Passport To Magonia by Jacques Vallée - Chapter 1
Transcript
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Visuals in this presentation are produced by Static Void Studio, to whom we are deeply indebted. Chapter 1 – Visions of a Parallel World So man, who here seems principal alone, perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown, touches some wheel or verges to some goal. Tis but a part we see and not a whole. Alexander Pope, Essay on Man On June 15, 1952, in the jungles of Yucatan, an archaeological expedition led by Alberto Ruz Lhuillier and three companions made a remarkable discovery. The team was investigating the impressive Palenque monuments located in the state of Chiapas, on the site of a well-known Mayan city that scientists were busy restoring and mapping in systematic fashion.
Yucatan is a region of constant humidity and high temperature, and the tropical vegetation had caused considerable damage to the temples and pyramids erected by the Mayas, whose civilization was marked by the genius of its architects and is thought to have declined in the first centuries of our era, disappearing almost completely about the ninth century that is at the time of the Charlemagne Empire in Europe. One of the most impressive constructions on the Palenque site is the Pyramid of Inscriptions, an enormous truncated pyramid with a long stairway in front. The pyramid is of a somewhat unusual design, for on the top is a large temple. The purpose of the monument was unknown until L'Ouilier and his companions suggested that it might have been built as a tomb for some exceptional king or illustrious priest. Led by this idea, they began to search the temple at the top of the pyramid for some passage or stairway leading directly into the monument, and on June 15th, 1952, they discovered a long flight of stairs going down through the enormous mass and actually underground level.
The passage was built after the traditional Mayan fashion, the inclined walls giving the enclosure a high conical shape ending with a narrow ceiling. Some Indian huts in Yucatan are still built this way, a most efficient design in the tropical climate since it allows hot air to rise, thereby providing a relatively comfortable temperature inside the hut. At the bottom of the temple passage stairway was a splendid crypt, and in the crypt was a sarcophagus covered with a single carved stone measuring 12 feet by 7. 10 inches thick, the slab weighed about 6 tons. The fantastic scene depicted by the artists had not suffered, it came to light in every detail, and archaeologists are completely at a loss to interpret its meaning.
The Mayans are supposed to have vanished without having invented even the rudiments of a technology. Some archaeologists doubt that they knew the wheel, and yet the design on the Palenque sarcophagus appears to show a very complex and sophisticated device, with a man at the controls of an intricate piece of machinery. Noting that the man is depicted with his knees brought up toward his chest and his back to a complicated mechanism from which flames are seen to flow, several people, among them Soviet science writer Alexander Kazantsev, have speculated that the Mayans had actually been in contact with visitors from a superior civilization, visitors who used spaceships. Kazantsev's interpretation is difficult to prove, however the only object we know today closely resembling the Mayan design is the space capsule. The demigod for whom sarcophagus, crypt, and pyramid were built with such splendid craftsmanship by the Mayan artists is something of a puzzle too.
The body is radically different from the morphology of the Mayans as we imagine them. The corpse is that of a man nearly six feet tall, about eight inches taller than the average Mayan. According to Pierre Honoré, the sarcophagus was made for the great white god, Kulkulkan, but no final clue to the mystery has yet been found, and the tropical jungles of Central America, where dozens of temples and pyramids are still buried under the exuberant vegetation, have not yet yielded the secret of the Palenque sarcophagus. Sorcerers from the Clouds It is a common belief that the term "flying saucer" was made in America. Was it not coined by an American businessman in 1947? Was not the first official investigation of the mystery by military authorities started in the United States a few weeks later? Well yes, but a farmer from Texas described a dark flying object as a large saucer as early as January 1878, and ancient Japanese records inform us that on October 27th 1180 an unusual luminous object described as an earthenware vessel flew from a mountain in the Kii Province beyond the northeast mountain of Fukuhara at midnight.
After a while, the object changed its course and was lost to sight at the southern horizon, leaving a luminous trail. In view of the time which has elapsed since the sighting, as US Air Force investigators like to say, it would be difficult to obtain additional data today. It is interesting, however, to find a medieval Japanese chronicler speaking of flying earthenware. The Japanese must also receive credit for having organized the first official investigation, and the story is so amusing and parallels so well. Recent activities of the US Air Force that I cannot resist reproducing it here.
