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. ****End****