My first exposure to Rael was on Rev. Bob Larson’s wacko radio show in 1990. I just did a websearch and found it on youtube, so posting it below. I’m gonna listen to it again for the first time in 30 years! Will you join me?

 

 

 

 

The following bit on Buck Nelson was co-written with my cosmic cohort, Greg Bishop, host of Radio Misterioso.

Buck Nelson will forever be known as the guy who sold Venusian dog hair, but is probably best known for the famous photo in which he is holding up a sign for one of his spacecraft conventions with the “S” written backwards.

On July 30^th, 1954, sixty-five-year old Buck witnessed “a huge disc-like object” hovering over his farm in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas that beamed down a light “much brighter and hotter than the sun.” Buck later claimed that this beam cured him of chronic lumbago.   1

The following year, Buck was treated to a second otherworldly visitation when a saucer landed in his barnyard carrying a crew of three amiable spacemen that included “Bob Solomon” (a strange name for a Venusian), an earthling traveling with him named “Little Bucky” and a third unnamed “old man” who was a trainee pilot brought along to learn how to steer the saucer. All three space-guys sauntered out of their saucer naked as jaybirds, carrying their uniforms on their shoulders to show they were normally proportioned human men so as not to alarm old Buck—though of course who knows if Buck would have found them any less alarming if they’d been wearing their normal spacesuits. Accompanying the space voyagers was a 385-pound space dog called “Big Bo” who stood on his hind legs and shook Buck’s hand just like he was a regular human feller.

Little Bucky, as the story goes, was a nineteen-year-old Earth-boy, who in 1940 was visited by a Venusian spaceship that landed on his family’s property in Colorado with an offer to take them all on a trip to Venus and back. However, little four-year-old Bucky was the only one in his clan to take the Venusians up on their offer, which apparently his parents were ok with.

As for Bob Solomon, he was a two-hundred-year-old Venusian who didn’t look much older than Bucky, which says a lot about the fine living one can find on Venus. Buck soon learned from the spacemen that atomic bombs would be the death of us all and that we needed to wise up and put the skids on any further atomic bomb testing or reap the dire results!

When the saucer men departed, they left behind Big Bo to hang with Buck for an extended stay and, being the good host he was, Buck would dutifully brush his interplanetary space dog and while doing so was able to collect a considerable amount of Big Bo’s hide, which he later sold in little packets at the 4^th annual Giant Rock Spacecraft Convention. (Some observers at the event noted that the packets of hair looked like they may have come from a plastic doll.) 2

On April 24^th, 1955, Buck was treated to a saucer flight to Mars where he enjoyed lunch, then next stop was the moon where he was treated to a right nice dinner, followed by a much-deserved nap. In between planet-hopping and much-deserved napping, Bob Solomon bestowed upon Buck a Venusian version of the Ten Commandments entitled the “Twelve Laws of God.” Not to be outdone, Little Bucky gave a demonstration of a “Book Machine” which was about the size of a television set and when a book was slid into this book machine contraption it would read the pages out loud, play music and project pictures!   3

Strangely (or not so strangely) Nelson noted that the space brothers also practiced segregation along racial lines, at least on Mars. Buck was told that “there are other races and colors of people there, but I was taken where the people were most like the ones I was used to.”  ⁴

Buck wrote about his madcap adventures with these cosmic klansmen in My Trip To Mars, The Moon, and Venus. Before his trip, Nelson recalled that he “left milk out for my cat, which I call ‘Krazy,’ and Trixie, my horse, could get feed out on the range. Ted, my dog, went on this trip with me.”  5

According to Buck, the people of Venus had “no roads, [due to their use of hovering vehicles] no police force, no jails, no government buildings, and no wars.” The ruler he visited wore overalls just like the denim ones favored by Nelson, but they “didn’t have all the buckles and hooks which ours do and they were made of a different material.”6

A man named Hank Fulk claimed that Nelson:
“…got to meet President Eisenhower on an arranged trip to DC. The President’s doctors learned how to do open heart surgery from Buck Nelson. They were able to save Eisenhower’s life when he had his first heart attack. This was information given to Buck by the “visitors.” Many in Washington DC wanted Buck killed, but the General was a Friend that stood by Old Buck. He was as “HOT” as Area 51.

“BO the dog was analyzed, photographed, and x-rayed by students from The University of Missouri, School of Veterinary Medicine in 1953. The Results showed his hair to be unlike standard dog hair, internal organs were also some different. He was said to look much like a giant Sheep Dog.” 7

The trail on Buck Nelson goes cold sometime in the 1970s, but there are rumors that he spent his last years with relatives in California. The present whereabouts of Big Bo are unknown.

