The UFO craze was started way back in 1947 by Kenneth Arnold and the phenomenon quickly spread throughout a community of believers who had been in contact with or had encountered alien beings. The ‘contactees’ as they would come to be known, were rife with outlandish tales of visits to far away worlds and telepathic communications with extraterrestrial visitors. Keep reading to discover our list of the TOP 10 particularly notable UFO contactee figures throughout history.
Two of the most prominent members of this UFO contactee figures movement were George Hunt Williamson and his friend George Adamski. They not only lectured all around the continental US through the 1950s, they even wrote best-sellers about their ‘adventures.” Their jig was up in the 60s as their obviously fake stories filled with scientific impossibilities faded, but as some of the first ‘contactees,’ they were certainly a couple of very peculiar individuals.
Particularly notable UFO contactee figures throughout history
Let’s revisit the stories of 10 particularly notable UFO contactee figures throughout history.
1. Buck Nelson
In 1956, a plainspoken, humble Missouri farmer named Buck Nelson began hosting a UFO convention on his own farm. In 1956 he published My Trip To Mars, The Moon, And Venus, a ridiculous pamphlet describing many outrageous adventures. He talked about experiencing two UFO sightings, with one of them having the four occupants of a UFO arriving in his home on March 5, 1955. He claimed that the four visitors included a pair of Venusians, a young earthling, and a 300-pound dog named Bo. He claimed that the visitors examined his house, then offered to take him on an interplanetary voyage at some point.
He recounts that just under two months later, on April 24th of the same year, Nelson, as well as his dog Ted, were picked up for their outer space journey. He described the journey starting with a visit to Mars, which Nelson claimed was similar to Earth with a lot of colorful hues. He then claimed that they visited the Moon next, and capped off their trip with a stopover on Venus which was a utopian paradise that has never experienced war or crime, and therefore had no need for jails, armies, or police.
He promised the aliens that he would tell his fellow earthlings all about his travels and he made sure to go straight to the media with his stories. Supposedly, he even talked to the armed forces. As evidence of his story, Nelson claimed to own hair from the 300-pound Bo, which he sold. Skeptics questioned why a Venusian dog’s hair was so similar to that of an Earth dog, to which Nelson responded that dogs are dogs regardless of the planet.
2. Cynthia Appleton
English housewife Cynthia Appleton was tending to her children in her home on November 18, 1957, when she heard a high-pitched whistling sound emanating from her sitting room. She went to investigate once the sound died down and witnessed a blond man appear by her fireplace. She recounted that he telepathically instructed Appleton to not fear him and explained that he was a visitor from the planet Gharnasvarn, aiming to make contact with earthlings on behalf of his people.
The man would make a supposed seven returns to Appleton’s home, sometimes bringing along a fellow traveler. He spoke in pseudo-psychological babble about the unreal nature of time, cures for cancer, and the unification of life across the universe. In an apparent adoption of earthly customs, the man didn’t materialize for his last six visits but rather arrived in a black car.
In September 1958, the man from Gharnsvarn would show up with his friend for the last time at Appleton’s home and claimed that the mother of two was now once again pregnant. While the child was her husband’s son, the man explained that it would also be of a Gharnasvarnian race. In May 1959, she did, in fact, have a son. However, then Ghrnasvarnians never showed again, and Appleton’s notoriety faded from the public spotlight quickly after.
3. Gabriel Green
After passing up on his promising career as a professional photographer, Gabriel Green became obsessed with UFOs, starting the organization named Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America, Inc., and began acting as an editor of Flying Saucers International (the group’s journal). In a boast of ambitious goals, Green launched a presidential bid as an independent candidate in 1960, facing off with Republican Richard Nixon and Democrat John F. Kennedy. He took his bid very seriously, though he did not make most ballots and was merely a write-in candidate. Why did he choose to run? According to Green, he was asked to do so by the “Space People.”
Apparently, he believed that only by the wisdom of the teachings and advice of the Space People would Earth’s humanity be salvaged. His campaign’s platform promised free college education for all Americans, no more taxation, and even a spaceship for a Martian mission. Seeing that the effort would go nowhere, Green was forced to pull out of the race. He would try getting into government another way in 1962, running as a Democratic candidate for a Senate seat. Unfettered, he would make another presidential bid in 1972, and when he once again lost, he quit his political ambitions. Perhaps he had resolved that now the Earth was doomed.
4. Ted Owens
Ted Owens fancied himself a real-life superhero and went by the monicker PK (Psychokinetic) Man.” He had claimed to have been bestowed with supernatural abilities by alien beings which allowed him to tap into “space intelligence” that gave him the power to do everything form dictate the weather to altering the results of a sports game.
The Space Intelligences, Owens claimed, were beings of hyperdimensional nature that traveled around on UFOs, observing Earth. He claimed his initial contact with the interplanetary travelers happened in 1965 when a UFO appeared and then vanished in front of his car. He further claimed that they telepathically communicated and transferred his PK powers. He regarded himself as a test subject of how much PK power humans can absorb and withstand.