The date was September 24th 1235, seven centuries before our time, and General Yoritsume was camping with his army. Suddenly a curious phenomenon was observed. Mysterious sources of light were seen to swing and circle in the southwest, moving in loops until the early morning. General Yoritsume ordered what we would now term a full scale scientific investigation, and his consultants set to work. Fairly soon they made their report.
"The whole thing is completely natural, General," they said in substance. "It is only the wind making the stars sway." My source of information for this report, Yusuke J. Matsumura of Yokohama, adds sadly, "Scholars on government pay have always made ambiguous statements like this." Celestial phenomena seem to have been so commonplace in the Japanese skies during the Middle Ages that they influenced human events in a direct way. Panics, riots, and disruptive social movements were often linked to celestial apparitions. The Japanese peasants had the disagreeable tendency to interpret the signs from heaven as strong indications that their revolts and demands against the feudal system or against foreign invaders were just, and as assurance that their rebellions would be crowned with success.
Numerous examples of such situations can be quoted. For instance, on September 12th 1271, the famous priest Nichiren was about to be beheaded at Tatsunokuchi Kamakura, when there appeared in the sky an object like a full moon, shiny and bright. Needless to say, the officials panicked and the execution was not carried out. On August 3rd, 989, during a period of great social unrest, three round objects of unusual brilliance were observed. Later, they joined together.
In 1361, a flying object described as being shaped like a drum about 20 feet in diameter emerged from the inland sea off western Japan. On January 2nd, 1458, a bright object resembling the full moon was seen in the sky and this apparition was followed by curious signs in heaven and earth. People were amazed. Two months later, on March 17th, 1458, five stars appeared circling the moon. They changed colour three times and vanished suddenly.
The rulers were utterly distressed and believed that the sign announced a great disturbance throughout the land. All the people in Kyoto were expecting disasters to follow and the emperor himself was very upset. Ten years later, on March 8th, 1468, a dark object which made a sound like a wheel flew from Mount Kasuga toward the west at midnight. The combination of the sound and the darkness of the flying object is difficult to explain in natural terms. On January 3rd, 1569, in the evening, a flaming star appeared in the sky.
It was regarded as an omen of serious changes, announcing the fall of the Chu dynasty. Such phenomena continued during the 17th and 18th centuries. For instance, in May 1606, fireballs were continuously reported over Kyoto and one night a whirling ball of fire resembling a red wheel hovered near the Nijo castle and was observed by many of the samurai. The next morning, the city was filled with rumours and the people muttered, "This must be a portent." One noon in September 1702, the sun took on a bloody colour several days in succession and cotton-like threads fell down, apparently falling from the sun itself. Phenomena reminiscent of the 1917 observations in Fatima, Portugal.
Chaos spread all over Japan on January 2nd, 1749, when three round objects like the moon appeared and were seen for four days. Such a state of social unrest developed and seemed so clearly linked with the mysterious, celestial objects that the government decided to act. Riot participants were executed, but confusion became total when people observed three moons aligned in the sky and, several days later, two suns. Undoubtedly, the Japanese experienced natural phenomena similar to mirages and incorrectly interpreted them in the context of social rebellion. From this distance, however, it is impossible to separate the reliable observations from the emotional interpretation.
What matters here is the link between certain unusual phenomena observed or imagined and the alteration of the witness's behaviour. In other words, these accounts show that it is possible to affect the lives of many people by showing them displays that are beyond their comprehension, or by convincing them that they have observed such phenomena, or by keeping alive the belief that their destiny is somehow controlled by occult forces. A brief examination of legendary elements in Western Europe in the Middle Ages will show that a similar rumor about strange flying objects and supernatural manifestations was spreading there too. Indeed, Pierre Boistouin in 1575 remarked, "The face of heaven has been so often disfigured by bearded, hairy comets, torches, flames, columns, spears, shields, dragons, duplicate moons, suns, and other similar things, that if one wanted to tell in an orderly fashion those that have happened since the birth of Jesus Christ only, and inquire about the causes of their origin, the lifetime of a single man would not be enough." According to the 1594 edition of the same book, this is what happened a few miles from Tübingen, Germany on December 5th, 1577 at 7am. Quote, "About the sun many dark clouds appeared, such as we are wont to see during great storms, and soon afterward have come from the sun other clouds all fiery and bloody, and others yellow as saffron.
