extraordinary%20encounters

Allingham’s Martian
According to Flying Saucer from Mars (1954),
Englishman and author Cedric Allingham
witnessed the landing of an extraterrestrial
spacecraft while vacationing in Scotland in
February 1954. A tall man, human in all ways
except for an unusually broad forehead,
stepped out of the vehicle. The occupant, who
indicated that he was from Mars, spoke in a
friendly fashion, saying that he had earlier visited
Venus and the moon. He asked if earthlings
would soon visit the latter world, and
when Allingham replied yes, the Martian
acted concerned. He wanted to know if a war
would soon erupt on Earth. After this conversation,
which occurred mostly by gestures, the
Martian reentered his craft and flew away,
though not before Allingham had photographed
him (from the back) and his ship.
The book asserted that a man named James
Duncan had witnessed the entire encounter.
A year earlier George Adamski had published
his account of a meeting with the
Venusian Orthon in the southern California
desert. Allingham’s tale thrilled British saucerians,
who now felt they had their own contact.
Waveney Girvan, who had published the
British edition of Adamski and Desmond
Leslie’s book, wrote, “If Allingham is telling
the truth, his account following so soon upon
Adamski’s amounts to final proof of the existence
of flying saucers” (Girvan, 1956).
Allingham proved strangely elusive, howe
ve r, making only one public appearance. He
s h owed up in the company of a virulently anti-
UFO science writer and media personality
Patrick Mo o re. That, plus the failure of inquirers
to find the alleged witness to Allingham’s
contact, should have warned British saucerians
that all was not well with the story told by their
n a t i ve Adamski. In 1956 Allingham’s publisher—also
the publisher of Mo o re’s books—
released a statement asserting that the contactee
had died of tuberculosis in a Swiss sanitarium.
In a book on British UFOs published thirteen
years later, journalist Robert Chapman
reported that he had found no evidence that a
Cedric Allingham had ever existed. In his
Alpha Zoo Loo 19
judgment, Flying Saucer from Mars amounted
to “probably the biggest UFO leg-pull ever
perpetrated in Britain” (Chapman, 1969). It
was an open secret among Moore’s friends
that he and a friend, Peter Davies (the “Martian”
in the photograph), had written the book
as a spoof on those gullible enough to believe
Adamski’s contact tales. Moore, well known as
a practical joker, once had regaled a contactee
magazine with letters, written under an assortment
of absurd pseudonyms (including
“L. Puller”), claiming scientific confirmation
of the contactee cosmos.
Eventually word of Moore and Davies’s involvement
trickled down to British ufologists.
Two of them, Christopher Allan and Steuart
Campbell, interviewed Davies who admitted
the hoax and added that he had rewritten the
original manuscript to disguise Moore’s distinctive
literary style. After the hoax was exposed
for the first time in print in the London
ufology journal Magonia, Moore professed to
be outraged, threatened legal retaliation, and
then retreated into telling silence.
See Also: Adamski, George; Brown’s Martians; Dentons’s
Martians and Venusians; Hopkins’s Martians;
Khauga; Martian bees; Mince-Pie Martians;
Monka; Muller’s Martians; Orthon; Shaw’s
Martians; Smead’s Martians; Wilcox’s Martians
Further Reading
Allan, Christopher, and Steuart Campbell, 1986.
“Flying Saucer from Moore’s?” Magonia 23
(July): 15–18.
Allingham, Cedric [pseud. of Patrick Moore and
Peter Davies], 1954. London: Frederick Muller.
Chapman, Robert, 1969. Unidentified Flying Objects.
London: Arthur Barker.
Girvan, Waveney, 1956. Flying Saucers and Common
Sense. New York: Citadel Press.
Leslie, Desmond, and George Adamski, 1953. Flying
Saucers Have Landed. New York: British Book
Centre.
“News Briefs,” 1956/1957. Saucer News 4,1 (December/January):
12.
Tory, Peter, 1986. “I See No Hoax, Says Patrick.”
The [London] Star (July 28).
Alpha Zoo Loo
Trucker Harry Joe Turner allegedly met an
alien named Alpha Zoo Loo during a fright-