Author: Bill Chalker

From New Dawn 190 (Jan-Feb 2022)

The name Harry Turner has returned to prominence after David Grusch, the former US intelligence officer and UAP whistleblower, recently drew attention to Turner’s declassified 1971 Australian Joint Intelligence Organisation report. Here we present Bill Chalker’s article on his friend Harry Turner and Turner’s findings, which now appear to reveal the edges of a much larger cover-up of the UFO phenomenon.

Reading the recently released US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) report by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force, I know we have been this way before. Exactly 67 years ago, right here in OZ. There are profound lessons for the Pentagon here.

The headline of Melbourne’s Argus newspaper in its Weekender section of 26 June 1954 read: “‘Saucers’ do exist and why!” The article was written by an “eminent Australian nuclear physicist, who has investigated ‘saucer’ reports since 1948,” whose name “must be withheld because of his link with high-level research.”

The Melbourne Argus was prominently reporting on a massive wave of UFO sightings in Victoria – the most significant of the early sighting waves in Australia that attracted official interest. A classified Directorate of Air Force Intelligence (DAFI) file minute, dated 2 Nov 1955, reads: 

A ministerial statement in the House (Australian parliament – B.C.) on 19 Nov 53 (indicates) that the RAAF make detailed investigations of every report received (which in truth we are not yet doing).

The Australian nuclear physicist stated: 

From all corners of the world there have come thousands of reports of strange objects in the sky… over cities, deserts, mountains and oceans… Radar plots have checked with visual sightings. Jet fighter aircraft have attempted to intercept them and have been out manoeuvred. (Governments)… have set up investigation centres… there remain several hundred reports that can’t be explained… 

Finally, I appeal to the Air Forces and Security Services of the Western World to release their suppressed information….

The Australian scientist hypothesised: 

A certain remnant of reports of UFOs may only be explained by the assumption that machines controlled by some intelligence are being observed….. These machines are not manufactured on earth; that is, their origin is extraterrestrial.

O.H. (Oliver Harry) Turner

The scientist was O.H. (Oliver Harry) Turner, who at that time was working in the physics department of Melbourne University. In 1982, he elaborated on his secret role to me.

DAFI asked Turner to undertake a classified “scientific appreciation” of their files. He recommended greater official interest and specific interest in visual radar reports, concluding: 

The evidence presented by the reports held by RAAF tend to support the… conclusion… that certain strange aircraft have been observed to behave in a manner suggestive of extraterrestrial origin.

DAFI questioned Turner’s findings. They instead followed misleading official US advice, concluding that his recommendations, notably the setting up of a scientific “investigating panel,” were impractical and not justified. 

In studying the RAAF/DAFI UFO files, Turner also utilised retired Marine Corps Major Donald Keyhoe’s USAF reports, described in his bestselling book Flying Saucers from Outer Space, and suggested the RAAF seek official USAF confirmation of the legitimacy of Keyhoe’s data. Turner said of Keyhoe’s “USAF data” that “if one assumes these Intelligence Reports are authentic, then the evidence presented is such that it is difficult to assume any interpretation other than that UFOs are being observed.” 

The disposition of Harry Turner’s controversial report is a revealing indictment of official handling of the UFO controversy. Faced with his provocative conclusions, with Keyhoe’s data as one cornerstone, the Director of Air Force Intelligence (RAAF) did seek official confirmation from America. The Australian Joint Service Staff (intelligence) in Washington wrote to him saying: 

I have discussed with the USAF the status of Major Keyhoe. I understand that his book is written in such a way as to convey the impression that his statements are based on official documents, and there is some suggestion that he has made improper use of information to which he had access while he was serving with the Marine Corps. He has, however, no official status whatsoever and a dim view is taken officially of both him and his works.

When it came to considering Turner’s classified report, the Department of Air concluded: 

Professor Turner accepted Keyhoe’s book as being authentic and based on official releases. Because Turner places so much weight on Keyhoe’s work he emphasised the need to check Keyhoe’s reliability. (The Australian Joint Service Staff communication) removes Keyhoe’s works as a prop for Turner’s work so that the value of the latter’s findings and recommendations is very much reduced.

Turner’s findings, including one in which he recommended setting up a scientific “investigating panel” in light of the “discrediting” of Keyhoe’s data, were found to be impractical and not justified. 

The big problem with all this was that it was based on an act of conscious or unconscious misrepresentation on the part of the US Air Force. They were engaged in a misguided campaign to undermine the popularity of Donald Keyhoe’s books. While Keyhoe may have slightly “beat up” his USAF data, the intelligence reports quoted by Keyhoe and used by Turner to support his conclusions to DAFI were authentic! Eventually, the USAF admitted that Keyhoe’s material was indeed from official Air Force reports. 

In both the US and Australian militaries, political myopia effectively scuttled Australia’s first serious flirtation with a scientific investigation of UFOs. Fortunately, Turner’s secret 1954 report was “located” in classified RAAF UFO policy files that I examined in 1982 with Squadron Leader Ian Frame from DAFI. 

Opening Turner’s UFO Files

I first had contact with Harry Turner back in 1982. He opened his UFO files to me. Turner told me that the case which impressed him the most was when radar at the restricted Woomera rocket range facility in South Australia picked up a UFO on 5 May 1954.

At about 1600 on 5th May, an unidentified Target was observed on radar… The target appeared on High Beam at a range of about 60,000 yards… approaching ‘R’, described a Hyperbola over ‘R’ and went out at a bearing of approx. 90 degrees… I timed it over 15,000 yards 10 seconds which would make its speed approximately 3600 M.P.H.…

From ‘R’, “Vickers-Armstrong” indicated he was 

standing by the Security Officer’s hut, and looking towards the radar post… observing one of our trials through binoculars. This object appeared to be travelling towards me or directly across a path of the approaching [RAAF] the Canberra [jet bomber capable of launching a nuclear strike]. When it got to the path of the Canberra it turned to my right and was going in the direction from which the Canberra had just come.

When it got directly over the Canberra it slowed down. During this time, I found it very hard to believe what I was seeing, so I shut my eyes and then looked again through the binoculars and the object was still stationary over the flight path of the Canberra… The object appeared to be travelling about three times as fast as the Canberra… It was perfectly circular all the time and a dark grey colour…

At the end of 1954, Turner went to England, working at Harwell, the British atomic energy research establishment. Returning to Australia in 1956, he was stationed at Maralinga, until 1964, as the Australian Health Physics representative during the controversial British atomic bomb trials.

By 1968, Harry Turner was working in the Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence (DSTI) of the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB – later JIO, then DIO), becoming their head of the nuclear science section. He told me JIB did not want to be drawn on the “UFO problem” which they viewed as a complex conjectural matter that might drag them into the limelight. 

In August 1968, Turner advised the JIB director that “DAFI is not anxious to retain responsibility for UFO analysis but would be prepared to continue collation responsibility” but due to “(a) lack of scientific capability, (b) no specific position has been established for UFO work which means additional duties for personnel allocated to other duties,” meant “many of the explanations offered by DAFI, usually under political pressure, impose a considerable scientific credibility gap.” 

During May 1969, at Turner’s suggestion, a new RAAF UFO report form was devised, intended to give a more scientific slant to the reports. Turner was working secretly with other scientists to set up a “rapid intervention” team to investigate cases of UFO physical evidence (“landing” events) within the Defence Science and Technical Organisation (DSTO), with four or five scientists, and an aircraft on standby. 

In a memo dated 8 November 1969 to the Director of JIB, Turner indicated that he had Dr Morton from ANU, Dr John Symonds from the Australian Atomic Energy Commission, and Dr Michael Duggin, then of the National Standards Laboratory. George Barlow of Defence Science and Technology (DST) also offered to help his group. Arthur Wills, then Chief Defence Scientist, “had agreed to this.” Dr John Farrand, who became chief defence scientist, alerted me to the memo’s existence. The plans for the scientific team had been almost finalised. However, fate intervened. 

