Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact - Above Top Secret

From behind the object, two beings appeared. They were three and a half to four feet tall. Theylooked joyfull. Their smiles displayed white and very thin teeth. They were wearing gray coverallsand reddish leather helmets similar to those used by military drivers. They had what seemed to be a"convexity" at the center of their foreheads. Speaking an incomprehensible language, the two closedin on the woman, and one of them took the pot containing the flowers. Mrs. Lotti-Dainelli now triedto get her property back, but the two beings ignored her and returned to their craft. The witnessstarted to scream and ran away. She returned to the spot with other witnesses, including policemen.Too late. Not a trace of the object was left. But it seems that other people saw the craft in flight,leaving a red and blue trail.These stories would be amazing and nothing more if it were not for one fact known to students offolklore: a constant feature of one class of legends involving supernatural creatures is that thebeings come to our world to steal our products, our animals, and even – as we shall see in a laterchapter – human beings. But for the moment, let us concern ourselves only with the samplegatheringbehavior of these beings and their requests for terrestrial products.In an Algonquin legend embodying all the characteristics of an excellent saucer story, a hunterbeholds a "basket" that comes down from heaven. The basket contains twelve young maidens ofravishing beauty. The man attempts to approach them, but the celestial creatures quickly reenter thebasket, which ascends rapidly out of sight. However, witnessing the descent of the strange object onanother day, the same hunter uses a trick to come close to it and succeeds in capturing one of thegirls, whom he marries and by whom he has a son. Nothing, unfortunately, can console his wife forloss of the society of her sisters, who have gone away with the flying vehicle. One day she makes asmall basket, and according to Hartland,having entered it with her child she sang the charm she and her sisters had formerly used,and ascended once more to the star from whence she had come.She had been back in that heavenly country two years when she was told:Thy son wants to see his father; go down therefore, to the earth and fetch thy husband, andtell him to bring us specimens of all the animals he kills.She did so. And the hunter ascended with his wife, saw his son, and attended a great feast, at whichthe animals he brought were served.The Algonquin story offers a complex mixture of themse. Some of them are present in modern-dayUFO stories; others derive from traditional concepts, such as the exchange of food. The newelements are: (1) the desire expressed by the celestial beings to recieve specimens of all the animalsthe hunter kills, and (2) the idea that sexual contact between the terrestrial and the aerial races ispossible.So far, we have seen our visitors stealing plants and requesting various items. But have theyactually killed animals themselves? Have they taken away cattle? If we are to believe the storiestold by many witnesses, they have. But the interesting fact is that, here again, we find a traitcommon to both the ufonauts and the Good People. Crowds of elves have been seen chasing cowsand horses. And in the same conversation with Walter Evans-Wentz, recorded before 1909, thestoryteller, "Old Patsy," told the following story about a man "who, if still alive, is now in Americawhere he went several years ago":In the South Island as night was coming on, a man was giving his cow water at a well, and,as he looked on the other side of a wall, he saw many strange people playing hurley. Whenthey noticed him looking at them, one came up and struck the cow a hard blow, and turningon the man cut his face and body very badly. The man might not have been so badly off, buthe returned to the well after first encounter and got four times as bad a beating.