Eduard “Billy” Meier claimed that his first otherworldly contact occurred when he was but a wee lad of five, at which time he said he learned to communicate with the saucer-drivers telepathically. In 1944, when he was all of seven, Meier met “Sfath,” an elder spaceman who took him under his celestial wings and on a trip to the stars.

After running away from home a few times, and joining the French Foreign Legion for a while, the space brothers (and sisters) encouraged Billy to travel about and gain some life experience. In 1964, he ended up in India and gave an interview to the New Delhi Statesman, claiming he had taken hundreds of UFO photos, but that he couldn’t share them quite yet because they were under the jurisdiction of the space brothers who weren’t yet ready for the big reveal.

In 1965, Meier was the victim of a bus accident in Turkey in which he lost most of his left arm. After recovering, he moved to Greece and eloped with a 17-year old named Kaliope Zafirerou. They somehow ended up in Pakistan and had a daughter named Gilgamesha. A son followed in 1969, christened Atlantis-Socrates.

With Gilgamesha and Atlantis-Socrates in tow, the pair moved back to Meier’s homeland where he set up a metaphysical discussion group in 1974. The event which changed the rest of his life (as if the adventures up to this point hadn’t made an impression) came on January 28, 1975, when Billy said a disc-shaped craft landed on his farm in Switzerland and out stepped a sexy blonde haired broad named Semjase, the leader of a crack expedition of space people that came here all the way from the Pleiades.

Even though Semjase looked no older than a twenty-something California beach girl, she was actually 350-years-old and had spent the previous decade in the DAL Universe (a twin universe parallel to Earth for those of you keeping score at home.)

With Semjase’s encouragement, Billy got busy snapping photos at a fevered pace of Pleiadeans (who Meier called Plejarens) and the beamships they rode in on, which at first amazed many a saucer enthusiast, only to have some Debbie-downer skeptic types call bullshit. There was even a blurry Semjase photo making the rounds that was eventually outed as a television screenshot of actress Darleen Carr during an appearance as one of Ding-a-ling Sisters on The Dean Martin Show of the 1960s.

In many ways, Meier seemed a throwback to the old school UFO contactees of the 1950s reborn anew into a 1970s sensibility informed by Close Encounters of the Third Kind and In Search Of. To this end, Meier was a new, improved George Adamski, but this time on steroids, using much the same method of mixing pseudo-religious mumbo jumbo into a stew of spurious saucer photos from which a cottage industry was crafted and continues to flourish to this day. But much like Adamski, no matter how much evidence was brought forward to demonstrate that Meier, in all likelihood, was selling phony saucers, new followers continued to flock to his farm to commune with this mighty one-armed intergalactic ambassador.

But where Adamski’s message mimicked the common tenets of a universal religion in step with New Agey niceties, Meier presented a heretical cosmology based on an alternate religious history of mankind derived from a mysterious text called The Talmud of Immanuel.  Immanuel, in this instance, was Jesus Christ, and if you read deeply enough between the lines, Jesus, in turn, was or is Billy, or that certainly seems to be the wink-wink hint you get from the material.

Not only was Billy able to travel interstellar-wise with the help of his otherworldly pals, but he was offered the use of their beamships to travel to different dimensions, and was even transported into the past where, with his trusty camera, he was able to photograph a dinosaur. One of Meier’s so-called “beamship” photos achieved immortality when the producers of The X Files used the image on the “I WANT TO BELIEVE” poster that adorns the wall of Fox Mulder’s messy office.

 

Spreading the Pleiadean message, however, proved to be no walk in the park, as Meier claimed he’d been the target of no less than 22 separate assassination attempts courtesy of the Men in Black, who Meier claims came all the way from the Sirius star system to try to teach him a lesson. Billy was informed: “The men in black were rounded up and taken into custody through forces of their home world after their last evil attacks against you. They also do not pose a threat anymore.”

Perhaps the first book to lift the veil on some of Meier’s seeming flagrant flim-flammery of the third kind was Kal Korff’s The Billy Meier Story: Spaceships From The Pleiades.  In this action packed yarn, Korff recounts how under an assumed identity he covertly crashed Meiers’ Swiss compound and spirited away a bundle of documents of other evidence, including photos Kal surreptitiously snapped (of a supposed Meier saucer landing site) that he later used for analysis to debunk the one armed wizard of Switzerland. All in all, Spaceships From The Pleiades   is a rollicking read, documenting a time period several years before Mr. Korff apparently lost his mind, which is another story entirely.

