Buzz
Following Kenneth Arnold’s groundbreaking UFO sighting in 1947, a group of enthusiasts emerged, claiming they had continuous encounters with flying saucers. These individuals, known as 'contactees,' shared bizarre stories of telepathic communication with aliens and visits to faraway worlds.
Prominent figures like George Adamski and his companion George Hunt Williamson gained fame by publishing bestsellers and touring the country in the 1950s. While their influence waned by the 1960s and their claims were later discredited as fraudulent and unscientific, the early contactees remain a peculiar and captivating part of UFO history.
10. Buck Nelson
Buck Nelson, the organizer of an annual UFO convention at his Missouri farm, was a straightforward and humble man who in 1956 self-published a bizarre pamphlet titled My Trip to Mars, The Moon, and Venus. Following two earlier UFO sightings, Nelson claimed that on March 5, 1955, four beings from a UFO visited his home.
The visitors included a young human, two Venusian men, and an enormous 136-kilogram (300 lb) dog named Bo. After inspecting his house, the extraterrestrials told Nelson they could take him on a journey to other planets in the future.
More than a month later, on April 24, Nelson and his dog Ted were picked up by his new alien friends for a space adventure. Their first stop was Mars, which Nelson described as vibrant and resembling Earth. They then visited the Moon before concluding their journey with a visit to Venus, a utopian world free from prisons, police, or wars.
Upon returning to Earth, Nelson promised the aliens he would share his story with the world. He spoke to the press about his experiences and was reportedly questioned by the military. At his farm conventions, Nelson even sold pieces of Bo’s fur as proof of his tale. Skeptics pointed out that the Venusian dog hair was strikingly similar to that of Earth dogs. Nelson responded, “Dawgs is dawgs. Don’t matter what planet they’re from.”
9. Cynthia Appleton
On November 18, 1957, while caring for her children at home, English housewife Cynthia Appleton was suddenly startled by a high-pitched whistling sound in her sitting room. Once the noise ceased, Appleton saw a tall, blonde man materialize by her fireplace. Through telepathy, he assured her not to be frightened. He introduced himself as a visitor from the planet Gharnasvarn, explaining that his people wanted to make contact with exceptional Earthlings like Appleton.
Throughout the following year, the man from Gharnasvarn made seven more visits to Appleton’s house, sometimes accompanied by a companion. When not offering bizarre cures for cancer, he would indulge in pseudo-philosophical ramblings, claiming that time was an illusion and that all life was interconnected. By his last six visits, he opted for a big black car instead of teleportation to arrive.
In September 1958, the Gharnasvarn man and his companion made one final appearance to Cynthia Appleton. They informed her that she was pregnant. Strangely, they stated that the child would be “of the race of Gharnasvarn,” yet also her husband’s biological child.
In May 1959, Appleton gave birth to a baby boy, just as the aliens had predicted. Despite some media attention, the Appletons never encountered the Gharnasvarn men again, and they quietly faded from public view.
8. Gabriel Green
Gabriel Green, once a professional photographer, abandoned his career to focus on his growing fascination with UFOs. He founded an early UFO group called the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America, Inc., and edited its journal, Flying Saucers International. In 1960, Green took the bold step of running for president of the United States, competing against Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard Nixon.
Despite being a write-in candidate with no prior political experience, Green approached his presidential campaign with great seriousness. In an August 1960 interview, he revealed that the “Space People” had urged him to run for office.
Initially hesitant, Green eventually realized that Earth’s survival depended on humanity heeding the wisdom of the Space People. In his campaign platform, Green vowed to eliminate taxes, provide free college education, and embark on a space mission to Mars.
Unfortunately, despite the backing of the Space People, Green ultimately dropped out of the race. In 1962, he attempted a run for the US Senate as a Democrat but lost. After another unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1972, Green abandoned his political aspirations, seemingly resigned to the idea that Earth’s fate was sealed.
7. Ted Owens
Ted Owens, who dubbed himself the “PK (Psychokinetic) Man,” believed he was a real-life superhero. A MENSA member and a genius with an IQ of 150, Owens claimed that extraterrestrials had granted him supernatural abilities. With the aid of “Space Intelligences,” he boasted that he could control the weather and even influence the outcome of sports events.
