UFO'S 101: Contactees

Throughout human history at times when society faced some upheaval that threatened the way things had always been, there were mystics and messengers who arise. People fear the unknown, the new, and all things spell change. Change brings chaos, change brings new ideas, and old ways fall aside. Morals and behaviors shift. New ideas replace old ones and people seek answers outside - and above - themselves. 

As a result, across cultures and through time there have been the "little people", the "fairies", "angels", "saints", chosen leaders, and even "space brothers." 

In the late 1940's these people first emerge with warnings against waging war, cries for peace and brotherhood, and changing our evil ways. Semi-evangelical, quasi-spiritualist, and often pure sociopathic con-art - these early "Contactees" ran the gamut of people and motives.

Into the 1950's when they have their peak period - numerous individuals have "encounters" from beings from Mars, Venus, and the planet "Clarion", and more distant places in the heavens and in other dimensions.

This metaphysical aspect groups the Contactee with those who saw saints, holy images, and sought to speak with the dead. Their goals were similar, the message reformed to a modern concern or fear, and sought to provide spiritual guidance to achieve a specific goal.

Theirs is a non-scientific experience, set among a familiar framework of social responses to changing times and ways.

As a library professional I was often called upon to explain to classes and readers the difference between a science -fiction book and a regular fiction book. Science-fiction had to have its basis in scientific fact or logical development from known science laws. A fiction book might dress up in space suits and tell a story filled with fiction but use the science as mere backdrop to a nuts and bolts fiction tale of one of the seven formal fictional plots. One is science that drives the fiction; the other is fiction that uses science as stage props. One is integral to the story and actions while the other is incidental and could be acted out on a pirate ship or farm with equal ease. 

The "Contactees" were this latter. They used the stage dressing of blond strangers bearing messages of peace and took them for rides in flying machines, and used the science and the phenomena as mere window dressing. They would speak of vibrational levels, of ether planes of existence, and vague messages of peace and harmony.

Those who view things in the skies or on the ground that science was unable to define or understand and who sought to use science to understand what they saw or experienced are a different category.

To entangle and confuse the two does a dis-service to the science waiting to be discovered that will explain objects seen by countless people who could only shake their heads and wonder what they had seen.