In October 1977, Col. Wendelle Stevens gained some measure of ufological notoriety (otherwise known as “UFO Famous”) becoming the first American UFO researcher to visit Meier at his saucer infested farm in Switzerland. Meier impressed Stevens with his stories and handed over a batch of photos to haul back to his home in Arizona. Afterwards, Stevens formed Genesis III Productions Ltd. to showcase and exploit the Meier photos. The first book in the series, a large-format affair, entitled UFO…Contact From The Pleiades Vol. 1, featured beautifully printed reproductions of some of the most impressive photos and descriptions of the supposedly exhaustive scientific scrutiny that had been applied to Meier’s claims and images.

By the time Vol. 4 of this book series rolled around, the photos had become increasingly outlandish, such as one of an intergalactic gal named Alena allegedly  taken on July 6, 1977. Alena, as the story goes, was a member of the Plejaran delegation from the Lyra Star constellation, and the supposed reason we only see a portion of her face in the photo was on account of strict Pleiadean regulations that forbade anyone from taking a photo of a full Plejaran face basically as a security measure to protect Alena’s identity while visiting Earth. Rules is rules.

Here’s an example of some typical Wendelle Stevens drivel regarding other aspects of the infamous Alena photo: “But just as intriguing was our search for a gold nylar jacket that might look like the one Alena is wearing in the picture with her arm holding the gun. We looked in all the clothing stores, all the sporting goods stores, and checked even the uniform supply stores for such a jacket, or even such gold material as might be necessary to make such a jacket, like the arm of the one worn by Alena as she holds the pistol for Meier’s photographs. We never found anything like it.”

All of this was certainly some weak sauce from Stevens, as it became evident that Meier took the photo of himself and a toy gun (and his one good arm) with his long hair flowing to supposedly give the impression that he was a she, which was a pretty goofy thing to do.

As for this supposed space gun (from another planet!) Royce Meyer at ufowatchdog.com reports that “This ‘laser gun’ was found on EBay. Notice the barrel is exactly the same as the Pleidean gun, right down to the plastic sight. So, either the Pleideans bought their gun on EBay and modified it for their own purposes, or they are in the habit of selling their surplus guns on EBay to raise a little earth cash.”

A recent convert to the Billy Meier circus is Cheryl Costa, co-author of UFO Sightings Desk Reference, a book analyzing trends in UFO data. Costa has tagged Meier’s photos as her “smoking gun” proof of an alien presence because she observed flash frames in the Meier film footage that she claims matches a similar flash in STS mission 48 footage of a strange “beam” that shot past the space shuttle. This “flash” is also what is observed when a rotating film camera shutter has not yet reached the proper speed and overexposes a few frames. American Meier supporter Michael Horn has made the observation that some of the “mistakes” in Meier’s footage are created by the Plejaren themselves in order to give skeptics an “out” because “it would be too threatening to their belief systems.” Alrighty then.

This entry was the product of the combined brain-forces of Greg Bishop and Adam Gorightly. An alternate version of this Billy Meier missive can be found in their book “A” is for Adamski along with a lot of other glorious tales from the bygone days of the UFO contactees. Get you copy while supplies last!

 

Just discovered this brilliant outer space related recording from boy genius Glenn Derringer as performed on his mighty Wurlitzer 4037 organ with built-in Orbit III synthesizer!

 

In May 1954, an ethereal voice popped into the head of a cab driver named George King: “Prepare yourself! You are to become the voice of the Interplanetary Parliament!” 1 Eight days after King received this vital information, an unidentified (supposedly world famous, though unnamed) swami materialized in his London flat and treated King to a crash course in tantric yoga, which apparently enabled him to attain vast knowledge regarding the secrets of the universe.

The aforementioned unnamed (world famous) swami instructed King to form an organization that would help the planet get its act together. To accomplish this feat, King was required to establish telepathic contact with Master Aetherius from Venus, who would steer him in the right direction.

In 1955, King founded the Aetherius Society. According to the group’s newsletter, The Cosmic Voice: “The orientation of the Aetherius Society is a spiritual one, since it is definitely known that the mission of the Flying Saucers and their crews to Earth is a spiritual mission.”

Other Venusians soon came telepathically calling—in addition to a legion of cosmic masters (including Jesus)—who enlisted King into something called the Great White Brotherhood. Although it sounded like a Ku Klux Klan chapter, the Great White Brotherhood was actually a group of ascended master good guys that have been engaged since time immemorial in a war against a legion of black magicians whose ultimate aim is to enslave the human race. Not good!

To battle against this subversion, King created what became known as “prayer batteries” that store up to 700 hours of “spiritual energy” (for a whopping 10,000 years!) that can be held in reserve and later put to use in making the Universe a safer place, which is always a good thing!

Not all of King’s interplanetary interactions were of the telepathic type. In You Are Responsible! (1961), King recounted a trip to Mars (actually to one of the moons of Mars, if you want to get technical) where he entered a room he apparently didn’t belong in and red lights started flashing (Warning! Warning!) Soon King found himself in the crosshairs of a shoot-first-ask-questions-later ray gun wielding dwarf from another planet! After being ray gun blasted by the dwarf and sustaining life-threatening injuries, King was able to psychically propel himself back to London and—with the aid of some “excellent spiritual healers” —return to optimum health in no time flat.

