Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact - Above Top Secret

Other details were as follows: the object made a sound similar to that of a giant beehive andthe air seemed strangely warm around it. Two of the men were standing on the ground near aladder; the third one was on a telescopic elevator, the base of which touched the ground, andwas holding something near a group of pipes: this produced the sparks seen by Facchini.They were about five feet nine inches tall, dressed in gray diving suits with an ovaltransparent glass in front of their faces, which were concealed behind gray masks. From thefore portion of the masks a flexible pipe emerged at the level of the mouth. They woreearphones. Inside the craft could be seen a series of oxygen-type containers and many dials.When Facchini offered his help, the men talked among themselves in gutteral sounds, andone of them took a camera-like device from around his neck and projected a beam of lighton Facchini, who tumbled away for several yards. He was then caught by a rush of air andthrown again to the ground. They subsequently ignored him as they recovered the elevatorand brought it inside the craft, which took off.After a sleepless night, Facchini returned to the site and found some metal fragments left bythe soldering operation, also four circular imprints and patches of scorched grass. Herevealed the observation only ten days later, when his doctor treated him for the pains andbruises resulting from his fall and advised him to call police. Ministry of Defensetechnicians who examined the metal samples found them to consists of an "anti-frictionmaterial very resistant to heat." The incident had other witnesses, who testified privately.Had Mr. Facchini been exposed deliberately to a faked apparition of space beings? What could bethe purpose of such an elaborate hoax? Who can afford to contrive such a complex scheme, for solittle apparent result? Is human imagination alone capable of playing such tricks on itself? Orshould we hypothesize that an advanced race somewhere in the universe and sometime in the futurehas been showing us three-dimensional space operas for the last two thousand years, in an attemptto guide our civilization? If so, do they deserve our congratulations?Are we dealing instead with a parallel universe, another dimension, where there are human racesliving, and where we may go at our expense, never to return to the present? Are these races onlysemihuman, so that in order to maintain contact with us, they need crossbreeding with men andwomen of our planet? Is this the origin of the many tales and legends where genetics plays a greatrole: the symbolism of the Virgin in occultism and religion, the fairy tales involving humanmidwives and changelings, the sexual overtones of the flying saucer reports, the biblical stories ofintermarriage between the Lord's angels and terrestrial women, whose offspring were giants? Fromthat mysteious universe, are higher being projecting objects that can materialize and dematerializeat will? Are the UFOs "windows" rather than "objects"? There is nothing to support theseassumptions, and yet, in view of the historical continuity of the phenomenon, alternatives are hardto find, unless we deny the reality of all the facts, as our peace of mind would indeed prefer.The problem cannot be solved yet. If we absolutely must have something to believe, then we shouldjoin one of the numerous groups of people who have all the "answers." Read Menzel's books or theCondon Report, that fine piece of scientific recklessness. Or subscribe to the magazines that "prove"that "flying saucers are real and from outer space." I am not writing for such people, but for thosefew who have gone through all this and have graduated to a higher, cleaner level of perception ofthe total meaning of that tenuous dream that underlies the many nightmares of human history – forthose who have recognized the delicate levers of the collective unconscious.ConjecturesIt may seem useless to conjecture about a mystery that, according to all evidence, remainsunidentified. But in this book we have already seen that the UFO phenomenon has left a clear seriesof marks in the beliefs and attributes of our contemporaries, in a pattern not only identifiable butalso by no means unprecedented. It is not pointless to try to devise critical tests, both sociological