For more fruity flying saucers stories just like this, you really need to check out A is for Adamski: The Golden Age of the UFO Contactees available now where finer books are sold on the internet.

1 Flammonde, Paris, 1971. The Age of Flying Saucers (pp.87-88.) New York: Hawthorn.

2 Nebel, Long John, 1961. The Way Out World (p. 36.) Prentice-Hall, Inc.

3 Clark, Jerome, 2000. Extraordinary Encounters (p. 51) ABC-CLIO Publishers.

⁴ Nelson, Buck. 1956. My Trip To Mars, The Moon, and Venus. Quill Press Company. (p. 8).

⁵ ibid p. 10.

⁶ ibid p. 4.

7 http://gratisenergi.se/hank.htm

Trevor James Constable was one of George Van Tassel’s earliest visitors at Giant Rock and due to this influence he began channeling Ashtar, a name that turns up time and again in UFO lore. Unlike other Ashtar iterations, the version with whom Constable attained telepathic contact was an Etherian from the fourth dimension, also known as the Realms of Schare.  Apparently the Etherians were a benevolent bunch, but through their teachings Constable also learned of some evil ETs visiting Earth whom he referred to “The Dark Ones.”

According to Constable, the Etherians—and the flying saucers they spun in on—exist all around us, and sometimes even pass through us, although in most cases we aren’t able to see them, which explains their tendency to blink in and out of materiality, and why they often take on corporeal form to accommodate what humans expect to see, including nut and bolt craft that are created on a temporary basis to facilitate these human interactions.

In the summer of 1957, Constable began using infra-red film to photograph what he described as “critters”; entities or spaceships (perhaps they were one and the same) that were invisible—or at least could not be viewed by “normal” eyes. 1 What the infrared film allowed Constable to do was peek beyond the curtain, so to speak, and tune into a bandwidth not normally accessed by human perception. The “critters,” or space creatures, in Constable’s photographs appeared as a wide range of strange things, some of which were similar to flying saucer shapes, while other photos revealed amoeba-like entities. Constable used a version Wilhelm Reich’s Cloudbuster to pull these creatures into the atmosphere, or into the infrared spectrum, enabling him to photograph them. Or at least that was the story he was sticking to.

 

Even within the wooly world of ufology, Constable’s theories bordered on heretical. Because of this—and to shelter his professional career as a military historian—he initially flew under the radar using the pseudonym of “T. James” for his first book Spacemen Friends and Foes (1956), and then later “Trevor James” for They Live In The Sky! (1958). Eventually—as he became more comfortable promoting these ideas—he used his full name Trevor James Constable for his magnum opus, The Cosmic Pulse of Life (1976).

Here’s to a snippet of Constable on the Jeff Rense show from years ago before Rense became a total whacked out nazi!

 

1 Clark, Jerome. 1992. The Emergence of a Phenomenon: UFOs from the Beginning through 1959 – The UFO Encyclopedia – Volume 2. Detroit: Omnigraphics, Inc. (p.876).

Here’s a song I recorded many moons ago, which I have been told by some is similar to some of Tangerine Dream’s music.

This installment was co-conceived with my contactee colleague Greg Bishop.

“I am…Howard…Menger. The following statements which I shall make are…true facts.” So begins Menger’s 1957 record Authentic Music From Another Planet  that really didn’t seem all that otherworldly, but just a marginally talented tinkler of the ivories channeling the stars. Along with only two published books (From Outer Space to You and The High Bridge Incident) this was enough to place Menger in the upper echelon of the 1950s UFO contactee movement.

In 1946—at the tender age of 10—Menger met a beautiful blonde in a translucent sky-suit named Marla (sitting on a rock in the forest) who revealed she was 500 years old, although she didn’t look a day over 21. Marla toldyoung Howard she had to get back home to Venus lickety-split, but someday in the future he’d meet another blonde beauty exactly like her, curves and all!

During WWII, Menger served with a tank division in the South Pacific and became proficient with a flamethrower which he used to flush the enemy out of caves and buildings. He related other contacts with spacemen and cosmic beauties throughout his tour of duty, whom he credited with saving his life. They predicted that the Allies would win and also told him that things would get more interesting after the war with a warning: “If you think you’re crazy NOW, Howard, wait until you see some of the other things that are going to happen to you!” 1

Menger was honorably discharged in 1946 and moved to a farm near High Bridge, New Jersey where he ran a sign-painting business and tinkered with homemade inventions. Perhaps because of his electronic and mechanical interests, he became fascinated with flying saucers and in particular (although he denied it later) with George Adamski’s book The Flying Saucers Have Landed, when he first read the title upon its release in 1953.