 

On a return trip to Mars (not just one of the Mars’ moons, but actually Mars this time), King attended the Martian General Assembly where a somber discussion ensued regarding a mysterious asteroid that posed a threat to the red planet—and Earth as well! This asteroid was the same place where King had encountered the ray gun wielding dwarf in the room where he shouldn’t have been. Apparently, a Martian scout ship had been sent to investigate the asteroid (or moon, or whatever you want to call it) and ended up being destroyed. Long story short, the Martians agreed that they needed some sort of retaliatory response to this evil dwarf asteroid, and King volunteered his services since he already had insider knowledge on the subject of evil dwarfs and the asteroid they rode in on.

As part of this tactical operation, King recruited his telepathic Venusian friends and along with the Martians formed an Earth/Mars/Venus alliance that destroyed the evil asteroid and the ray gun-wielding dwarfs along with it. Unfortunately, 174 Martians died during the course of the conflict, but Earth was saved (and that’s all that really counts.) 1

 

Despite all of these interplanetary heroics, George King was later taken to task by TV star Jackie Gleason on an episode of Long John Nebel’s Party Line:

GLEASON: How are you?

KING: Very well, thank you.

GLEASON: Are these people from outer space friends of yours?

KING: I believe that they are friends of mine, yes.

GLEASON: Could you call upon them for assistance? For instance, if you were in some sort of legal difficulty, embracing some part of their recognition of you, would they come to your aid?

KING: Under those circumstances, they would help, yes.

GLEASON: If I were, for instance, to say to you that you are a bare-faced liar, now you know you could sue me for libel, right?

KING: Yes yes.

GLEASON: Now you think you could get any legal assistance from them in a case like this?

KING: No, I don’t.

GLEASON: Why?

KING: Why should they help?

GLEASON: Well, you’re championing their cause.

KING: No, No I’m not. I’m trying to give a spiritual message, which I believe to be good for all people…

GLEASON: Why do we need a spiritual message from someone in a flying saucer? Don’t we have enough from Christ, Buddha, Moses, men like that?

KING: Do we live by those teachings?

GLEASON: I do.

KING: You do? Then you’re the first Christian I’ve ever seen.

GLEASON: You mean that no one lives by the laws of Buddha, Christ, or…

KING: I never met anyone.

GLEASON: By the way, do you know that every time you are uncertain when you say something, you cough? Do you know what that means psychologically? In other words, you cough every time you tell a lie.

KING: Do I?

GLEASON: Now George, look at the juicy opportunity you have. Here’s a guy that you’re talking to that’s got a lot of dough. You can sue me for maybe a million dollars, and maybe get it. All you have to do to get it is to bring one of your friends from Mars to OK this thing. And then you win.

KING: I’ve already answered this question. There isn’t a man on Earth who could do this.

GLEASON: In other words, you have absolutely no proof from these people whom you are championing? You have absolutely no backing from anybody in outer space for what you say?

KING: Just a moment please. Just one minute.

GLEASON: I’m waiting, and cough a little bit.

KING: I shall put this phone down in a moment.

GLEASON: Yes?

KING: I’m a guest here, you see.

GLEASON: Not in my house, you’re not a guest. I think you’re a phony!

KING: C L I C K ! ! 2

 

Gleason’s dressing down of George King notwithstanding, the Aetherius Society continues to flourish, which is evident to anyone who has attended one of their Operation Prayer Power battery-charging sessions that “combine dynamic prayer, Tibetan mantra, and the science of radionics” as a “potent new tool against disease and suffering on earth.” According to Aetherius Society propaganda:

“For two hours, (Aetherius members) join together in a powerful ritual, using dynamic prayer, eastern mantra, and mystic mudras. The Energy they invoke is collected and stored in a radionic battery. These charging sessions continue week after week, filling each battery with thousands of hours of Prayer Energy.

“Whenever there is a disaster on Earth in need of Spiritual Energy, such as a hurricane, earthquake or war, this store of uplifting healing energy can be released almost immediately through a Spiritual Energy Radiator. This radionic device can discharge a battery in a fraction of the time it took to charge it. This concentrated Prayer Energy is then manipulated by cooperating Masters to the area in need.

“Since we started this Mission in 1973, we have had astounding successes aiding victims of catastrophes and other natural disasters.

“OPERATION PRAYER POWER charging sessions are open to anyone who is willing to expend the necessary effort to learn and practice the Holy mantras used as a powerful way to help humanity.”