Turner’s UFO Investigations Officially Discouraged

In mid-1969, a major UFO flap broke out in Western Australia, centred in Perth, including an impressive visual radar event at Cloverdale, and tracked on Kalamunda radar on 23 May. DAFI asked the Defence “intervention” group to assist. It was not yet in place, so Harry Turner was seconded to help out. He found the radar case intriguing, concluding: “Neither the Kalamunda radar observation nor Mrs. C__’s sighting can be readily explained by conventional objects or phenomena.” He criticised the DAFI system, in particular referring to the lack of assistance given to local Air Force Intelligence officers. Air Force did not take kindly to criticism, particularly when it came from an “outsider” – a JIB scientist. Turner’s access to the DAFI UFO files was withdrawn. 

Harry Turner’s JIB superior, Bob (R.H.) Mathams, the Director of Scientific Intelligence, told me that he didn’t encourage Turner’s UFO interests and that his access to DAFI files was an informal liaison agreement that became unworkable after Defence restructuring. 

JIO’s “dance” with UFOs was almost entirely driven by Turner’s interest. His battle to establish the DSTO “rapid intervention” group continued, with numerous papers and memos in the period 1969 to 1971.

In a January 1970 submission, Turner even utilised Dr Jacque Vallee’s listing of 1,000 worldwide UFO landings or near landing reports (appended in Vallee’s 1969 watershed book Passport to Magonia) to highlight to JIB the potential military threats. 

“The information suggests the existence of 3 ‘weapon systems’ – (1) a device to interfere with electrical circuits, (2) a device to induce paralysis, (3) a heat ray,” related Turner, continuing,

There is circumstantial evidence that these weapons are at times used deliberately, although mostly in a defensive role. A number of reports allege that a lone car at night has been followed, and after being stopped by a beam, some kind of interaction has developed between the car occupants and the landed craft occupants. Information is included which deals with residual effects on the environment of the landed craft. It is these residual effects which offer the greatest potential reward to scientific investigation at this stage.

Even reports of this nature failed to get Turner’s proposed study traction. (Recently, uninformed internet-based ‘researchers’ got excited when they ‘rediscovered’ this document, mistakenly thinking it was a secret official Australian policy document.)

The RAAF’s “UFO problem” continued as an unwanted burden. In July 1971, Captain R.S. Royston (DAFI) wrote: 

Although I am directly concerned with any possible threat to Australian security, I am not particularly interested in the subject of UFOs, even though my directorate devotes valuable time to this problem. I accept the US assessments without question and consider that it would be a complete waste for we here in Australia to spend valuable time and money in further detailed investigations.

JIB deputy director and DSTI head Bob Mathams discussed Turner’s persistent “sub rosa” UFO crusade. Matham stated his position to Turner, specifically from a scientific intelligence point of view, that there were insufficient resources, and that he was not convinced of “a sufficient scientific intelligence component in the UFO problem,” and 

that there is still considerable controversy concerning UFOs and this will undoubtedly continue until the subject is fully examined by some competent authority. Such an examination, however, would require a considerable effort to collect information on UFO sightings, to investigate reports of such sightings and to examine all information in an objective, scientific manner.

The deputy director agreed, revealing (in February 1970): 

I am sure that there is an area for investigation that should be pursued by some authority. That authority, however, would need very considerable resources indeed. I am forced, therefore, whilst agreeing that the subject should be studied somewhere, to decide that JIO cannot be that somewhere. Without considerable back-up we would be wasting our time and the RAAF have apparently cancelled out the little that they were doing.

Lost Opportunities, OZ-style

Harry Turner persisted, even getting the JIO director to sign a May 1971 minute paper on the “Investigation of UFO sightings,” directed to the Deputy Secretary of Defence, that recommended passing on responsibility for the investigation of UFOs from the RAAF to Defence science, as distinct from DSTI (in JIO) which should focus on a limited number of select cases (say six per year) over a two to three year period, after which JIO could make a better determination if “a strategic intelligence interest exists.” 

When DSTO came on the scene in 1974, Turner saw it as potential better home for his ideas. The UFO subject interested people like George Barlow (Defence Science No 2) and Dr John Farrands, the Chief Defence Scientist, but not enough for Turner’s plans to come under their direct remit. Turner’s secret “UFO science war” effort ended. The RAAF’s limited and stagnating approach continued.

Despite the secret UFO science wars orchestrated by Harry Turner, the situation was frustrated by perceptions of limited resources and politicking – a lost opportunity for some solid scientific examination of the UFO mystery, but a situation with powerful lessons for the shape-shifting spectre of more recent dances with the UFO phenomenon – now recast in the tight terminology of UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). 

Skinwalker Ranch and the case of Mrs Klein

In October 2021, the book Skinwalkers at the Pentagon: An Insiders’ Account of the Government’s Secret UFO Program by James T. Lacatski, D.Eng., Colm A. Kelleher, PhD, and George Knapp revealed that the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)’s Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) and Utah businessman and space entrepreneur Robert Bigelow’s BAASS (Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies) program, had examined military and civilian UFO/UAP experiences, and possible “paranormal and correlates” that are strongly anchored in bizarre events at Bigelow’s Skinwalker ranch.

The broader and far stranger aspects of the UFO phenomena that Harry Turner had studied for decades in Australia was now getting a rare focus via the Pentagon.

Driven by Lacatski (DIA), who had his own bizarre experience at the Skinwalker ranch, DIA investigators got dragged into the very weird phenomena. One of the significant Pentagon players, given the pseudonym “Jonathan Axelrod,” 

was also the lead investigator of the now infamous ‘Tic Tac’ case that had embroiled the Nimitz Aircraft Carrier Strike Group in a series of cat and mouse high stakes games off the coast of San Diego… the so-called Tic Tac [UFO] had out-maneuvered and out-performed multiple F/A-18 Hornets…

The book highlights the so-called bizarre “hitchhiker” effect, with “Jonathan Axelrod” and his family as “poster children”, 

for the eruption of anomalies in the home following trips to Skinwalker Ranch… For more than a dozen years following his July 2009 and subsequent trips to the ranch, Axelrod’s wife and (then) teenage children were subjected to nightmarish “dogmen” appearing in their backyard; to blue, red, yellow and white orbs routinely floating through the home and in the yard; to black shadow people standing over their beds when they awoke; and to a relentless barrage of loud, unexplained footsteps walking up and down the stairs in their house… Axelrod and his family were certain that the trigger for this transformation was his first trip to Skinwalker Ranch.

These sorts of bizarre experiences feature in many places, but I’ll describe one from my focus here – Harry Turner.

In July 2002, he handed me ten pages of his handwritten notes about his investigation, in 1971 and 1972, of a Canberra woman, Mrs Klein. In an extraordinary way, these notes prefigured the extraordinary elements of the UFO abduction cases that are better known today. At the time of Harry Turner’s interview, they were completely unknown.

The hidden aspects of the alien abduction mystery would not become generally known until Budd Hopkins described them in his bestselling 1987 book Intruders. Mrs Klein’s story, as captured in Harry Turner’s notes, revealed a potent revelation of the alien abduction contact drama yet to come. Her story was relatively unpolluted by modern culture’s fixation on certain aspects of the phenomenon.

I described Vicki Klein’s strange experiences in detail in my 2005 book Hair of the Alien. Below I describe one bizarre episode that powerfully resonates with those of Axelrod and others in the 2021 Skinwalkers book:

The neighbour Mrs. Z. claimed that during the evening of September 7, 1971, she had gone to the rear of the house because her dog was playing up. Turner’s notes state, “as the dog retreated indoors, she noticed two figures in Mrs. Klein’s backyard… Mrs. Z. thought they must be Mr. and Mrs. Klein but was puzzled as to why they should be standing in that position and be so still. So she went towards them and shone her torch on them. They turned out to be a tall metal-meshed clad figure (like ‘Claude’ – the entity Vicki Klein had been interacting with, unknown at that point to the neighbour), with his ‘dog-faced’ companion. They… gradually faded away.” Harry Turner in his notes reports: “These two disparate types claim they are ‘one people’. The tall blonde… but the ‘dog-faced’ one has pointed ears, eyes with large pupils and no iris… longish flattened nose, thin mouth, dressed in blue-grey tunic with tight banded collar… The dog-faced type can appear to look more human-like if they wish to…” 

Some of the contents of Skinwalkers at the Pentagon makes me think that James Lacatski and the BAASS/AAWSAP teams were shaping up similarly to the network Harry Turner developed in Australia back in the late 1960s and early 1970s from Defence Science and other scientists. 