Feeling a desire to rekindle his cosmic contacts, Menger visited the spot where he’d met his first alien love interest fourteen years before. Not surprisingly, she appeared again and told Menger he had a job to do to help the Space People in their missions on Earth. He had to buy clothes for them (the women giggled and threw their Earth-bras away) and give haircuts to the men, who wore their hair long, like space hippies. These beautiful Venusians started dropping by regularly to Menger’s farm for coffee and friendly chats. Venus soon called upon Howard to serve as their personal barber and cut their long blonde locks so they could easier fit in with Earth society. In return for his hospitality, Menger was rewarded with a series of starship trips to Venus, Mars and the Moon, bringing back photos of the lunar surface taken from a porthole during his saucer ride. As evidence of his otherworldly excursions, Menger showed off a “moon potato” during a guest spot on Long John Nebel’s Party Line, which to all present looked like a common stone.  When asked about the moon potato’s less than earthly appearance, Menger explained it had been “dehydrated.”

On another episode of Party Line, Menger demonstrated a small-scale model of an “energy accumulator”, the design of which was based on space brother specifications. According to Menger, the full-size equivalent of this device served as a flying saucer propulsion system, not to mention a perpetual motion machine.  Perhaps Menger didn’t get the instructions quite right because when he flipped the switch, the small rotating motor fell off the body proper of the contraption. As Menger later explained: “I guess the glue came apart.” 2

Menger held small saucer conventions on his farm, becoming a sort of East Coast version of a poor man’s George Van Tassel. It was at one such saucer soiree that the mysterious Valiant Thor was photographed, the very same Venusian Commander that Dr. Frank Stranges would spend considerable time with at the Pentagon. To date, no one has identified the man with the carefully coiffed pompadour. Attendees were also treated to figures dancing about in the woods on the property at night, although Menger said that the space people were not to be approached because they were shy.

During another event at Menger’s farm, he made the acquaintance of a charming young lady who was a dead ringer for Marla, the blonde Venusian bombshell he’d met as a lad. As it turned out, this young lady—Constance “Connie” Weber—was the reincarnation of Marla (or Marla’s sister, or something like that) replete with gorgeous golden curls. Menger was immediately smitten with Marla’s earthside edition, which didn’t sit well with his wife Rose who promptly filed for divorce.

Some of Menger’s fans later called him on the carpet concerning an episode that occurred at one of his saucer soirees where said fans had assembled in a dimly lit room to meet an actual spacewoman whose features were concealed in the shadows. During this space girl meet-up, a sliver of light landed on her face revealing that it was Connie Weber playing the Space Lady role. 3

A few years after making this many claims of Venusian visitations, Menger appeared on a Long John Nebel TV broadcast and pretty much backtracked on every claim he’d ever made, claiming that the Government (also known as the “Silence Control Group”) offered him a job to say that he’d made up all his flying saucer stories as well as fabricating a series of space people photos. As for the government job, part of Menger’s duties, or so he claimed, was going around burying boxes.

 

In later years, Menger and his wife were occasionally featured at saucer conventions, but his star had faded, and he was looked upon as a relic of an earlier, more naïve era. Jim Moseley, researcher and chronicler of the UFO scene, recalled that Menger appeared at a Florida gathering in the 1990s along with Connie and one of his space-people-inspired contraptions. During a demonstration in a hotel, he plugged his invention into a wall socket and blew all the fuses in the facility. 4 Moseley also reported that Menger was apparently possessed of a furious temper when aroused, which may have been due to his wartime experiences and possible PTSD.

He appears to have come to a sort of peace with his legacy at the time of his death in 2009.

1 Menger, Howard, and Connie Menger. 1991. The High Bridge Incident: The Story behind the Story. Vero Beach, FL: Howard Menger Studio. (p. 4-5)

2 Flammonde, Paris,  1971. The Age of Flying Saucers page (p. 99.) New York: Hawthorn.

3 Clark, Jerome, 2000. Extraordinary Encounters: An Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrials and Otherworldly Beings. p. 172 ABC-CLIO.

 4 Bishop, Gregory. 2001. “Interview With James Moseley” in Wake Up Down There: The Excluded Middle Collection. Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press. (p. 115)

The following was co-written with my intergalactic ally Greg Bishop, co-author of “A” is for Adamski: The Golden Age of the UFO Contactees.

Claude Vorilhon was born September 30, 1946 in Vichy, Allier France. His life reads like an improbable novel. He reinvented himself three times as a public figure, first as a teenybop singer, then an auto-racer and journalist, and finally as a messenger for the space brothers.

