extraordinary%20encounters

48 Brodie’s deros
fense Research Board. The following year,
Smith released Project Magnet’s findings,
which were—perhaps not surprisingly—that
UFOs performed in ways that are “difficult to
reconcile . . . with the capabilities of our technology”;
thus, “we are forced to the conclusion
that the vehicles are probably extra-terrestrial”
(Smith, 1953).
He urged his superiors to set up a monitoring
station that would check for UFO activity
over a twenty-four-hour period. They agreed
to the proposal and provided a DOT-owned
hut on Shirley’s Bay, some ten miles west of
Ottawa. The installation contained an ionospheric
reactor, an electronic sound-measurement
device, a gamma-ray detector, a
gravimeter, a magnetometer, and a radio. If a
passing UFO set off any of these, an alarm
would sound. Two government scientists and
two civilian astronomers worked with Smith.
This work was done on their own time, but
the “flying saucer observatory” garnered much
embarrassing publicity for the Canadian government.
It was closed at the end of August
1954. Even so, Smith was privately assured
that he could continue UFO research so long
as it was not at the taxpayer’s expense; he was
also welcome to use government equipment.
Because of his credentials and his employer,
conservative ufologists who otherwise avoided
persons associated with contact claims welcomed
Smith into their ranks, ignoring, as
much as possible, his private assertions about
the Boys from Topside. Through his own and
others’ psychic contacts, he conversed with extraterrestrials
and attempted to learn from
them. In a letter to the prominent (and outspokenly
anticontactee) ufologist Donald E.
Keyhoe on December 11, 1955, Smith wrote,
“I have learned a great deal, but I am a small
child attempting to assimilate a college
course. Believe me, I have been shown
glimpses of a philosophy and technology almost
beyond comprehension.”
By now, Smith had largely abandoned
more conventional techniques of UFO investigating,
and he was entirely focused on contactees,
whom he quizzed intensely and whose
stories he compared before deciding on their
validity. At least some of them, he thought,
were telling the truth. He was gratified that
the space people were patient enough to put
up with his methods. In an article in England’s
Flying Saucer Review, after he went
public with his extraterrestrial connections, he
declared, “I began for the first time in my life
to realize the basic ‘Oneness’ of the Universe
and all that is in it” (Smith, 1958).
In 1956, Smith formed the contactee-oriented
Ottawa Flying Saucer Club. When not
grilling contactees or taking direct messages
himself, he occupied himself with sky watches
in parks and rural areas with like-minded
friends. He lectured and wrote about his beliefs
in saucer magazines, and he even spoke
openly with reporters. He died of intestinal
cancer on December 27, 1962.
See Also: Contactees
Further Reading
Beckley, Timothy Green, and Ottawa New Sciences
Club, eds., n.d. The Boys from Topside. New York:
UFO Review.
Cooper, Philip, 1959. “Men from Mars among Us—
He’s Talked to Them!” Ottawa Citizen (April 14).
“Flying Saucers Project Denied,” 1953. New York
Times (November 14).
Gross, Loren E., 1982. UFOs: A History—1950: Au -
gust–December. Fremont, CA: self-published.
Nixon, Stuart, 1973. “W. B. Smith—The Man behind
Project Magnet.” UFO Quarterly Review 1,
1 (January/March): 2–11.
Smith, Wilbert B., 1953. Project Magnet Report. Ottawa,
Ontario: Department of Transport.
———, 1954. Project Magnet, the Canadian Flying
Saucer Study. Ottawa, Ontario: self-published.
———, 1958. “The Philosophy of the Saucers.” Fly -
ing Saucer Review 4, 3 (May/June): 10–11.
Brodie’s deros
In the mythology of the Shaver mystery, the
creation of Richard Sharpe Shaver, deros are
cannibalistic, sadistic idiots who live in caves
underneath the earth. As the degenerated descendants
of an advanced race of extraterrestrials
that thousands of years ago colonized
our planet, they have access to the elders’ advanced
technology. They use it, however, for
destructive and even perverted purposes on