Perhaps they should consider in detail the legacy of Harry Turner and the secret UFO wars of OZ.

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From New Dawn 189 (Nov-Dec 2021)

A comparison of the two types of experiences – shamanic and alien abduction – is revealing. Folklorist Dr T.E. Bullard lists the following elements of UFO abduction narratives: 

• capture

• examination (which includes tales of specimen taking, reproductive examinations, implanting of small artefacts inside the abductees, and removal of organs)

• conference (the witness talks with abductors) 

• tour

• otherworldly journeys

• theophany (the witness has a religious experience or receives a message from a divine being) 

• return

Michael Harner, Holger Kalweit and others list the following recurring elements of shamanic experiences:

• selection or capture

• initiation experiences (which include accounts of implanting artefacts, removal of organs, etc.)

• ‘magical flights’ including ‘celestial ascents’ to strange realms dialogues with mythic personages or spirits 

• return

Consider the following. Disembowelment is undoubtedly one aspect you would not expect to find in contemporary UFO abduction accounts but astonishingly enough, such features do occasionally appear. 

In the bizarre Apache Junction, Arizona case of 1971, the subject underwent a frightening examination in which he felt his chest opened and his heart briefly left his body. Sandy Larson, another abductee, reported that her abductors even removed her brain from her skull! Such experiences, on whatever level of reality or unreality they occur, are common fare in shamanic accounts.

Both classes of experiences talk about the placement of artefacts within the body. In shamanism, it is crystals and the like. With UFO abductions, it is ‘implants’. Celestial ascents are common to both genres. 

Even the descents into ‘other realms’ – the underworld or under the sea – that occur in shaman stories also occasionally feature in UFO abduction stories. 

In the strange Filiberto Cardenas abduction story, Cardenas spoke of being taken by three human-like entities to a beach where the aliens apparently worked a combination lock on a rock. The rock opened, revealing a tunnel, “and they rushed down into the sea at a ‘great velocity’.” Even the extraordinary Andreasson affair, the subject of books by UFO researcher Raymond Fowler, featured a journey down a tunnel into a strange subterranean realm. 

Animals often feature in both experiences. In the case of shamanism, they take the form of ‘power animals’ or ‘spirit allies’. Jean Achterberg, in Shirley Nicholson’s Shamanism, states: “Deer are widely associated with shamanic work. In Siberia, real-life reindeer shared the fly-agaric journeys with the shaman… The deer spirit is believed to leave the sacred peyote buttons as tracks to guide the shamans on their supernatural course …Even in prehistoric times, the deer had healing significance, based on man/deer shaman art forms that have been found on caves and artefacts.” Harner describes how the shaman utilises deer, birds, fish, wolves, bears, and other animals.

In UFO abduction accounts, the presence of animals is rationalised as “screen memories” of aliens. In his book Missing Time, Budd Hopkins describes Virginia Horton’s magical encounter in a French wood with a talking deer! In Whitley Strieber’s books, owls and wolves are often referred to. He also refers to the experience of Barry Maddock, who had “the bizarre impression that an enormous grey owl with big, black eyes” was in a room with him. It took Maddock into “a large vaulted chamber that reminded him of the Sydney Opera House. There it turned into a bird of paradise.” And again, in the Andreasson affair, Betty Andreasson encountered the Phoenix bird during one of her abduction experiences. More recently, experiencer Mike Clelland has written The Messengers: Owls, Synchronicity and the UFO Abductee (2015) and Stories from the Messengers: Accounts of Owls, UFOs and a Deeper Reality (2020).

Nevill Drury (1947–2013) explored the links between shamanism and contemporary Western occultism. In his book Vision Quest (1984), Drury gives a fascinating account of his introduction to shamanic tutelage under Dr Michael Harner at a transpersonal conference in Victoria in November 1980. His shamanic journey was complete with tunnel imagery, a palace of crystal, Phoenix imagery, having a crystal placed in his chest, and seeing saint-like figures rimming the tunnel he journeyed through. To him, “the shaman’s journey, in a very real and personal way, is a pathway to sacred space… our inner being.” 

Note, however, that the Andreasson affair – an “otherworldly journey” told from the perspective of a UFO abduction narrative – also featured tunnel imagery, a large crystalline structure, a “vision” of the Phoenix, and encountering saint-like figures. She also told of having an “implant” placed inside her, behind the eyes. The correspondences were fascinating! The first of the Andreasson series of books appeared in 1979 and 1982. Nevill Drury’s initial shamanic journey occurred in 1980. He had no awareness of the Andreasson books.

The sexual/reproductive element also appears in both shaman and UFO abduction narratives. In shaman accounts, we even have stories of “spirit weddings” and “spirit children” off-spring  – the results of liaisons between shamans and the “spirits.” Holger Kalweit gives a fascinating account of such a situation in his book Dreamtime and Inner Space. The “shamaness” gave birth to a child by (a spirit) in the spirit world, and “he would bring it to her at night for her to breastfeed it. He came when everyone was asleep. The people in the village heard the child cry, but her own family slept as if they were dead.” It is fascinating to compare that sort of story with the accounts Budd Hopkins describes in his book Intruders – tales of ova sampling, baby presentation and baby bonding! 

Shamanism, Abductions & Healing

Finally, there appears to be a growing correspondence in UFO abduction accounts with one of the primary goals of shamanism – healing. 

In Gary Doore’s compilation, Shaman’s Path: Healing, Personal Growth and Empowerment, Stanley Krippner writes: “Shamans were the world’s first healers, first diagnosticians, first psychotherapists, etc… There are shamanic healing methods that closely parallel contemporary behaviour therapy, chemotherapy, dream interpretation, family therapy, hypnotherapy, milieu therapy, and psychodrama. It is clear that shamans, psychotherapists, and physicians have more in common than is generally suspected. For the shaman, however, the spiritual dimension of healing is extremely important, whereas contemporary physicians and psychotherapists typically ignore it.” 

Therapies have emerged with shamanic perspectives, including Stanislav Grof’s “Holotropic Therapy” and Michael Harner’s “Shamanic Counselling.” Many “close encounter” therapies, some with questionable efficacy, have emerged, with tenuous roots in early abduction experiences.

In the classic watershed UFO abduction case – that of Betty and Barney Hill – as told in the 1966 best-selling book The Interrupted Journey, Dr Benjamin Simon, a Boston psychiatrist, investigating the cause of stress-related problems experienced by the couple, used hypnotherapy to explore the UFO abduction story and arrive at a therapeutic outcome. The complex abduction story that emerged under hypnosis had a positive psychological and cathartic effect on the couple. The psychotherapeutic benefits of confronting the abduction story were obvious.

The growing number of health professionals who began to examine the UFO abduction mystery contributed to a therapeutic enrichment of the witness’s interaction with researchers. For example, Dr Rima Laibow, a New York psychiatrist, had been working with Budd Hopkins. More than half of the abductees she worked with were what she referred to as “dual victims.” They reported not only UFO abduction experiences but also child abuse. Some researchers suggest this aspect explains the origin of the abduction tales, i.e., the abduction story was a “screen memory” for child abuse. Dr Laibow rejected this hypothesis, pointing out the consistency of the accounts, the physical evidence in many cases, the emergence of many of the abduction narratives under hypnosis (“an uncommon mode of presentation for screen memories”) and the presence of similar abduction scenarios in the “unabused.” 