Out of these clouds have come forth reverberations resembling large tall and wide hats, and the earth showed itself yellow and bloody, and seemed to be covered with hats, tall and wide, which appeared in various colors such as red, blue, green, and most of them black." It is easy for everyone to think of the meaning of this miracle, which is that God wants to induce men to amend their lives and make penance. May Almighty God inspire all men to recognize Him. Amen. Especially interesting to us will be the fact that these reports of celestial objects are linked with claims of contact with strange creatures, a situation parallel to that of modern day UFO landings. Since these rumors have been puzzling to many authorities in the Roman Catholic Church, perhaps it is appropriate to begin with a quotation from the life of Saint Anthony, the Egyptian-born founder of Christian monasticism who lived about 300 AD.
In the desert, Saint Anthony met with a strange being of small stature who fled after a brief conversation with him. "Before long in a small rocky valley shut in on all sides, he sees a mannequin with hooted snout, homed forehead, and extremities like goats feet. When he saw this, Anthony, like a good soldier, seized the shield of faith and the helmet of hope. The creature nonetheless began to offer him the fruit of the palm tree to support him on his journey and as it were pledges of peace. Anthony perceiving this stopped and asked who he was.
The answer he received from him was this, "I am a mortal being and one of the inhabitants of the desert whom the Gentiles deluded by various forms of error worship under the names of Fauns, Satyrs, and Incubi. I am sent to represent my tribe. We pray you in our behalf to entreat the favor of your Lord and ours who we have learnt came once to save the world and whose sound has gone forth into all the earth." As he uttered such words as these, the aged traveler's cheeks streamed with tears, the marks of his deep feeling which he shed in the fullness of his joy. He rejoiced over the glory of Christ and the destruction of Satan and marveling all the while that he could understand the Satyrs language and striking the ground with his staff he said, "Woe to thee Alexandria, who instead of God worshipest monsters. Woe to thee Harlot City, into which have flowed together the demons of the whole world.
What will you say now? Beasts speak of Christ and you instead of God worship monsters." He had not finished speaking when, as if on wings, the wild creature fled away. Let no one scruple to believe this incident. Its truth is supported by what took place when Constantine was on the throne, a matter of which the whole world was witness. For a man of that kind was brought alive to Alexandria and shown as a wonderful sight to the people. Afterwards, his lifeless body, to prevent its decay through the summer heat, was preserved in salt and brought to Antioch that the emperor might see it." Again, with this story, we are faced with an account, the truthfulness of which it would be futile to question.
The lives of the early saints are full of amazing miracles that should be taken as literary figures rather than as scientific observations. The important point is that basic religious texts contain such material, giving, so to speak, letters of nobility to a category of beings widely believed to be of supernatural origin. Such observations as St. Anthony's will prove fundamental when religious authorities are faced with the problem of evaluating medieval observations of beings from the sky, claims of evocation of demons by occult means, and even modern miracles. The details and the terminology of such observations as St.
Anthony's are not important to this study. It is enough to note that in St. Anthony's account the strange being is indifferently termed a satyr and a mannequin, while the saint himself states that the gentiles also use the names fawn and incubus. St. Jerome speaks of a man of that kind.
Throughout our study of these legends we shall find the same confusion. In the above account, however, it is at least clear to St. Anthony that the creature is neither an angel nor a demon. If it had been, he would have recognized it immediately. In the 20th century old Indian book of primitive astronomy, Surya Siddhanta, it is said that "below the moon and above the clouds revolve the Siddhas perfected men and the Vidya Haras possessors of knowledge." According to Andrew Thomas, Indian tradition holds that the Siddhas could become "very heavy at will or as light as a feather, travel through space and disappear from sight." Observations of beings who flew across the sky and landed are also found in the writings of Agobard, Archbishop of Lyon, France.
Agobard, who was born in Spain in 779 and came to France when three years old, became Archbishop at 37. When he died in 840, one of the most celebrated and learned prelates of the 9th century, he left an interesting account of a peculiarly significant incident one. "We have, however, seen and heard, many men plunged in such great stupidity, sunk in such depths of folly as to believe that there is a certain region which they call Magonia, when ships sail in the clouds in order to carry back to that region those fruits of the earth which are destroyed by hail and tempests, the sailors paying rewards to the storm wizards, and themselves receiving corn and other produce. Out of the number of those whose blind folly was deep enough to allow them to believe these things possible, I saw several exhibiting in a certain concourse of people, four persons in bonds, three men and a woman who they said had fallen from these same ships. After keeping them for some days in captivity, they had brought them before the assembled multitude, as we have said, in our presence to be stoned.