Owens explained that the Space Intelligences were hyperdimensional beings who traveled in UFOs, monitoring Earth closely. His first encounter with them occurred in 1965 when one of their UFOs appeared and disappeared before his car. Communicating with Owens telepathically, these beings were the source of his PK abilities. According to Owens, he was being tested to determine how much PK power a human could handle and endure.
Despite having a following, Owens found it difficult to convince academics and scientists of his claims. He obsessively gathered newspaper clippings and records that supposedly validated his demonstrations and predictions. However, most experts dismissed him as a fraud. The only people who seemed to believe his strange tales were some sportswriters, a CIA agent, and a NASA official.
6. Aladino Felix
In 1959, under the alias Dino Kraspedon, Aladino Felix, a Brazilian, published a typical contactee book titled My Contact with Flying Saucers. Felix claimed to have encountered the crew of a UFO in Sao Paulo. A few months later, the UFO's captain visited him at home and gave the usual warnings about the perils of the Atomic Age.
Six years later, Felix reemerged in the public eye, presenting himself as a psychic. He made vague predictions about natural disasters, including one of Brazil's deadliest flash floods in 1966. In the midst of Brazil's political turmoil, Felix also foretold waves of terrorist attacks within the country.
If some of Felix’s predictions seemed unsettlingly accurate, it may have been due to his own involvement in the events. In 1968, Felix and 18 others were arrested for their involvement in bank robberies and bombings. The group had even planned to assassinate politicians, and it was revealed that Felix was their leader.
Before being sent to prison, Felix declared, “My friends from space will come here and free me and avenge my arrest. You can expect tragic consequences for humanity when the flying saucers invade this planet.”
5. Daniel Fry
On July 4, 1950, while taking a stroll through the New Mexico desert, Daniel Fry witnessed a remote-controlled UFO land just 20 meters (70 ft) away from him. A voice from the craft invited Fry to join them. As the ship’s remote pilot spoke to him, Fry was suddenly transported to New York City and back in just 30 minutes.
Fry’s mysterious companion, Alan, had much to explain to his perplexed passenger. Alan disclosed that the aliens cruising Earth in flying saucers were once Earthlings themselves. Alan’s forebears had founded the ancient civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria, two advanced powers that eventually destroyed each other. The survivors relocated to Mars, where they rebuilt their society and continued to observe Earth from a distance.
In order to spread the Martians’ teachings, Fry established a spiritual group named Understanding, Inc. The organization, founded in California in 1955, began with just nine members. However, it rapidly expanded and eventually had members organized into 60 ‘units’ worldwide. Although the original wave of contactee enthusiasm had faded, the group persisted into the 1980s, albeit in what one academic study described as ‘serious decline.’
4. Orfeo Angelucci
Orfeo Angelucci, a factory worker who had previously experienced a nervous breakdown, became a subject of study for renowned Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. Angelucci’s contactee tales had a distinctly Christian flavor, featuring angels, Lucifer, and even a direct encounter with Jesus Christ.
In what might be his most entertaining tale, Angelucci recounted how he allegedly swapped bodies with an alien named Neptune in January 1953. He remembered drifting off to sleep on an Earth-bound divan, only to awaken in Neptune’s body on a completely different planet.
Neptune’s companions, Lyra and Orion, took Angelucci on a journey where they showed him a projection of an ancient world called Lucifer. The Luciferians, who had attempted to conquer other planets, were supposedly punished by being banished to Earth. According to Angelucci’s extraterrestrial guides, most present-day humans were descendants of these fallen Luciferians.
Like many others among the contactee group, Angelucci felt a profound responsibility to help humanity. While inhabiting Neptune’s body, Angelucci witnessed a terrifying vision of the world’s end. He was shown that if humanity did not alter its course by 1986, Earth would be obliterated by an enormous comet. Naturally, the comet never arrived, and Angelucci passed away quietly in 1993.