Further still, she found in a number of cases, “following the abreaction of the abduction, therapeutic work could occur spontaneously about material which was not abreacted: the early physical and/or sexual abuse.” Elaboration of the abduction material often led to a reassessment of memories of abuse and a positive reintegration of the individual. Physiological symptoms were occasionally overcome, leading to a positive therapeutic outcome. 

Dr Laibow concluded in an article in the International UFO Reporter that “the need for additional study, deeply intermeshed with, not separate from, the active therapy of those who have this set of realities in their lives, is a matter of urgent public health concern (whatever we now feel the locus of the reality to be).” Dr Laibow’s involvement tapered off with some controversy beyond the scope of this limited review.

Budd Hopkins remarked in Intruders that the long-term effect of these complex abduction experiences is psychological. He stated: “Though some of the resulting behaviour may be similar, UFO abductees are not like people who’ve had a single traumatic experience, such as the victims of automobile accidents or brutal muggings. They are people who have been, at intervals over the years, involuntarily subjected to a frightening and invasive ‘secret life’…. The emotions this secret life engenders can include fear, dread, helplessness, profound maternal confusion and loss, the sense of physical – even sexual – vulnerability, and a thousand other things, ranging all the way up to basic uncertainty as to where one really belongs, where home really is. And all along this road lies a terrible sense of self-doubt, a questioning of one’s very sanity.” 

Initially, very few of the people who allegedly experienced an abduction sought out publicity. Indeed, most were terrified of it. They were more like the victims of assault than starry-eyed seekers of a new world reality. They seemed to be haunted by their experiences, and most were seeking answers. Instead, they were confronted by shallow, ridiculing media reporting and a general public that had no awareness of the controversy. The inevitable response from a position of ignorance was to either ridicule or reject – “They must all be nuts.” Given the extent of the problem, this was a very unwise approach. Something was happening. While some thought the issue might turn out to be a quantum leap in the field of anomalistic psychology, others felt otherwise. 

Opening Up New Avenues

A full appreciation of UFO abduction and shaman experiences may also provide a quantum leap in understanding in another direction. 

Whitley Strieber had viewed shamanism as “the shattered remnants of mankind’s early attempts to control this (visitor) phenomenon.” Perhaps the reverse may have been more likely? Shamanism involved individuals who seemed to have a strong measure of control over the set of realities they operated in. In UFO abduction experiences, the generally helpless victims have no control over the bizarre ‘reality’ that overwhelms them. It appeared a phenomenon operating on two opposite ends of a control continuum. Perhaps we, as a culture, had lost an ability that other cultures and generations may have had to some extent? 

For abductees or experiencers, perhaps there are ‘rites of passage’ in achieving some level of understanding and control over the UFO abduction experience. Some experiencers or abductees have in recent times collectively developed communities of support. Many have gone “underground” to avoid connections. Others have become activists taking control of their experiences, resisting or avoiding those they did not see as understanding or embracing their realities. What the future holds for these changing dynamics remains to be seen.

Alien abductions may yet prove to be remarkable testimony to the eccentricities of the human condition – that is, these experiences may spring from the realm of the hoaxer, the deluded, the alienated of our society, or may yet be about something truly extraordinary. This complexity demands we keep an open mind and keep the matter properly in question until we have enough information to determine what is going on. The range of intelligent and qualified people looking into the UFO abduction mystery grew over the decades. People who have these experiences are also contributing in substantial and fascinating ways to bringing understanding to these strange realities.

Experiencers should not be unrealistically encouraged by advocates of alien presence nor, at the other extreme, should they be ridiculed by the sceptical among us. Instead, they should be helped to confront the reality of their experiences, whether or not it is eventually found to be prosaic, profound, or extraordinary. Only time will tell whether the search for answers will give us more insights into the human mind and the UFO phenomenon. Could it be that it will do both? 

The Wandjina

It is fascinating when sacred art and the UFO subject intersect. Such intersections occur in occasionally unusual ways that are controversial and yet potently rich in potential meaning. 

In my 2005 book Hair of the Alien, I wrote: “For the woman, the most strikingly similar image to that of the beings [she encountered in an experience Whitley Strieber described as ‘the best description of the gray beings’ among the thousands of letters that were sent to him in the wake of the success of his book Communion] is the Wandjina – the haunting Australian aboriginal rock paintings that reveal figures with large dark eyes and no mouth.” 

The Wandjina (or Wanjina) are beautifully evoked in such works as Yorro Yorro: Everything Standing Up Alive by David Mowaljarlai and Jutta Malnic, Keeping the Wanjinas Fresh by Valda Blundell and Donny Woolagoodja, and most strikingly to a worldwide audience rising up from the floor of the Sydney Olympic stadium in 2000 during the opening ceremony. 

Such striking resonances are hauntingly fascinating in their possibilities. I was pleased I had met David Mowaljarlai in the company of John Mack and Stephen Larsen (the co-author of Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind: The Authorized Biography) a year before his passing in 1997. Donny Woolagoodja continues the tradition in his biography Yornadaiyan Woolagoodja, a wonderful exploration of his personal interaction and relationship with the Wandjina images. 

Keeping the Wanjinas Fresh documented the Wanjina (Wandjina) rock paintings and the living tradition that are being kept “fresh” through “touching” up the old rock paintings and creating new “modern” expressions of the Wanjina – “eternal manifestations of the sacred life force… the supernatural ancestors” of the local aborigines (including the Worrorra, Ngarinyin and the Wunambal). Donny Woolagoodja has a direct linkage to the “retouching” tradition through his father, Sam Woolagoodja.

The book highlighted that “the Wanjinas created the countries that their human descendants belong to and they made the laws that guide their everyday lives. Visible as paintings at hundreds of rock art sites throughout their countries, the Wanjinas remained sources of strength for Sam and his people during the tumultuous years of colonisation. Even after the Worrora were displaced from their countries, the Wanjinas continued to instruct them in their dreams.” Also: “Expressions of the Wanjinascan be seen in the night sky, for instance the Milky Way. They are also closely associated with clouds and water… Sam once told (Blundell) that the Wanjinas ‘came through clouds’. ‘That’s their home’, he said, ‘they come from rain’. People are ‘born in sunlight’, while Wanjinas are ‘born in the dark’.”

People around the world would have seen the Wanjina rising from the ground in the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Donny Woolagoodja was the traditional artist behind that extraordinary display. Most pivotal in the book, beyond the beautiful contemporary Wanjina artwork, is the “refreshing” tradition among chosen local people.“While most of the Wanjinas have lost their mouths, they are still able to instruct people in their dreams.” According to Donny, those aspects of recent paintings that appear to be ‘new’ are actually contemporary revelations of Lalai (“the primeval era of creation” or “the Dreaming” – an eternal sense of “living cosmology”). Donny explains: “When I paint, I follow the dream.”

Those tempted to speculate that the Wanjina (or Wandjinas – the original widespread spelling variant) are evidence of “extraterrestrials” visiting Earth should consider these works. I have been a cautious traveller in this context. On my website (www.theozfiles.com) and in my earlier book The OZ Files: The Australian UFO Story, I stated:

“The legends and lore of the indigenous aborigines also provide material suggestive of interactions with anomalous aerial phenomena. Of course, in speculation about such data, it should be realised that the accounts are of historical and anthropological nature and therefore care should be taken not to interpolate too much into them. Aboriginal myths incorporate the idea of ‘sky-beings’, with the Wandjina being among the most interesting to consider. The Wandjina have been preserved in a fascinating oral tradition and in a large collection of rock paintings scattered throughout the Kimberley region of northern Australia. The paintings have received all manner of interpretations from stylised representations of a pervasive myth system to naive ‘ancient astronaut’ theories. It is however fascinating to see that the indigenous tribes viewed the Wanjina as ‘the spirit in the cloud’. Indeed, the unique painting style shows a logical sequence from human figures to stylised representations of clouds. This duality of anthropomorphic form and ‘clouds’ is widespread in primitive cultures and finds an interesting parallel in the biblical accounts in ‘Exodus’. While this line of thought is suggestive of superior ‘sky beings’ acting as cultural catalysts for primitive societies, I should point out that making mythological component comparisons can make for interesting exercises, full of emotive similarities, but are purely speculative.”