But truth prevailed." We shall see in the following pages that the occultists give a quite different interpretation to the same incident. The seven visitors of Facius Cardan. Throughout medieval times, a major current of thought distinct from official religion existed, culminating in the works of the alchemists and hermetics. Among such groups were to be found some of the early modern scientists and men, remarkable for the strength of their independent thinking and for their adventurous life, such as Paracelsus. The nature of the beings who mysteriously appeared, dressed in shiny garments or covered with dark hair, and with whom communication was so hard to establish, intrigued these men intensely.
They were the first to relate these strange beings to the creatures described in the Bible and in the writings of the early Kabbalists. According to biblical writers, the heavenly hierarchy includes beings of human form called cherubim, a name that in Hebrew means "full of knowledge." Ezekiel describes them in the following terms, "Their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps, it went up and down among the living creatures, and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning." Other mysterious creatures who fly through the sky and land in their cloud ships, Agabard's authority notwithstanding, of the same race as the angels, asked the old philosophers. No, because they are mortal. "The Hebrews used to call these beings who are between the angels and man-sadaim, and the Greeks, transposing the letters and adding but one syllable, called them daimonas. Among the ancient philosophers, these demons were held to be an aerial race, ruling over the elements, mortal, engendering, and unknown in this century to those who rarely seek truth in her ancient dwelling place, which is to say in the Kabbalah and in the theology of the./ Hebrews, who possessed the special art of holding communion with that aerial people, and of conversing with all these inhabitants of the air." Plutarch even had a complete theory on the nature of these beings.
"He thinks it absurd that there should be no mean between the two extremes of an immortal and immortal being, that there cannot be in nature so vast a flaw without some intermediate kind of life, partaking of them both. As therefore we find the intercourse between the soul and the body to be made by the animal spirits, so between divinity and humanity there is this species of demons." It is not surprising then to find that the philosophers disagreed with Agabard on the nature of the three men and the woman who were captured by the mob in Lyon. "In vain does a philosopher bring to light the falsity of the chimeras people have fabricated, and present manifest proofs to the contrary. No matter what his experience, nor how sound his argument and reasoning, let but a man with a doctor's hood come along and write them down as false. Experience and demonstration count for naught, and it is henceforward beyond the power of truth to re-establish her empire.
People would rather believe in a doctor's hood than in their own eyes. There has been in your native France a memorable proof of this popular mania." The famous Cabalist Zedechias in the reign of your Pepin took it into his head to convince the world that the elements are inhabited by those peoples whose nature I have just described to you. The expedient of which he bethought himself was to advise the silfs to show themselves in the air to everybody. They did so sumptuously. These beings were seen in the air in human form, sometimes in battle array marching in good order, halting under arms, or encamped beneath magnificent tents, sometimes on wonderfully constructed aerial ships whose flying squadrons roved at the will of the Zephyrs.
What happened? Do you suppose that ignorant age would so much as reason as to the nature of these marvelous spectacles? The people straight away believed that sorcerers had taken possession of the air for the purpose of raising tempests and bringing hail upon their crops. The learned theologians and jurists were soon of the same opinion as the masses. The emperor believed it as well, and this ridiculous chimera went so far that the wise Charlemagne and after him Louis the debonair imposed grievous penalties upon all these supposed tyrants of the air. You may see an account of this in the first chapter of the capitularies of these two emperors. The silfs seeing the populace, the pedants and even the crowned heads thus alarmed against them, determined to dissipate the bad opinion people had of their innocent fleet by carrying off men from every locality and showing them their beautiful women, their republic and their manner of government, and then setting them down again on earth in diverse parts of the world.
They carried out their plan. The people who saw these men as they were descending came running from every direction, convinced beforehand that they were sorcerers who had separated from their companions in order to come and scatter poisons on the fruit and in the springs. Carried away by the frenzy with which such fancies inspired them, they hurried these innocents off to the torture. The great number of them who were put to death by fire and water throughout the kingdom is incredible. One day among other instances it chanced at lions that three men and a woman were seen descending from these aerial ships.