The member of MENSA did have his followers and fans, including a CIA agent, a handful of sports writers, and one NASA official, but when it came to convincing scientific academia about his abilities, Owens struggled mightily, being treated skeptically by professionals despite working hard to find evidence of his prediction and demonstrations from newspaper clippings.
5. Aladino Felix
Felix published My Contact with Flying Saucers under the pseudonym of Dino Kraspedon in 1959, appealing to the contactee movement. He claimed that he met a UFO crew in Sao Paulo, Brazil and the experience resulted in the captain of the UFO visiting his home several months later where he was warned about the dangers of the Atomic Age. After fading from public view for a spell, Feli would resurface as a self-styled psychic six years later, making vague natural disaster predictions that happened to coincide with a deadly Brazilian flash flood of 1966. Additionally, he predicted multiple instances of terrorist attacks in Brazil during the country’s particularly turbulent political period.
In fairness, some of his predictions were pretty accurate, but mostly because he intervened to try to help them come true. Felix was arrested in 1968 with 18 other people, suspected of bombings and bank robberies. The group was plotting to go after politicians too, with Felix as their not-so-righteous ring leader. As he was sentenced and hauled off to jail, he vowed that his space friends will arrive to avenge his arrest and that the planet would be invaded by extraterrestrials in flying saucers.
6. Daniel Fry
Taking a walk in the New Mexico desert isn’t typically very eventful, but it apparently was for Daniel Fry on July 4th, 1950 as a remote-controlled UFO descended just 70 feet (20 meters) away from him and a voice invited him to come aboard. He obliged and was whisked away to New York City, only to be brought back to New Mexico in just 30 minutes.
His pilot and host, Alan, revealed to him that the aliens themselves were former Earthlings who roamed around the planet in their flying saucers. Apparently, Alan was a descendant of ancestors who built Lemuria and Atlantis, two advanced global superpowers that annihilated one another, while the survivors of the conflict launched into orbit and circled the planet looking to observe Earth from a distance.
Fy found Understanding, Inc in 1955 in California, a spiritual organization meant to spread the messages of the Martians. While the group only had 9 initial members, they would grow to organize 60 “units” globally. The organization survived well into the 1980s, but that area of academia swiftly declined afterward.
7. Orfeo Angelucci
The contactee stories of Orfeo Angelucci, a factory worker who had a nervous breakdown were studied by renowned Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. His accounts had themes that echoed Christianity including a meeting with Jesus Christ, as well as interactions with Lucifer and angels.
Some of his stories were borderline comical, like his one claim that in January 1953 he swapped bodies with an alien answering to the name of Neptune. In this account, Angelucci recalled going to sleep on a couch on Earth, then waking up in the body of the alien on another planet. The alien being had companions, named Orion and Lyra, who showed Angelucci a distant planet named Lucifer and explained that due to their attempts to conquest other planets, the Luciferians were cast out to Earth as punishment, where they were subsequently imprisoned. According to Angelucci, that meant that most of the Earth’s residents were descendants of these interstellar criminals.
Angelucci kept with the common theme of many others on this list, holding a firm intent to help humanity. He, therefore, felt the need to inform humanity that while in Neptune’s body, he had seen an apocalyptic vision in which the Earth was destroyed by a comment if humanity did not change its ways in 1986. Once the year came and went, Angelucci, faded from any relevancy, passing away quietly in 1993.
8. Reinhold O. Schmidt
Wondering about a remote area around Kearney, Nebraska on November 5, 1957, Reinhold O. Schmidt, a German-American farmer, came upon a balloon-shaped UFO which stunned him with a light beam to the chest as he approached, paralyzing him. Two beings came out from the UFO and searched Schmidt for weapons. Finding none, they invited him to join them inside. Curiously, the leader spoke English with a heavy German accent, while the rest of the crew communicated strictly in German.
Once Schmidt deboarded, the UFO took off. Schmidt was sure no one would believe him but felt he had to report the incident to the authorities anyhow. He spoke to prominent local authorities about it, bringing the sheriff, his deputy, and other law enforcement personnel to the spot of the encounter. After hearing him out, the authorities believed the plausibility of the event but coerced Shmidt into denying it. Schmidt was defiant, so word of his encounter spread around the area. His brazen disregard for the instructions of the law officers landed him a night in jail.
That would not be his only encounter with the German-speaking UFO occupants, and after several experiences, Schmidt sought to write a book and give lectures. However, Schmidt took his actions too far and got into legal trouble when he scammed an elderly widow out of $1000. Not only did his new reputation cast serious doubt on the legitimacy of his claims, but he also was convicted of grand theft and incarcerated.
9. Wilber Smith
There were two types of people that followed the rise of UFO popularity. One side was the set of laypeople who recounted their “experiences” of meeting, interacting, and being abducted by strange otherworldly visitors of various kinds, while others were educated professionals. One of the latter was a naval aviator and NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon cofounder, Donald Keyhoe. By using their figures as scientists and military figures, Keyhoe and his group of dismissed contactees attempted to further investigate UFO sightings. However, the two groups did not have a very amicable relationship, often even refusing to be featured together on television.