Such speculations need to have their anchor points in the living and preserved traditions of the people who view the Wanjinas as their primary “religious” focus. To not do so is to ignore a primary and fascinating source of oral and pictorial knowledge about these extraordinary beings and risks disrespecting an extraordinary age-old and living tradition.

Fourth Level of Meaning

Another insightful book emerged in 2006. Treading Lightly: The Hidden Wisdom of the World’s Oldest People by Professor Karl-Erik Sveiby (a specialist in Knowledge Management) and Tex Skuthorpe (an aboriginal Nhunggabarra cultural custodian) described “a unique journey into traditional Aboriginal life and culture, and offers a powerful and original model for building sustainable organisations, communities and ecologies. It is a compelling message for today’s world.” 

In 2004, Professor Sveiby approached researcher Steve Walters and me to get our opinions on a strange photographic anomaly – a possible aerial anomaly – he had recorded during April 2004 at Mount Oxley near Bourke, New South Wales, while in the company of Tex Skuthorpe and his partner. Karl-Erik presents the unusual photo in the book as a possible manifestation of the Fourth Level of meaning in aboriginal stories – the spiritual realm. Through the fascinating aboriginal story of How the Nhunggabarra got flowers, Mount Oxley (or Wubi-Wubi) was a focus of shamanic contact between aboriginal men of high degree (or wiringins) and the ancestral being Baiame (Baayami).

Mount Oxley had already become an interesting place for me. I visited it back in September 2003, exploring its fascinating sense of presence and its enigmatic lore of strange phenomena. I was already aware of the legend of the flowers through the renderings of K.Langloh Parker of local aboriginal tales she collected in the late 1890s. It was fascinating to see the story retold through the words of local custodian Tex Skuthorpe and its “Fourth Level” of meaning and beautiful evocation through Tex’s great paintings.

While prosaic explanations may be evident for the photo anomaly Karl-Erik recorded (such as moisture condensation effects), it is fascinating to consider the context he and Tex explored in their important book. I certainly did not want to detract from the central message of Treading Lightly, given its significance as a potent intersection between a unique ancient culture and modern knowledge management theory.

There may have been fascinating resonances between the concepts of “Fourth Level” (through Treading Lightly – shamanic spiritual interactions) and “Fourth Kind” (through “alien abductions”) – intersections I had been contemplating for some time. Treading Lightly describes powerful and important matters that need to be focused upon by our modern culture.

Encounters Throughout Asia

My trips in Thailand and China during 2005 and 2006, exploring the Asian UFO experience and evidence for an “alien DNA paradigm,” also yielded evidence possibly supportive of the shamanic alien abduction connection. I focused on genetic connections at a very specific and detailed level because of the unusual nature of the rare Asian mongoloid sequence, revealed in the Khoury sample described in my book Hair of the Alien. They occurred in the DNA signatures of an isolated group of people, the Lahu, who were limited to the region of the southern Chinese province of Yunnan, and the immediate region bordering that locality – northern Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), and Laos. The areas of Yunnan and northern Thailand yielded considerable data and research, particularly with fascinating UFO and unusual light phenomena connections in both regions.

Strange light phenomena and possible UFO connections are found in the shamanic type elements of Lahu society. Dr Anthony Walker’s 907 page Lahu study Merit and the Millennium: Routine and Crisis in the Ritual Lives of the Lahu People revealsone of the more fascinating Lahu shaman-like contact experiences involving a leading Lahu figure, Ca Nu, who claimed the Sky beings/spirits visited him and gave him a mysterious glowing stone with inscriptions. He also reported seeing strange “hole” shapes crossing the sun, along with anomalous “stars.” Ca Nu connects his experiences with spiritual prophecy, a dynamic revealed on numerous occasions in not only shaman lore but in many contact and abduction situations.

A ball of light was encountered by dissident Chinese writer Ma Jian in 1986 in Lahu territory in southern Yunnan China. Escaping from custody, he was trying to find his way through dangerous terrain. Suddenly,“a light appeared in the darkness. It was neither a torch nor a candle, nor a glow-worm shaking in the breeze. It seemed to come from another realm. It rose from a stream and floated through the trees then stopped by some branches ten meters away and slowly dropped to my eye level… I walked forward and the ball of fire followed me through the branches, guiding my way for twenty kilometres until the sky turned white.” 

He described the encounter in his book Red Dust. I met Ma Jian during the 2003 Sydney Writers Festival. He confirmed that his account was not a literary metaphor for his sense of alienation with contemporary China. Instead, it was a real experience with a ball of light about the size of a rockmelon. This Lahu region phenomena near the Lancang (the Mekong) River echoes the intriguing Naga light phenomena that most prominently plays out near Nong Khai, on the Mekong, as the mighty river enters Thailand. I witnessed and filmed the Naga light balls coming out of the Mekong in 2006. My investigations resisted the straightforward explanation of hoaxing for tourism purposes.

Yang Zheng of the Kunming UFO Research Association indicated his “most dramatic case” occurred in November 2006 (the month after my visit to Yunnan) when thousands of villagers in Zhenyuan Yi, Hani and Lahu Autonomous County of Yunnan Province witnessed seven white hemispherical shaped objects hovering directly above the property of a local CPC (Chinese Communist Party) cadre for nearly two hours. The objects appeared to keep changing shape. As it was a small village, word soon spread and many villagers arrived to witness the sighting. They started pursuing the objects, but the UFOs disappeared. I had been in the Lahu territory only a few weeks earlier. 

All this seems a compelling confirmation of the potential breakthrough research focus provided by the alien DNA paradigm and the shamanic alien abduction perspective.

Click here for Part One of this article.

The above was originally published in Nature & Health (Australia), Vol. 11, No. 1, Autumn 1990, and has been revised and updated by the author.

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From New Dawn 188 (Sept-Oct 2021)

Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen, in their book, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904), provided a classic account of an extraordinary tradition. An Aborigine, Kurkutji, was set upon by two spirits, Mundadji and Munkaninji, in a cave:

“Mundadji cut him open, right down the middle line, took out all of his insides and exchanged them for those of himself, which he placed in the body of Kurkutji. At the same time, he put a number of sacred stones in his body. After it was all over, the youngest spirit, Munkaninji, came up and restored him to life, told him that he was now a medicine man and showed him how to extract bones and other forms of evil magic out of them. Then he took him away up into the sky and brought him down to earth close to his own camp, where he heard the natives mourning for him, thinking that he was dead. For a long time, he remained in a more or less dazed condition, but gradually he recovered and the natives knew that he had been made into a medicine man. When he operates the spirit, Munkaninji is supposed to be near at hand watching him, unseen of course by ordinary people.”

This is a striking description of the initiatory experience of an Australian aboriginal shaman. A.P. Elkin aptly referred to these individuals as “aboriginal men of high degree.”

There are numerous accounts of this kind from the past, from recent times, the present, and right around the world. In addition, there are many excellent works covering shamanism, like the classic study by Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy and his analysis of the Australian tradition, Australian Religions; Carmen Blacker’s The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanic Practices in Japan; Michael Harner’s The Way of the Shaman; Joan Halifax’s Shamanic Voices; Holger Kalweit’s Dreamtime & Inner Space: The World of the Shaman; Shamans Through Time edited by Jeremy Narby and Francis Huxley; Shamans of the World edited by Nancy Connor with Bradford Keeney; and The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and the Western Imagination by Andrei Znamenski.

Ritual death and resurrection, abduction by powerful beings, ritual disembowelment, implanting of artefacts, aerial ascents and journeys into strange realms, alien tutelage and enlightenment, personal empowerment, and transformation – these and many other phenomena are recurring elements of the extraordinary shamanic tradition.

Incredibly, these worldwide native aboriginal experiences share an impressive connection with a bizarre complex of human experiences that have attracted a lot of attention since the late 1960s. 