Vorilhon ran away from home in 1961 at the tender age of 15, hitchhiking to Paris where he hoped to become a recording star. He was discovered by a radio personality and given a record contract and the showbiz name: “Claude Celler.” 1

From 1966 to ’67 he released a string of singles to minor success. One of the sides was entitled “Madame Pipi,” which told the story of a toilet attendant. Claude’s teen crooner career ended abruptly when his sponsor killed himself in 1970. Gathering his earnings from his aborted dance with showbiz, Vorilhon founded a magazine based on his lifelong interest in auto racing, which also allowed him to test-drive new cars.

Vorilhon’s next big adventure occurred during a hike in the Pyrenees mountains on December 13, 1973 when he encountered a small, bald, green-suited spaceman with a goatee on his chin and a halo over his head who introduced himself as Yahweh (God to the Hebrews) and explained that humans were the lab creations of a group of ETs known as the Elohim.

Yahweh further informed Claude that he’d been chosen to spread the Elohim message and treated him to a spaceship trip (at seven times the speed of light no less!) to the Elohim’s home planet where he met up with the holy space age trinity of Jesus, Moses and Buddha. At some point in this madcap romp, Claude was given a scented bath courtesy of six perfectly formed biological robot babes, who subsequently treated him to some steamy robot sex.

In due time, Claude was appointed as the Elohim’s ambassador to Earth and given the space name Raël. This ultimately led to what some termed a free love saucer cult known as The Raelian Movement who encourage sexual promiscuity among its frolicking followers, all in search of an Elohim-blessed “cosmic orgasm.” Talk about a big bang! Bada bomp!

 

Claude’s new friends also showed him the unity of all things and the symbol for this unity. Unfortunately, the symbol in question faced an incredible uphill battle for acceptance. The logo of a swastika perfectly integrated into a six-pointed Star of David shocked and scandalized almost everyone who beheld the cursed thing. It was so dazzling (or offensive) that during the 1970s and ’80s, the Raelian Movement had to order stickers to place over the covers of all the books they still had in stock sporting their space age Star of David swastika. A new symbol they came up with  to replace the former looked appropriately new-age, but didn’t have the impact of the original because, well, nothing quite grabs the eye like a swastika shoved in your face. Eventually, Raël decided that a reasonable amount of time had passed and the scandal had blown over enough to recall its original glory for a new generation.

On a sunny afternoon on June 21, 2012, holiday makers at beaches along the New York and New Jersey shores were treated to the sight of a small aircraft towing a banner reading:

卐  =    ☮+  ♥  PROSWASTIKA.ORG

…followed by the Raelian swastika-in-the-star symbol. Thousands were aghast. Vorilhon might as well have marched up the main streets with a few of his followers wearing white hoods and torches. Raelians posted a press release on the proswastika.org site to explain their provactive  actions:

“Our objective in this annual “Swastika Rehabilitation Day” is to… rehabilitate the image of this very ancient symbol which has, in recent decades, been equated only with Hitler’s horrors, when in fact, the swastika has always meant something very beautiful, peaceful and loving for billions of people all over the world and still is by billions of people.” 2

At the 50^th anniversary Roswell festival in 1997, the Raelians rented a booth at the convention center and went for the hard sell with babes in skintight leotards with headset microphones hawking the virtues of sensual meditation and the sex-positive message of Raël.  3

Not content to conquer just the weird world of UFO fandom, a select few Raelian babes (also known as the Order of Angels) posed in the October 2004 issue of Playboy, along with text that could almost be termed a recruiting pamphlet with nude women scattered throughout. Raël’s “wife and partner for 13 years” quipped, “This is the only religion that teaches that nudity and sexuality are pure and beautiful.” 4

In 1997, the Raelians announced the founding of a biotech company called “Clonaid” to begin research into human cloning, which they said was the first step to immortality. On December 6, 2002, Clonaid director Brigitte Boisselier announced that they had cloned the first human being in asecret lab near Las Vegas. They named the child “Eve,” and announced that DNA testing would soon be performed to prove that the girl was an exact genetic copy of her mother. Over the next several months, Boisselier and others from around the world claimed five more successful human clones were born. By March, 2013, they said that the number had risen to thirteen. No evidence was ever provided for any of these claims.

As of 2020, the Raelian movement is still going as strongly, no doubt due to its sex-positive message and the fact that female members regularly take part in topless protests against prudish laws that prohibit the baring of female breasts in public. Long may they wave.

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raël

2 http://ja.proswastika.org/about-the-swastika

3 Greg Bishop’s personal recollection.

4 (no author) “The Rael World.” Playboy, October 2004: p 77-81.

Check out Gorightly’s captivating interview with Raelian love goddess Donna Newman!

 

Hear Raël croon a groovy tune about the Elohim!