textfiles/ufo/unex0002.txt

From "The Unexplained" #2. 
Orbis Publishing, Great Britain.

                      WHO ARE THE HUMANOIDS

  MANY PEOPLE CLAIM TO HAVE MET THE OCCUPANTS OF UFOs; BUT
ACCOUNTS OF HUMANOIDS' BEHAVIOUR AND APPEARANCE SEEM STRANGELY
INCONSISTENT

  The sighting of nine unusual flying craft in Washington
State, USA, by American airman Kenneth Arnold in June 1947,
marked the advent of modern publicity for the "flying saucer"
or UFO phenomenon. The frequently reported ultra-high speeds
and breath-taking manoeuvrability of the objects inevitably led
to speculation by observers, newsmen and the public alike that
what was being witnessed were intrusions into our airspace by
extra-terrestrial visitors - beings from outer space. And, as
the behaviour of these objects seemed to indicate superior
technology and its fluent control, the big question was: control
by whom, or by what?
   
   The question was not quickly resolved, however, for although
the phenomenon was so persistent that the US Air Force set up
an investigatory unit (Project Blue Book), officialdom did not
appear to want to know the answer. By 1952, many accounts of
sightings and even landings had been filed with the Project;
but in his book 'The Report on UFOs', Blue Book's commanding
officer, Captain Edward Ruppelt, stated he had been plagued by
reports of landings and that his team had conscientiously
ignored them.
   
   There are, however, always those whose sense of wonder
overcomes official intransigence. Groups of doggedly inquisitive
civilian researchers drifted together and, the limits of their
slender resources, they gathered and recorded information from
all around the world. Among them were people like Aime Michel
and Jaques Vallee from France (Vallee subsequently lived and
worked in the USA); Coral and Jim Lorenzen and their Aerial
Phenomena Research Organisation (APRO) in Arizona; Len
Stringfield in Ohio; Major Donald Keyhoe's National
Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in
Washington DC (who, like Ruppelt, were at first none too happy
about the many landing reports) and, in Britain, the supporters
of the 'Flying Saucer Review'.

 ALIEN PHENOMENON

   From the impressive body of evidence collected by these
veterans, and others, it is quite obvious now that the
occupants of UFOs constitute a phenomenon in their own right.
Indeed, the shapes, sizes, appearance and behaviour of these
'pilots', as reported by their alleged observers, are often
quite extraordinary. Out of the thousands of reported
sightings, no coherent picture emerges of their nature and
intentions, however, and their actions seldom seem to be
related to any kind of organised surveillance of our planet.
Sometimes, sightings of these aliens are even reported without
the apparent presence of a UFO.
   
   From 1947 to 1952, while the reality of UFOs and their
occupants was often the subject of heated debate, allegedly
man-like creatures had already been observed either close to,
or actually in, UFOs in widely different parts of the world.

 BRAZILLIAN LANDING

   At Bauru, in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil, on 23 July
1947, for instance, - less than a month after Kenneth Arnold's
aerial encounter near Mount Rainier - a survey worker named
Jose Higgins, and several of his fellow workers, saw a large
metallic disc come to earth and settle down on curved legs.
   
   Higgins stood his ground while his his colleagues fled, and
he soon found himself face to face with three 7-foot (2.1
metres) tall beings, all wearing transparent overalls with
metal boxes on their backs. One entity pointed a tube at him
and moved as though to apprehend him. But Higgins dodged the
creature and observed that it was shy of following him into the
sunlight.
   
   The creatures had large bald heads, big round eyes, no
eyebrows or beards and long legs. They leapt and gambolled,
picking up and tossing huge boulders about. They also made
holes in the ground, perhaps trying to indicate what could have
been the positions of planets around the sun, and pointing
particularly to the seventh hole from the centre. (Could that
seventh 'planet' signify Uranus?) The creatures then re-entered
their craft, which took off with a whistling noise. Higgins
subsequent account appeared in two Brazillian newspapers.
   
   Three weeks later, far away in north-eastern Italy, a
Professor Johannis was on a mountain walk on 14 August 1947,
near Villa Santina, Carni, in the province of Friuli, when he
suddenly saw a red metallic disc in a rocky cleft and emerged
from trees to look at it. He then noticed that two dwarf-like
creatures were following him, moving with tiny strides, hands
perfectly motionless at their sides, and heads still. As they
came nearer, Johannis' strength failed him: he seemed
paralysed.