Whitley Strieber’s “visitors”

One of the best-known accounts of this contemporary mirror of the shamanic tradition appeared in 1987 in a best-selling book that sold more than four million copies worldwide. The story behind it was made into a film by Australian director Philippe Mora. I am referring to Whitley Strieber’s book Communion. Its sequels, Transformation (1988), Breakthrough (1995), The Secret School (1996), The Communion Letters (with Anne Strieber, 1997), Confirmation (1998), Solving the Communion Enigma (2012), The Supernatural (with Jeffrey Kripal, 2016) and A New World (2020) continued Whitley Strieber’s story of a claimed “elaborate personal encounter with intelligent non-human beings” and his attempts to understand the mystery. Whitley Strieber’s story emerges from the perspective of the alien UFO abduction. Whatever its factual reality or physical basis, Strieber’s account of his experiences is one of the most potent personal expressions of the UFO abduction mystery.

Strieber describes how he was taken from his upstate New York cabin on 26 December 1985 by unknown “visitors.” From the nearby woods, he recollected being taken up into the air and suddenly finding himself in “a messy round room.” Strange beings were there. A needle-like thing was allegedly inserted behind his right ear. A grey and scaly object with a sort of network of wires on the end was briefly inserted into his rectum. An incision was made on his right forefinger. He had no further conscious recollections beyond that point. 

The memory of what he thought happened came back to him over the next few days. The impact was shattering. He thought he was losing his mind. He even contemplated suicide. Instead, he was helped by UFO researcher Budd Hopkins who arranged for him to see a psychiatrist, Dr Donald Klein.

Dr Klein’s hypnosis sessions provided further details of the 26 December 1985 episode and earlier experiences. As Strieber searched further into his past, he uncovered not explanations and certainty but instead more mysteries. He concluded: “I had a relationship with them, despite the fact that I could not even be sure they existed.”

By the time the December 1985 experience overwhelmed him, Strieber may have had these sorts of encounters at least a dozen times. He embarked on an intellectual journey through the vast UFO and related literature, trying to grapple with the mystery that had enveloped him. 

Strieber also describes how others around him were witnessing the “visitors.” Quite a number of people who stayed at his New York cabin allegedly witnessed the “visitors.” Is this baseless contagion or evidence of the paradoxical reality of the “visitors,” as seen by Whitley Strieber? As a highly successful novelist, Strieber has had to face claims that Communion and its sequels are works of clever fiction. He insists it is all true. Having met him and spoken at length with him on several occasions, I feel it is clear he is trying to convey the ‘impossible’ as best he can.

Whitley Strieber felt that the “visitors” represented “the most powerful of all forces acting on human culture. They may be extraterrestrials managing the evolution of the human mind. Or they may represent the presence of mind on another level of being. Perhaps our fate is eventually to leave the physical world altogether and join them in that strange hyper-reality from which they seem to emerge.”

Further, he wondered “if the shamanic language of symbol and myth would offer a better insight into the visitors’ motives”? In Transformation, Strieber contemplates, “Like the shamanic aspirants of old, I would be forced to confront death.” A friend of Strieber’s, Dora Ruffner, felt “the visitor experience was initiatory in nature – a journey into the underworld.” In an interview for Terror Australis magazine, Strieber suggested “that shamanism is the shattered remnants of mankind’s early attempts to control this (visitor) phenomenon.” 

Budd Hopkins & ET Genetic Experiments 

The field of Ufology has developed a range of positions on ‘alien abductions’, but the most popular view appeared to be that of the late researcher Budd Hopkins, author of Intruders, Missing Time, Witnessed, and (with Carol Rainey) Sight Unseen, and his memoir Art, Life and UFOs. 

The “alien abductors,” in Hopkin’s view, were extraterrestrial and are involved in some sort of extraordinary genetic experiment. Human beings are first abducted when children. A cell sampling operation occurs. These lead to certain individuals being followed closely. After puberty, ova and sperm cells are taken during follow-up abductions. The goal of this activity is “the merging of human and ‘alien’ genetic material for the production of a hybrid race.” The hybrids are then apparently brought to term in laboratory “nurseries” inside large UFOs. The involuntary contributors are later abducted yet again and are shown the results – tiny hybrid infants or children. This bizarre “baby presentation” apparently involves the abductees being asked to pick and hold their “offspring” in a kind of binding experience!

In the book Phenomenon (1988) edited by Hilary Evans and John Spencer, Hopkins concedes: “I am the first to admit the sheer outrageousness of such ideas, but outrageousness doesn’t mean untruth. I find the evidence, unfortunately, compelling. I have every reason to conclude that these ‘impossible’ breeding experiments are actually taking place… I am convinced that, for good or ill, these genetic procedures are at the heart of the UFO abduction phenomenon.”

Hopkins is credited with bringing abductions into the central focus of UFO study and research in the 1980s. There was furious debate amongst many UFO researchers about the legitimacy of these developments. Not all accepted that the abduction claims were the key to the UFO mystery. Many saw the abduction stories as an inevitable outgrowth of a psychological response to the ostensibly more objective manifestations of mainstream UFO ‘reality’. Others saw such events in a more positive light, with a transformational aspect. Others argued that the richness of the human mind and dynamic interplay with UFO researchers spawned these accounts, not aliens. 

However, the UFO abduction mystery was not simply an artefact of a few investigators. It’s seemingly worldwide in its dimensions. English researcher Jenny Randles’ book Abduction (1988) carries details from over 200 ‘abduction’ reports from some 35 countries, as diverse as Zimbabwe, Finland, China, USSR, Tibet and India.

Reports occur in Australia. I have investigated many cases myself. My book Hair of the Alien: DNA and Other Forensic Evidence for Alien Abductions (2005) examined the experiences of Peter Khoury and the hair sample that yielded fascinating results. It led me to develop what I referred to as “the alien DNA paradigm,” focusing on the possibility of evidence for alien genetic “intelligent intervention” in various cultures (particularly indigenous cultures) around the world. It was driven by locations with high strangeness/breakthrough activities with UFOs, light phenomena, alien abductions, by cultures that feature claims of “sky beings,” diverse UFO phenomena, by possible unusual DNA markers within these cultures or present selectively or generically in human DNA, and by locations or regions which bring together each of these factors (UFO “haunted” location, alien mediated culture, DNA aspects). 

John Mack & the Psychology of the ET Experience

Alien abduction narratives became a central focus for many researchers. The late John Mack was a potent and articulate spokesman for a transformational focus. With his 1994 book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, and more particularly his 1999 book Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters, he signalled and mapped out his perspectives. In essence, Passport presented a shamanic envisioning of the whole alien abduction mystery. The transformative aspects of the phenomenon held sway for John Mack, and examination of the physical dimensions seemed secondary or even unimportant. 

The kind of information I have focused on such as DNA, albeit not without ignoring the shamanic correlations, perhaps conflicted with the numinous dimensions of the hyper-reality John Mack speculated may be at the heart of the abduction phenomenon. It seemed that in alien abductions, Mack saw affirmations of important concerns and perspectives he had held for some time. They sat well with the transpersonal and environmental issues he had championed for some time, certainly long before the alien sirens beckoned him into their seductive embrace. 

The Believer: Alien Encounters, Hard Science, and the Passion of John Mack (2021) by Ralph Blumenthal (co-author of the December 2017 New York Times UAP/UFO breakout story), for me, enhanced the contexts of his Australian visits and gives insights into John Mack’s conflicted dance with physical evidence of alien abduction claims. He was more interested in its ultimate meaning, nature and impact. When he was in Australia, I supported his research into indigenous aboriginal abduction and UFO experiences – an area we both had a strong interest, particularly its shamanic dimensions. 

John Mack argued in Passport to the Cosmos: “There are problems with an entirely literal physical interpretation. To begin with, despite liberal use of words like genetic, DNA, and mitochondria, there is not solid material evidence of which I am aware to support the notion that any of this, including the creation of the hybrids themselves, is occurring on the material plane to the extent that detectable or measurable changes are happening at the molecular level. At best what we have in the physical domain are small lesions (which skeptics say could be self-inflicted, but I have found no evidence for this) and bodily symptoms that might be manifestations of subtle forces, real energies originating on another plane of reality.” 