The entire city gathered about them crying out they were magicians and were sent by Grimaldus, Duke of Beneventum, Charlemagne's enemy to destroy the French harvests. In vain the four innocents sought to vindicate themselves by saying that they were their own country folk and had been carried away a short time since by miraculous men who had shown them unheard of marvels and had desired to give them an account of what they had seen. The frenzied populace paid no heed to their defense and were on the point of casting them into the fire when the worthy Agobard, Bishop of Lyon, who having been a monk in that city had acquired considerable authority there, came running at the noise and having heard the accusations of the people and the defense of the accused gravely pronounced that both one and the other were false. That it was not true that these men had fallen from the sky and that what they said they had seen there was impossible. The people believed what their good father Agobard said rather than their own eyes were pacified, set at liberty the four ambassadors of the Sylphs and received with wonder the book which Agobard wrote to confirm the judgment which he had pronounced.
Thus the testimony of these four witnesses was rendered vain." Such stories were so well established during the Middle Ages that the problem of communicating with the elementals became a major preoccupation of the hermetics and an important part of their philosophy. Paracelsus wrote an entire book on the nature of these beings but he took great pains to warn the reader of the dangers of an association with them. "I do not want to say here because of the ills which might befall those who would try it through which compact one associates with these beings thanks to which compact they appear to us and speak to us." And in a treatise entitled "Why These Beings Appear to Us", he presented the following ingenious theory. "Everything God creates manifests itself to man sooner or later. Sometimes God confronts him with the devil and the spirits in order to convince him of their existence.
From the top of heaven he also sends the angels, his servants. Thus these beings appear to us not in order to stay among us or become allied to us but in order for us to become able to understand them. These apparitions are scarce to tell the truth. But why should it be otherwise? Is it not enough for one of us to see an angel in order for all of us to believe in the other angels?" Paracelsus was probably born in 1491 and in the very same year, Facius Cardan recorded his observation of seven strange visitors directly related to the creatures of the elements who were so puzzling to the great philosopher. The incident is preserved in the writings of his son, Jerome Cardan, 1501 to 1576, who is well known to us today as a mathematician.
Jerome Cardan lived in Milan and was not only a mathematician but also an occultist and a physician. In his book De Subtilitate, Cardan explains that he had often heard his father tell the particular story and finally searched for his record of the event which read as follows. "August 13th 1491. When I had completed the customary rites at about the 20th hour of the day, seven men duly appeared to me clothed in silken garments resembling Greek togas and wearing as it were shining shoes. The undergarments beneath their glistening and ruddy breastplates seemed to be wrought of crimson and were of extraordinary glory and beauty.
Nevertheless, all were not dressed in this fashion but only two who seemed to be of nobler rank than the others. The taller of them, who was of ruddy complexion, was attended by two companions and the second, who was fairer and of shorter stature, by three. Thus in all there were seven. He left no record as to whether their heads were covered. They were about 40 years of age but they did not appear to be above 30.
When asked who they were, they said that they were men composed, as it were, of air and subject to birth and death. It was true that their lives were much longer than ours and might even reach to 300 years duration. Questioned on the immortality of our soul, they affirmed that nothing survives which is peculiar to the individual. When my father asked them why they did not reveal treasures to men if they knew where they were, they answered that it was forbidden by a peculiar law under the heaviest penalties for anyone to communicate this knowledge to men. They remained with my father for over three hours but when he questioned them as to the cause of the universe, they were not agreed.
The tallest of them denied that God had made the world from eternity. On the contrary, the other added that God created it from moment to moment so that should he desist for an instant, the world would perish. Be this fact or fable so it stands." Nearly three centuries later, in September 1768, a young man of 16 was traveling to the University of Leipzig with two passengers from Frankfurt. Most of the journey was accomplished in the rain and the coach sometimes had trouble moving uphill. On one occasion when the passengers had left their seats to walk behind the horses, the young man noticed a strange luminous object at ground level.
Quote "All at once, in a ravine on the right hand side of the way, I saw a sort of amphitheatre, wonderfully illuminated. In a funnel-shaped space there were innumerable little lights gleaming, range, step fashion over one another and they shone so brilliantly that the eye was dazzled. But what still more confused the sight was that they did not keep still but jumped about here and there as well downwards from above as vice versa and in every direction. The greater part of them however remained stationary and beamed on. It was only with the greatest reluctance that I suffered myself to be called away from the spectacle which I could have wished to examine more closely." The postilian when questioned said that he knew nothing about such a phenomenon but that there was in the neighborhood an old stone quarry, the excavation of which was filled with water.