3. William Dudley Pelley
William Dudley Pelley is often considered one of the most peculiar contactees of the 20th century. A vehement anti-Semite, he had worked as a screenwriter in the 1920s before leaving Hollywood, convinced that Jews controlled both the movie industry and global affairs.
After his departure from Hollywood, Pelley became deeply involved in mysticism and penned a popular article, which later expanded into a book, about a near-death experience he claimed to have had. According to Pelley, during a seven-minute experience in “eternity,” he visited God, Jesus, and hyperdimensional beings who told him that souls were reincarnated until they ascended the spiritual hierarchy and eventually became white people.
When Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933, Pelley eagerly merged his mysticism and racism to form the Silver Legion of America, a paramilitary fascist group that attracted more than 15,000 members. In 1936, Pelley made an unsuccessful bid for the presidency as the candidate of the Christian Party, which he founded.
After years of enduring Pelley’s rants and threats, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration grew increasingly irritated. Pelley was arrested, charged, and convicted of sedition in April 1942.
Upon his release from prison in 1950, Pelley was barred from engaging in any political activities. He turned his focus back to mysticism, but his writings continued to become increasingly nonsensical.
Building on his earlier ideas, Pelley developed a set of racist spiritual doctrines known as Soulcraft. He taught that people of different races—Asian, black, and white—had souls originating from distinct planets. To make his teachings more appealing to contemporary fringe thinkers, Pelley also incorporated telepathy and UFOs, eventually meeting and influencing early contactees such as George Adamski and George Hunt Williamson.
Though Soulcraft attracted a small following, Pelley never regained the widespread influence he had in the 1930s. He died in June 1965, largely forgotten by the public.
2. Wilbert Smith
When the UFO phenomenon began to captivate the public, two main groups of believers emerged. One faction was composed of the contactees, like those featured on this list, who claimed to have had direct communication, meetings, and travel experiences with extraterrestrial beings.
The other group was made up of more educated professionals, such as Donald Keyhoe, a naval aviator and cofounder of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). Keyhoe and his colleagues dismissed the stories of contactees, instead attempting more scientific approaches to UFO investigations using their backgrounds in the military and science. The two factions often clashed, with Keyhoe even refusing to appear on TV with contactees.
Wilbert Smith, a radio engineer working for the Canadian Department of Transport, was an intriguing blend of the two competing groups. He served as a special adviser for the original NICAP but also associated with contactees like George Hunt Williamson, claiming to be in contact with the same extraterrestrial beings that Williamson's circle knew. From 1950 to 1954, Smith led Canada's Project Magnet, a government-funded initiative investigating UFO sightings.
Smith's findings were highly embarrassing for the Department of Transport. Not only did he assert that the UFO sightings were genuine, but he also went as far as to suggest that flying saucers were visitors from parallel universes.
He believed humans could communicate with UFOs through psychic abilities and cited questionable studies by a contactee group called Borderland Sciences Research Associates as evidence. As expected, Project Magnet lost its funding, but Smith persisted in his UFO research until his death on December 27, 1962.
1. Reinhold O. Schmidt
On November 5, 1957, German-American farmer Reinhold O. Schmidt claimed to have come across a balloon-shaped UFO in a secluded area of Kearney, Nebraska. His curiosity led him to approach the craft, only to be struck by a beam of light that paralyzed him. Two men then emerged from the UFO, searched Schmidt for weapons, and invited him aboard. Curiously, the entire crew spoke German, with their leader conversing in English, albeit with a distinct German accent.
After Schmidt was released, the UFO took off into the sky. Fearing that no one would believe his extraordinary story, Schmidt decided to reach out to the authorities. He took Kearney’s deputy sheriff to the location of the encounter, also showing it to the police chief and several other notable figures in the town.
The local authorities acknowledged that Schmidt's story seemed plausible, but soon pressured him to retract it. As the tale spread across the town, Schmidt’s refusal to back down resulted in him being incarcerated for a day.
Schmidt went on to have several more encounters with the strange German-speaking UFO crew, eventually writing books and giving lectures about his experiences. However, his credibility suffered in 1961 when he was convicted of defrauding an elderly widow out of thousands of dollars, leading to a prison sentence for grand theft.