However, some were an interesting mixture of the two, such as a Canadian Department of Transport radio engineer named Wilbert Smith. He was simultaneously one of the original NICAP advisors while also associating with contactees like George Hunt Williamson. He even reported contact with the same extraterrestrial beings as those Williamson claimed to have interacted with. However, he still kept a job from 1950 to 1954 as head of Canada’s Project Magenet, a research group focused on UFO investigations and was government-funded.
The Department did not take kindly to the conclusions Williamson brought about. His outlandish claims deemed that not only were alien visitors real, he argued that flying saucers were actually vessels from parallel universes. He referenced (bogus) studies conducted by the Borderland Sciences Research Associates as proof of these facts. He believed that humans were able to communicate with the UFOs through psychic powers. Borderland Sciences Research Associates would soon lose their funding, but that did not deter Smith who kept on searching for alien life until he passed away on December 27, 1962.
10. William Dudley Pelley
Hardly any contactee accounts are as odd in the 20th century to rival that of William Dudley Pelley, a severely anti-Semitic screenwriter from the 1920s who left Hollywood because he believed that Jews controlled not only Hollywood but also the world. As the next phase of his life came along, he turned to publish a popular mysticism article and even published a book that detailed some near-death experiences he had.
His claim involved that for 7 minutes he was in “eternity” where he met with Jesus, God, and several hyperdimensional beings. He claimed he was told that souls were reclaimed until they achieved their spiritual, hierarchical status who eventually ascended to being white people.
As Adolf Hitler assumed power in 1933, Pelley leaned into his mysticism and racist beliefs by joining a paramilitary fascist group the Silver Legion of America, that grew to as many as 15,000 members. Pelley even attempted to run for president in 1936 under the Christian party but was handily booted from the race.
Pelley rallied, threw tantrums, and threatened the government. In April of 1942, FDR was fed up with him, so he was arrested, charged with, and arrested for sedition. He was forbidden from engaging in any political activism after his 1950 release from incarceration. Pelley sank further into mysticism, making his future writings more inane.
He developed Soulcraft, a set of racist spiritual teachings that were based on the principle of black, Asian, and white people all coming from different planets. He wanted to be taken seriously by fellow UFO crackpots, so his writings made references to influential names in the UFO community including George Hunt Williamson and George Adamski.
Pelley would never regain the notoriety he had in the 1930s again, though Soulcraft did have some ardent fans and believers. By his death in June 1965, Pelley was largely forgotten and is mentioned these days mostly in lists just like this one.
Conclusion:
The history of UFO contactees is a fascinating and intriguing topic that has captured the imagination of people for decades. From George Adamski to Billy Meier, these figures have claimed to have had direct contact with extraterrestrial beings and have shared their experiences with the world.
Despite some being met with skepticism and criticism, their stories continue to inspire discussions and debates about the possibility of life beyond our planet. These top 10 particularly notable UFO contactee figures have certainly left a lasting impact on the world of ufology and beyond.
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Frequently Asked Question:
how to report ufo sighting?
To report a UFO sighting, you can follow these steps:
1. Write down the details: Note the date, time, location, and any other details about the sighting, including the shape, size, color, and any other relevant observations.
2. Contact relevant organizations: Consider reporting the sighting to organizations that investigate UFO sightings, such as the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) or the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI).
3. Share with law enforcement: If the sighting is of immediate concern or appears to pose a threat, consider reporting it to local law enforcement or the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
are the ufo sightings real?
The existence of UFOs, or unidentified flying objects, is a topic of much debate and speculation. While some UFO sightings have been later identified as natural phenomena, aircraft, or other known objects, others remain unexplained and have sparked interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life or advanced technology. However, there is currently no definitive evidence to prove the existence of extraterrestrial or advanced technology behind UFO sightings.
are ufo sightings increasing?
It is difficult to determine if UFO sightings are truly increasing. Some studies suggest a rise in reported sightings, but factors like increased public awareness and reporting methods could be contributing. Without comprehensive data, it is challenging to determine if UFO sightings are truly on the rise.
Hello, and welcome to my blog! My name is Idammah, and I am the founder of this site dedicated to exploring the world's mysteries, uncovering fascinating facts, and delving into science's weird and beautiful aspects. I have always been fascinated by the unknown and the unexplained, and I love nothing more than digging deep to find the answers to some of life's greatest mysteries. Whether it's exploring the depths of the ocean, investigating ancient civilizations, or unraveling the mysteries of the universe, I am always on the hunt for new knowledge and insights. As a self-proclaimed weirdo and science enthusiast, I believe that there is always more to learn and discover, and I am constantly seeking out new and exciting ways to expand my understanding of the world around me. Through FoxPeek blog, I hope to share my love of all things strange and wonderful with like-minded readers and inspire others to embrace their inner curiosity and seek out the world's mysteries for themselves.