These statements puzzled me somewhat because during his research visits to Australia and afterwards, John Mack had become well acquainted with Peter Khoury and the fact that the hair sample related to his 1992 experience was being subjected to mitochondrial DNA sequence analysis. Our first report on the work, ‘Strange Evidence’, appeared in the Spring 1999 issue of the International UFO Reporter and information about it was widely reported in the UFO media from June 1999 onwards. Before that, we were circulating the preliminary results of the research. In addition, while the words genetic and DNA might have been liberally used in the abduction research field, I was not aware of similar usage of the term mitochondrial until the appearance of my ‘Strange Evidence’ report.

Mary Rodwell champions the transformational perspective in her books, Awakening: How Extraterrestrial Contact Can Transform Your Life (2002) and The New Human: Awakening to our Cosmic Heritage (2016). The extensive study, ‘Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness and Contact with Non Human Intelligence’, edited by Rey Hernandez, Jon Klimo, and Rudy Schild (2018), gives a framework for this viewpoint.

Some critics argue that sufficient explanations for the UFO abduction mystery are found in the physiological or psychological domain, such as sleep paralysis, temporal lobe sensitivities, fantasy-prone personalities, and a host of other avenues bound by the human condition. 

The Imaginal Realm

Another interpretation of UFO abduction accounts also appears to strengthen the shamanic perspective of the abduction narratives. I refer here to the imaginal interpretation. Note that I wrote imaginal, not imaginary. There is a big difference if you believe the proponents of the idea.

Dr Kenneth Ring of the Department of Psychology at the University of Connecticut, and author of the near-death experience studies Life at Death and Heading Toward Omega, described his theory of imaginal UFO abductions in the MUFON UFO Journal of May 1989, and incorporated these ideas into his 1992 book The Omega Project: Near-Death Experiences, UFO Encounters, and Mind at Large. 

He included a quote from me: “Aboriginal shamans have a powerful and consistent tradition of ritualistic initiation, the elements of which bear amazing similarities to many modern-day UFO abductions and contact accounts.” This had come from a research paper I presented way back in 1977 at an Australian UFO conference. I stated that while, at least then, we appeared to lack contemporary cases which demonstratively show, among other things, the elements of abduction, “contact,” and “time-lapse,” Australia, unbeknown to most researchers, enjoyed a rich indigenous tradition of similar accounts – the tribal initiation accounts of aboriginal medicine men – men of “high degree” as A.P. Elkin aptly puts it.

Kenneth Ring’s ideas struck a responsive chord with speculations I had been considering for more than a decade. By 1990 I had examined the works of the great French Islamic scholar Henry Corbin. In a paper first published in 1964 entitled ‘Mundus Imaginalis or the Imaginary and the Imaginal’, Corbin coined the term “imaginal” to account for the Islamic mystical notion of a hidden realm (“a third kingdom” – the Alam Al-mithal as contained in the Sufism of the Islamic mystic Ibn’ Arabi).

According to proponents, the “imaginal realm” could be accessed in certain altered states of consciousness – for example, via “mythical consciousness” (to use James Hillman’s archetypal psychology term) or “shamanic states of consciousness” (to use western shamanic exponent Dr Michael Harner’s terminology).

Kenneth Ring made the critical point that the imaginal realm was as real as everyday reality but usually separate and invisible to us. It apparently had form, dimension, and, he contends, “most important for us, persons.” 

In this Islamic “imaginal” realm of Alam Al-mithal, there were claimed to be quite a number of strange denizens, some having characteristics that bear an extraordinary likeness to the entities that dominate UFO abduction stories. One species, the Jinn, was described in 1983 by veteran English UFO writer Gordon Creighton in a fascinating piece in the Flying Saucer Review, entitled ‘A brief account of the true nature of the “UFO entities”.’

Ring highlights shamanism as one of the most potent expressions of the imaginal realm. He states: “The shaman is the prototypic ‘otherworld traveller’, a man (or woman) who is at home in both worlds, recognises the reality of each, and can easily journey between them.”

Richard Noll succinctly states the critical issue in his essay, ‘The Presence of Spirits in Magic and Madness’ (in Shirley Nicholson’s compilation, Shamanism): “Humankind has traditionally consulted extra-mundane entities for expanded knowledge and empowerment, for they are traditionally considered ‘sources of wisdom’ that are transpersonal and able to convey crucial information beyond the normal constraints of space and time …The practitioner usually initiates dialogues with spiritual entities by first inducing an altered state of consciousness, which allows these ‘invisible guests’ to be seen and heard. However, in some instances it is they who knock first on the doors of imaginal perception. Called or not called, they offer symbolic potential for transformation, whether for oneself, for others, or for desired changes in the physical environment…” 

These beings are not imaginary in the sense of being not real, pure fantasy, or artificially made up. They are imaginal, existing in a realm of experience in which they inhabit a reality of their own, a mundus imaginalis or “imaginal world,” as Henry Corbin deems it, which is co-existent with the mundane experiential world of our ordinary state of waking consciousness. Imaginal beings are part of our experienced reality and have probably been so since the birth of human consciousness.

The concept of an imaginal realm sits very well with the paradoxical reality of the UFO abduction mystery, however, it is just as unprovable as the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Some proponents of the imaginal view argue that confirmation comes through experience. It is difficult to see how the idea can be substantiated. 

Dr Ring’s suggestion that his theory could be easily disproved by the arrival and open contact of extraterrestrial abductors, falls short with the lack of explicit mainstream confirmation of such visits. He argued it was high time that we jettisoned “our out-worn cartesian habits of thought” and approach “these phenomena from an imaginal/folkloric perspective. This will necessarily take us down a psychological road that will lead not only into folkloric territory but into the realm of myth itself.” 

That approach, while fascinating, asks us to abandon the scientific ethic and mainstream conventions of consensus reality. Given the extraordinary claims and uncertainties that attend this strange area of human experience, it may be premature to do that. More cautious and tested approaches would seem more worthwhile. Such approaches, led by collaborations with experiencers, may yet confirm we are dealing with extraterrestrials, imaginal entities, and other hitherto unfathomed explanations for this extraordinary phenomenon. An open mind would be our best council. 

The second part of this article appears in New Dawn 189 and explores accounts of alien abductions that have shamanic elements; the Wandjinas of Australian aboriginal spirituality; and the author’s trip to Thailand and China which revealed connections between UFO sightings and local shamanic traditions. Click here to obtain that issue.

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From New Dawn 173 (Mar-Apr 2019)

Over 40 years ago, during the early evening of 21 October 1978, pilot Frederick Valentich reported in a radio communication with Steve Robey of Melbourne Flight Service that “a large aircraft” which had “a long shape” and “a green light,” appearing to have a bright metallic lustre and four bright lights, travelling variously at high speed, approached his Cessna 182L aircraft (registration VH-DSJ) and apparently hovered in a stationary manner and also orbited above him. 

After six minutes Valentich reported his aircraft’s engine was rough idling, and the strange object was “hovering, and it’s not an aircraft.” Having indicated he intended to fly on to King Island, Valentich’s communication terminated after 17-seconds of “metallic” noises. 

Neither Valentich or the Cessna were ever found. The event became one of Australia’s greatest aviation mysteries, and the apparent UFO connection remains unresolved. 

The areas that feature prominently in the Valentich incident – Cape Otway (his last land call), Bass Strait (the apparent location of his disappearance) and King Island (his apparent destination) – all have extensive precedents for UFO activity. 

During a two-month period centred around January 1978, holidaymakers, fishermen, school teachers, local police and lighthouse keepers in the Cape Otway area reported seeing UFOs. During July 1977, local residents and the lighthouse keeper at Cape Otway saw an inexplicable brilliant light source that hovered out to sea for half an hour. 