Now whether this was a pandemonium of will of the wisps or a company of luminous creatures, I will not decide. End quote. The young man in question was Goethe. You will find this sighting in the sixth book of his autobiography according to Kenneth Anger to whom I am indebted for this very interesting discovery. Would the German poet and scientist have had occasion to learn more about the luminous creatures had he lived in the 20th century? If Paracelsus came back would he find new material for his theories on the nature of the strange and fugitive races of beings from the sky? We can safely hypothesize that their attention would be immediately directed to the files of UFO landings.
In the next paragraphs we shall examine some of the recent cases they might have found of interest. What do they prove? Nothing. They only indicate that if there ever was a time for scientists to bow their heads with awe before the variety and power of natural phenomena and human imagination, it is to be found in our own age of technology and rational thought, not in the confusion of medieval philosophies. Return of the Humanoids. One night in January 1958, a lady whose name I am not authorized to publish was driving along the New York State Thruway in the vicinity of Niagara Falls in the midst of a violent snowstorm.
The exact time was 1.30am. The lady was going to visit her son then in the army and she was driving very carefully trying to find an exit for she believed the Thruway was closed ahead of her. Visibility was extremely bad hence she had no chance to think when she suddenly saw what seemed to be an airplane wreck on the center parkway. Quote. A large shape was visible and a slim rod at least 50 feet high was illuminated and getting shorter as though it was sinking into the ground.
My motor slowed down and as I came closer my car stopped completely. I became panicky and tried desperately to start it as I had no lights. My first thought was to get out and see what was happening but I suddenly saw two shapes rising around that slim pole which was still growing shorter. They were suspended but moving about it. They seemed to be like animals with four legs and a tail but two front feelers under the head like arms.
Then before I could even gasp the things disappeared and the shape rose and I then realized it was a saucer. It spun and zoomed about 10 feet off the ground and up into the air and I could not even see where it went. My light suddenly came on I started the car and it was all right. I pulled up to that place got out with a flashlight and walked over to where it had been sitting. A large hole was melted in the snow about a foot across and grass was showing on it.
The grass was warm but nothing was dug up around there. End quote. The lady who met only with disbelief when she told her story to her family reported the case in a letter to Otto Binder when his syndicated series Our Space Age began to appear in a number of newspapers. The most puzzling element in this account is not so much what is described but the fact that such stories have become since 1946 rather common in all parts of the world. To a physicist of course they appear unbelievable just as the strange mannequin met by Saint Anthony would appear unbelievable to a biologist and yet there are several cases on record in which similar accounts arc associated with traces that can hardly be questioned.
In the celebrated incident at Socorro, New Mexico it was a policeman Lonnie Zamora who reported seeing two small beings dressed in white close to a shiny egg-shaped object which rested on four pads before it took off with a thunderous noise only to become perfectly silent as it flew away. The incident took place on April 24 1964 and was the occasion for some interesting measurements by local police officials and a federal bureau of investigation of the traces left by the object and of some even more interesting deductions by William T Powers on the possible mechanical construction of the landing gear. Here again we observe an emotional pattern strangely reminiscent of the medieval scene just surveyed. The witness in the Socorro case when he was about to be interviewed by air force investigators was so little convinced that he had observed a device of human construction that he asked to see a priest before releasing his report to the authorities. Then of course there is the report of the Kentucky family who claimed to have been besieged by several little men whose appearance was completely fantastic.
The incident occurred on the night of April 21 1955 and was the occasion of many strange observations of the behavior of the visitors. One of the creatures was seen approaching the farmhouse with both hands raised. When it was about 20 feet away two of the witnesses shot at the intruder. It did a flip and was lost in the darkness. Then it appeared at the window when the men came back inside the house and was again shot at.
Another creature seen on the roof was knocked over by a bullet but instead of falling it floated to the ground. The entities had oversized heads almost perfectly round and very long arms terminating in huge hands armed with talons. They wore a sort of glowing aluminum suit which is reminiscent of the Sylphs of 1491. Their eyes were very large and apparently very sensitive. They always approached the house from the darkest comer.