1 Gulyas, Aaron John. 2013.  Extraterrestrials and the American Zeitgeist: Alien Contact Tales Since the 1950s. McFarland.

2 Nebel, Long John. 1961. The Way Out World.  Prentice-Hall, Inc. (p. 52).

 

One evening in July of 1952, Truman Bethurum—a heavy equipment mechanic working on a project near the California/Nevada border—pulled off the side of the road to catch some quick shut-eye when he was startled from sleep by several small olive-skinned beings gathered around the cab of his pick-up truck. “Our homes are our castles in a faraway land,” Bethurum’s new found friends informed him. Meanwhile a silver saucer 300 feet in diameter spun overhead.

“Have you a captain?” Bethurum inquired, rubbing the sleep from his bedazzled eyes.

“Surest thing you know,” one of the olive-skinned ETs replied and invited Bethurum aboard their ship (which they called a “scow”). 1 In short order, Bethurum found himself in the presence of the ship’s captain, a gorgeous gal named Aura Rhanes. As Bethurum waxed in Aboard A Flying Saucer (1954): “Little did I suspect that their captain would turn out to be a woman—and what a woman!”

Bethurum described Aura as “tops in shapeliness and beauty” with a complexion that was “a beautiful olive and roses” causing him to stare dumbfounded, unable to form a sentence. “Speak up, friend,” Captain Rhanes implored Bethurum. “You’re not hexed!”

Aura and her crew spoke perfect English—in rhyming couplets, no less—and hailed from Clarion, a planet permanently hidden behind Earth’s moon. According to the Claronites, their home was straight out of some Utopian paradise where such things as divorce, smoking tobacco, drinking liquor, and other such evil earthly pursuits didn’t exist. (Borrrrinnngg!) On account of all this wholesome living, Clarionites lived to be around a thousand years old and could levitate at will. They were also tops in scientific technology and had developed a machine called the Retroscope that allowed them to see any place in the universe at any time in history.

The Clarionite “scow” was constructed of “the finest Martian steel.” The crew members dressed like Greyhound bus drivers, except for our adorable Captain Rhanes, who sported a radiant red skirt, black velvet short sleeve blouse and black beret with red trim like some kind of space age beatnik beauty. For general amusement, the Claronites passed the time—during the course of their intergalatic travels—playing polkas and square dancing. On a more serious note, Captain Rhanes informed Bethurum that if mankind didn’t quit squabbling amongst themselves, they would never be able to achieve space flight. She also had a flair for the dramatic: “I expect to be around for 1,000 years, but the water in your deserts will mostly be tears.” Sad!

Following his initial contact with Captain Aura and her crew of Greyhound bus drivers, Bethurum returned to his hotel room and wrote this historic note: “If I am found dead in my bed, it will be because my heart has stopped from the terrible excitement induced by seeing and going aboard a flying saucer!”

Over a three month period, Aura visited Truman on eleven occasions, sometimes materializing in his bedroom, much to the chagrin of Bethurum’s wife, Mary, who later cited the comely space captain in her divorce petition.

Bethurum enjoyed another shot at marital bliss in 1960, although unfortunately it wasn’t with shapely Aura, but a weathered old gal named Alvira Roberts, their nuptials taking place on the podium at the Giant Rock Spacecraft Convention.

During one of Aura’s later materializations, she instructed Bethurum to gather around himself some friends—particularly those with greenbacks—and establish the “Sanctuary of Thought”, a cosmically inspired commune dedicated to “peace and brotherly love” based out of Prescott, Arizona, that could help Truman generate some extra income.  It was through the “Sanctuary of Thought” that he sold signed copies of Aboard a Flying Saucer, as well as delivering services as a “spiritual advisor.”

The last time Bethurum beheld his curvaceous space captain was in the early morning hours of August 27^th, 1952 at an all-night roadside diner in Glendale, Nevada:

Bethurum was enjoying a late night snack of pie and coffee with Whitey Edwards…when he felt an elbow in his side. Edwards gestured eagerly toward the lunch counter, where a small man was seated next to a tiny woman wearing a black and red beret, a black, velvety blouse, and a brilliant red pleated skirt… It had to be Aura Rhanes and one of her crewmen!

Bethurum looked, and confirmed Edwards’ suspicion. Would he like to be introduced?

Edwards, strangely put off by the presence of the celestial visitors, refused and began gathering his things to leave.

“If you do,” Bethurum cautioned, “stand near the door so you can see what they get into and which way they go when they come out.”

Then he approached his extraterrestrial friends. “I beg your pardon, Lady, but haven’t we met before?”

No, she insisted to each of his repeated requests for recognition, no, no. He turned to pay his check, and the pair were gone. He rushed outside and demanded Whitey Edwards’ report – where had they gone?

“Honest, Truman,” his friend responded, “Not a blessed soul passed through that door until you came out.”

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