   The little beings - less than 3 feet (1 metre) tall - wore
translucent blue coveralls, with red collars and belts. The
witness could detect no hair, but he described their facial
skin colour as 'earthy green'. He also noted straight noses,
slits for mouths that opened and closed like fishes' mouths,
and large round, protruding eyes.
   
   Johannis says he shouted to them on an impulse and waved his
alpine pick, whereupon one dwarf raised a hand to his belt, the
centre of which apparently emitted a puff of smoke. The pick
flew out of Johannis' hand, and he fell flat on his back. One
entity then retrieved the pick, and the pair retreated to the
disc, which soon shot up, hovered briefly over the
panic-stricken professor, and then suddenly seemed to shrink
and vanish.

 CRASH LANDING

   On 19 August 1949, in Death Valley, California, two
prospectors saw the apparent crash-landing of a disc. Two small
beings emerged and were chased by the prospectors until the
aliens were lost among sand dunes. But when the two men
returned their site, the disc-shaped object had gone.
   
   Argentine rancher Wilfredo Arevalo saw one 'aluminium' disc
land while another hovered over it on 18 March 1950. The object
that landed was surrounded by a greenish-blue vapour, and in
its centre was a transparent cabin in which Arevalo saw 'four
tall, well-shaped men dressed in Cellophane-like clothing'.
They shone a beam of light at the rancher, the disc glowed a
brighter blue, flames shot from the base, and it rose from the
ground. The two objects then disappeared swiftly towards the
Chilean border.
   
   Such reports seemed to promise interesting meterial for
future investigation. but did not appear to indicate a serious
threat of alien ('take me to your leader') invasion. There was,
too, an official reluctance even to consider landing reports,
which were said to be flooding in, due possibly to a fear of
being swamped with crazy stories of 'little green men', which
might well have become ready targets for ridicule in the media.
(Serious researchers eventually coined the term 'humanoids')
   
   Back in 1953, however, something happened that shocked most
serious-minded investigators, for it was in that year that a
certain George Adamski broke in on the UFO scene with a book
co-authored with Desmond Leslie - 'Flying Saucers Have Landed'.
In this controversial title, Adamski claimed to have conversed
with a being from a flying saucer and to have taken
photographs of the craft. The book rapidly became a bestseller
and was a boon to those early serious researchers - although
they would never admit it - in that it brought to thousands of
casual readers an interest in ufology.
   
   George Adamski (1891 - 1965) was an amateur astronomer who
operated Newtonian reflector telescopes from his home at
Palomar Gardens, California. he developed an obsessive interest
in flying saucer reports, frequently claimed to have seen the
objects and to have photographed them telescopically - as on 5
March 1951, when he captured on film a giant cigar-shaped
object surrounded by emerging scout craft, and on 1 May 1952,
when he took a picture of another giant cigar-shaped 'mother
ship'. Then, on 20 November 1952, with a small party of
friends, Adamski was driven out to a place just off the road to
Parker, in Arizona. The purpose of the trip was to look for,
and then possibly to photograph, UFOs.

 VENUSIAN VISITOR

   A 6-inch (15-centimetre) protable telescope was set up at a
convenient place and Adamski settled down to wait, while his
companions retreated to watch from a distance. Before long, he
said, he was rewarded with the sight of an object landing among
the hills before him, and he photographed it at long range
before it disappeared.
   
   A 'person' then appeared and approached him. The stranger
was about 5 feet 6 inches (1.7 metres) tall, wore ski-suit type
clothing and had long hair down to his shoulders. There was an
aura of friendliness about him, and Adamski said that they were
able to communicate telepathically about many things, the
visitor specifically indicating that he came from Venus.
   
   The stranger's 'scout craft' then turned up and, refusing
Adamski's request for a ride, the 'Venusian' departed, taking
one of Adamski's film plate-holders with him. The ufonaut left
footprints in the sand, and a member of the party produced
plaster of Paris to make casts of the imprints.
   
   On 13 December 1952, the Venusian returned to Earth,
bringing back the plate-holder, and it was then, so Adamski
claims, that he took close-up pictures of the craft.
   
   In his second book, 'Inside the Space Ships', Adamski stated
that he finally made that trip - round the Moon - and that a
space companion had pointed out the rivers on the unseen far
side.
   
   All of this seems to indicate that Adamski was not telling
the truth, or perhaps that he had been deliberately misled by
entities that had a vested interest in spreading a little
confusion on Earth. Then again, perhaps the story Adamski told
was real enough to him.

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