The eyes had no pupils and no eyelids. The eyes were much larger than human eyes and set on the side of the head. The creatures generally walked upright but when shot at they would run on all fours with extreme rapidity and their arms seemed to provide most of the propulsion. On September 10 1954 in Quarouble a small French village near the Belgian border at about 10 30 pm Marius Dewilde stepped outside and was at once intrigued by a dark mass on the railroad tracks. Dewilde then heard footsteps in the night.
Turning on his light he found himself facing two beings wearing very large helmets and what seemed to be heavy diving suits. They had broad shoulders but de Vild did not see their arms. They were less than four feet tall. De Vild moved toward them with the intention of intercepting them but a light appeared on the side of the dark object on the tracks and de Vild found he could not make a single move. When he regained control of his body the two visitors had re-entered the supposed machine and flown away.
This classic observation had a strange sequel never before published. French civilian investigators who studied the case were cooperating closely with local police officials but there were other people on the site notably representatives of the air police from Paris. When an inquiry was made regarding the analyses performed on some stones found calcined at the spot where the saucer had been seen by Dewilde it was discovered that even the police could not obtain information as to the results of the analyses. In the words of the local police chief quote "the official body working in liaison with the air police belongs to the ministry of national defence. The very name of this ministry excludes the idea of any communication" end quote.
On November 19th 1954 the following facts came to light. The police confirmed that Dewilde had made a second report concerning an observation of an object in the vicinity of his home. We were later to learn that the report in fact described a landing. However the police said quote "Dewilde and his family have decided for fear of adverse publicity to take no one in their confidence regarding this second occurrence. Therefore you will find no mention of it in local newspapers" end quote.
Furthermore civilian investigators were told politely but in no uncertain terms that any further information on such incidents would be kept confidential by the police. Reports continued however and some of them would have delighted Paracelsus. On October 14th 1954 a miner named Starovski claimed to have met on a country road near Urchin also in the north of France. A strange being of small height and bulky figure with large slanted eyes and a fur covered body. The midget less than four feet tall had a large head and wore a brown skull cap which formed a fillet a few inches above the eyes.
The eyes protruded with very small irises. The nose was flat, the lips were thick and red. A minor detail, the witness did not claim he had seen the creature emerge from a flying saucer or re-enter it. He just happened to meet the strange being who did not wear any kind of respiratory device. Before he could think of stopping him the creature had disappeared.
Six days later on October the 20th 1954 in Parravicino d'Erba near Como, Italy, a man had just put his car in the garage when he saw a strange being covered with a luminous suit about four feet tall standing near a tree. When he saw the motorist the creature aimed a beam from some sort of flashlight at him paralyzing the witness until a motion he made when clenching the fist holding the garage keys seemed to free him. He rushed to attack the stranger who rose from the ground and fled with a soft whirring sound. The author of this unbelievable story was 37 years old and was known locally as a trustworthy man. He arrived home in a state of great shock and went to bed with a high fever.
The details of the case were obtained through an investigation by the Italian police. Eleven years later the files of landing reports and strange creatures associated with them had become very thick indeed. Then a new flurry of reports began. On July the 1st 1965 Maurice Masse a French farmer who lived in Valensole had the following experience. As he arrived in his field at 6 a.m.
and was getting ready to start his tractor he heard an unusual noise. Stepping into the open he saw a machine that had landed in his lavender field. He thought it must be some sort of prototype and walked toward it with a mind to tell the pilots in no uncertain words to go find another landing spot for their contraption. It was only when he was within 20 feet of the machine that he came in full view of the scene and realized his mistake. The object was egg-shaped, had a round cockpit, was supported by six thin legs and a central pivot and was not bigger than a car.
In front, appearing to examine a lavender plant, were the two pilots. They were dressed in one-piece gray greenish suits. On the left side of their belts was a small container. A larger one was on the right side. They were less than four feet tall and had human eyes but their heads were very large, about three times the volume of a human head.
They had practically no mouth, only a very small opening without lips. They wore no respiratory device, no headgear and no gloves. They had small normal hands. When Massey came upon them, they seemed to become suddenly aware of his existence and yet it was without any indication of fear or surprise that one of the pilots took a small tube from its container and pointed it at Massey, with the result that the witness found himself suddenly incapable of movement. For the next 60 seconds or so, the two entities looked at Massey.
