. It took him
awhile to decide that they we re not joking.
Over the next few hours, he learned much
about their home world, its civilization, its
cities, its technology, and more. Thousands of
years ago, he was told, many destructive wars
were fought between the planet’s nations,
until finally its inhabitants established a oneworld
government under what amounted to a
benevolent dictatorship of a council of wise
men. The state raised and educated the children,
and there was no serious poverty. People
from this planet live undetected among earthlings,
reporting on human affairs to their otherworldly
superiors.
Toward dawn the buzzing sounds, emanating
from either the helmets or the belts, resumed.
The two left the car, with Villanueva
following. Eventually, they came to the ship, a
saucer-shaped structure. The men invited him
inside the craft, but at that moment he lost his
nerve and fled back to the car. From it he saw
the saucer ascend and disappear in the direction
of the rising sun.
When his experience became known soon
afterward, Villanueva was compared to the
prominent American contactee George
Adamski. Adamski met Villanueva in Mexico
in the spring of 1955 and asked him a series
of questions. An American couple that also
was there would write, “If the questions astounded
us, so did the answers. Salvador
passed his examination at the hands of a man
who, having seen a saucer himself, knew how
to ask about certain things which no mere
imaginary contact could give the answers to”
(Reeve and Reeve, 1957). Desmond Leslie,
Adamski’s associate and co-author, visited Villanueva
later that year. Leslie claimed that
Adamski had confided “the Key” to him, explaining
that “every man who has received a
true and physical contact with men from
other worlds has been given a certain ‘Key’
whereby it shall be known that he is speaking
truly. No man . . . could ever stumble upon
this key by guess or chance. . . . Villanueva
gave it without hesitation” (Good, 1998).
Unlike Adamski and other contactees of the
period, Vi l l a n u e va did not embark on a pro f e ssional
care e r. So far as is known, he claimed no
f u rther meetings with extraterre s t r i a l s .
See Also: Adamski, George; Contactees
Further Reading
Good, Timothy, 1998. Alien Base: Earth’s Encounters
with Extraterrestrials. London: Century.
Reeve, Bryant, and Helen Reeve, 1957. Flying Saucer
Pilgrimage. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.
VIVenus
The woman who called herself “VIVenus”—
“Viv” for short—made her mark in the mid-
1970s to the early 1980s. She said she was a