extraordinary%20encounters

nians amounted to bad science fiction, he was
also widely re ve re d .
In August 1953, more than ten thousand
persons attended the Interplanetary Spacecraft
Convention at Van Tassel’s residence in Giant
Rock, California. The speakers were mostly
the new contactee stars. The movement was
growing rapidly, becoming a worldwide phenomenon.
It also produced a small library of
books and newsletters. Over the course of the
next few years, other contactees rose to occult
celebrity. Many were physical contactees, but,
in time, channelers and automatic writers—
most of whom did not seek publicity or
profit—dominated the ranks.
Not everyone was willing to take the space
people at their word. Channeling contactee
Trevor James Constable warned that some of
them were demons in disguise. Some years
later, occult-oriented ufologist John A. Keel
wrote, “The demons, devils, and false angels
were recognized as liars and plunderers by
Contactees 71
UFO contactee George Adamski (left) being interviewed on television by Long John Nebel (Fortean Picture Library)
early man. These same impostors now appear
as long-haired Venusians” (Keel, 1970).
Christian fundamentalist authors of UFO
books expressed similar suspicions.
Adamski’s death in April 1965 marked the
passing of the era of the physical contactees.
Even so, the most successful contactee of later
years was himself a physical contactee, Eduard
“Billy” Meier, a rural Swiss man with a background
in the esoteric. Like Adamski and his
first-generation counterparts, Meier put forth
photographs, artifacts, and allegedly confirmatory
testimony to back up his stories of inthe-flesh
meetings with space people and of
rides in their spacecraft. Meier’s extraterrestrials
are from the Pleiades star system. But like
Adamski’s Venusians, they are handsome and
beautiful, with blond hair and a generally
n o rthern Eu ropean appearance. Unlike Ad a mski’s
and just about everybody else’s space people,
Meier’s have a specifically antireligious
message; the Pleiadeans, according to Meier,