They appeared to be exchanging their impressions vocally in a sort of gargle. These sounds came from their throats, insisted the witness, but the mouths did not move. The eyes, in the meantime, conveyed human expressions. In private, Masse told a civilian investigator that he had not been frightened by their attitude and that it contained more friendly curiosity than hostility toward him. After some time, estimated by Masse, as I have said, as about one minute the creatures went inside the craft.
The door closed, like the front part of a wooden file cabinet, but Masse could see them through the cockpit. They were facing him as the object took off in the opposite direction, first hovering a few feet from the ground, then rising obliquely with the takeoff speed of a jet plane. When it was about 60 yards away, it vanished. The witness was closely questioned on this last point by French scientists, who were privately interested by the case, but Masse insisted he could not say whether the object went away so fast that the eye could not follow it or whether it actually disappeared. He made it quite clear, however, that one moment the thing was there and the next moment it was not there anymore.
Massey remained alone in his field, paralyzed. The word paralysis is not properly used in connection with incidents of this type. Massey said that he remained conscious during the whole observation. His physiological functions, respiration, heartbeat were not hampered, but he could not move. Then he became very frightened indeed.
Alone in his field, unable even to call for help, Massey thought he was going to die. It was only after about 20 minutes that he gradually regained voluntary control of his muscles and was able to go home. There is a sequel to his experience. For several weeks after the incident, Massey was overcome with drowsiness, and all his relatives, as well as the investigators, observed that he needed so much sleep that he found it difficult to stay awake even for four hours at a time. This is another little-known characteristic of close proximity cases.
To Masse, who was used to working from sun up to sun down as the early hour of his observation itself shows, this was a very impressive and disturbing consequence of his experience. Another result of the publicity the case attracted was the great damage to Massey's field, as crowds of tourists gathered to see the traces left by the craft. At this point, I should say that Masse is a man respected in the community. A former resistance fighter, a conscientious and successful farmer, he is regarded as absolutely trustworthy by the police authorities who investigated the case under the direction of Captain Valnet of Digne. Yet this man tells us a story that does not simply appear fanciful.
It is completely unbelievable. What is Massey's impression of the visitors? For some reason, he says, he knows they meant no harm. They were not hostile to him, only indifferent. As he stood facing them during that long minute, he suddenly was overcome with the certitude that they were good, a belief he is unable to rationalize, because at no point did he understand their strange language. The story is fantastic.
Yet it reminds us of the account Barney and Betty Hill gave under hypnosis of their alleged abduction in New Hampshire. The account involved the same description of an alien language, of entities whose expressions were almost human, of an overwhelming feeling of confidence and of not the slightest indication that the incident had a meaningful purpose or followed an intelligent pattern. Of considerable interest to the psychologist is the fact that the entities are endowed with the same fugitiveness and behave with the same ignorance of logical or physical laws as the reflection of a dream, the monsters of our nightmares, the unpredictable witches of our childhood. Yet their craft do leave deep indentations in the ground, according to observers who were fully awake and absolutely competent at the time of the sighting. What dox it all mean? How can one reconcile these apparently contradictory facts? Some in a laudable attempt question the classical search for patterns.
Is it necessarily true, they ask, that we would detect meaningful patterns in the same sense of our own intelligence level, in the behavior of a superior race? Is it not much more likely that we would find in their actions only random data and incoherent pictures, much as a dog would if confronted with a mathematician writing on a blackboard? If so, it is only after new concepts have emerged in our consciousness that our vision of the world would be suddenly illuminated and that we would truly discover the meaning of their presence in our environment. And if a superior race does in fact generate what we are now observing as the UFO phenomenon, is it not precisely with the purpose of changing the course of human destiny by presenting us with evidence of our limitations in the technical as well as the mental realm? This theory which has been presented in particular by the French science writer, Émer Michel, in several brilliant books and articles is perhaps the most intriguing that has been put forward to date. It does not attempt however to answer the question of the nature of the objects. Children of the Unknown. If they are not real, should we see these rumors as a sign that something in human imagination has changed, bringing into a new light uncharted areas of our collective unconscious? They may be only children of our fancy and our love for them akin to our love for Batman and Cinderella, but they may be real.
Modern science rules over a narrow universe, one particular variation on an infinite theme. In any case, it is important to understand what need these images fulfill, why this knowledge is both so exciting and so distressing to us. Such is the subject of this book.