Bass Strait figures in UFO mysteries particularly in 1920 and 1944. The Melbourne Argus newspaper even described many people seeing “cigar-shaped” objects flying over Bass Strait as far back as 1896. 

King Island’s 425 square miles played host to a wave of unidentified nocturnal aerial lights for at least three months prior to Frederick Valentich’s disappearance. Oval shaped lights followed cars and mystified local residents. Strange lights or flares appeared off the north of the island. 

One of the most spectacular close encounters with a UFO in the area occurred at a wild and uninhabited part of the King Island coast, near Whistler Point, just before dawn, on 10 April 1976. “A beam of light” emanating from “a cross-shaped object” approached a duck-shooter’s car, in a direct line. The light display eventually receded directly along its line of approach, ending a silent inspection when it disappeared over the distant skyline.

Much suggests a UFO connection in the Valentich case, but unfortunately a final answer alludes us. Despite the provocative nature of the taped conversation between Valentich and Melbourne Flight Control before his disappearance, which refers to a possible UFO presence, the affair remains a mystery.

The Valentich incident is punctuated with haunting, or rather more appropriately, taunting clues that set one off in all sorts of conflicting directions. Many have come up with solutions varying from the bizarre to the sublime. Did a UFO abduct Valentich? Did Valentich contrive the whole affair? Did he, as many think, crash into Bass Strait, leaving no trace? Or are other prosaic explanations involved? A multitude of various lines of enquiry radiate out in all sorts of directions. Most take us away from the facts of the matter, namely that no trace of pilot or plane have yet been found. 

The mystery resonates in the Australian consciousness in a place reserved for more mythic episodes like the haunting fiction of ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’. It has inspired dramatic works like the profound and confronting play ‘Sky’ and the bizarre and striking TV mini-series, ‘Locusts and Wild Honey’. We must remind ourselves that a family waits for an answer that so far has never come. I hope that someday they will find that answer.

Due to the tenacious efforts of Adelaide-based researcher Keith Basterfield in 2012, we can now study the previously restricted Department of Transport file V116/783/1047, available in digital format at the National Archives of Australia website. I last saw this file back in late 1982 while sitting in front of Mr A. Woodward at the Melbourne office of the Bureau of Air Safety Investigation. He had the file open in front of him while answering my questions. I tried not to be too obvious in reading the file in its upside-down perspective. 

The released Valentich files provide hints at some possible answers, and it may be that ultimately the answer does not involve UFOs. Reconciling a detailed analysis of the released data with the extensive research done on the case by researchers over the years might help us come up with a final answer. But for now Frederick Valentich and his Cessna plane are still missing, so final closure eludes those who want to know. 

‘The Unexplained Files’ series on the Discovery Science Channel in September 2013 featured an excellent recreation of the extraordinary 1978 Valentich mystery. My friend George Simpson (based in Melbourne, Victoria) was instrumental in the accounting of this story on the programme.

On the programme, Steve Robey of Melbourne Flight Service was clearly still distressed about the disappearance of Valentich. Frederick’s younger brother Richard gave the family’s dimension to the story. Both these elements remind us that a disturbing and tragic element still haunts this mystery. George Simpson interviewed Roy Manifold who took some intriguing photos at the time and locality of Valentich’s disappearance. 

Dr Richard Haines investigated the case and authored a book on it, Melbourne Episode: Case Study of a Missing Pilot (1987). He facilitated the airing of the strange sound heard at the end of Valentich’s last radio conversation with Steve Robey. I listened to the tape back in 1984 when I stayed with Dr Haines in California. Haines’ comment in ‘The Unexplained Files’ programme that the sound might be from contact between the Cessna and the UFO Valentich had been describing in the six-minute conversation, caused me to suddenly reconsider a very strange story I came across back in early 1995.

The Coonabarabran Times of Coonabarabran, north-west New South Wales, Australia, in its 17 November 1994 issue, carried brief details of an apparent close encounter with a diamond-shaped UFO near ground level on 15 November 1994, on the Mendooran road to the south of the town. 

With the assistance of local police, I interviewed the four principal witnesses to this apparent close encounter.  One of the area witnesses told me that I should seek out Laurie, a local businessman, who had a lot of UFO stories to tell. 

One story was utterly startling and unbelievable. It was apparently connected to the Valentich mystery and initially told to me by one of the Coonabarabran witnesses who heard it through Laurie. Others encouraged us to ask Laurie about other stories. We did both, but the story in question stood out.

Laurie told us he had heard the story directly from a South Australian farmer who had bought a property in the north-west of New South Wales. The farmer had come into his business and the talk strayed onto UFOs. He shared with Laurie an experience he had on his South Australian property on the day following the disappearance of Frederick Valentich.

The farmer said he was harvesting lucern when he heard a loud screeching sound coming from the harvester. He thought it might have been a bearing, so he uncoupled the harvester from the tractor’s power drive and jumped off and went back to have a look. The farmer was trying to work out the source of the continuing noise when he became aware that he was in a shadow. He looked up and saw he was directly underneath a large “saucer” shaped object, and going by the size of his harvester; he estimated it to be about 30 metres across. The loud screeching noise continued. 

From directly underneath the object, the farmer reportedly could see two concentric outer rings or bands that were counter rotational and were operating at different speeds. One went very fast, so fast that you had to blink to see that it was moving. The other one was moving very slowly in the opposite direction. There were two small protuberances that the farmer took to be rudders, and two large holes, one had “shimmering heat” coming out, the other was shooting small flames.

The farmer began to think there was something horribly wrong with this huge object and that it might crash down on him. He ran to get out from under it. He got the impression that one of the object’s engines had stopped working. 

As he moved away the farmer looked back at the object which he could now see edge on. It had a large dome on top and what looked like a black weather seal along the base of the dome structure. He then noticed what looked like a “church door with a curved top, but no windows or handles were visible.”

He told Laurie the most unusual thing was that the massive object had a Cessna stuck to the outside of it – “the whole aircraft.” It was flat up against the side of the object with its tail hanging down. Laurie said he was not sure whether the farmer said there was engine oil running down the outside of the Cessna, but he could clearly see the plane’s registration markings. He found a nail and scratched the plane’s registration number into the paint of his tractor. 

According to Laurie, the farmer said the object – “the saucer” – still accompanied by the screeching sound, then flew away over a ridge in the direction of a nearby Army range.

The farmer said to Laurie he told no one about what happened. He went into town later in the day. One of his neighbours saw him and apparently said, “I see you are doing some more crop spreading.” He said no, why do you say that. The neighbour said, “I saw the Cessna today up in your top paddock.” He replied to his neighbour, “There’s no Cessna in my top paddock.” The neighbour insisted, “Yes there is, I was up near there, I saw it there today.” The farmer said, “That’s interesting, I’ll have a look when I get home.”

He went up to the top paddock and saw no plane, but he did see three tyre marks and some tracks from a plane. He followed the tracks to where they ended, and there was “a pool of ’flamin’ engine oil” on the ground. 

I recorded the story from Laurie on two separate occasions, one over the phone in January 1995 and face to face in Coonabarabran one month later in the presence of my friend Robb Tilley. Laurie was impressed with the story. Robb and I simply did not know what to think. Getting further information proved elusive.

As I had lived through the Valentich mystery unfolding at the time in 1978 and had written extensively about the research and investigation of the extraordinary events, I was acutely sensitive to the bizarre and strange aspects. I also had contact with Guido Valentich, Frederick’s father, and I knew that he had been exposed to various claims about what had happened to his son. He even helped me investigate one claim, which ultimately ended in no real resolution, just another unverifiable claim. Sadly, Guido passed away without a definitive answer to his son’s disappearance.

With Laurie’s account from the farmer, I had yet another extraordinarily bizarre and unbelievable claim. Laurie told me the farmer returned on another occasion with the Cessna’s registration number. It was DSJ, the number of Valentich’s Cessna. This in itself was not convincing for me because that information was widely reported at the time of the plane’s disappearance.

I did not want to burden the Valentich family or authorities with yet another unverified story. The biggest problem for me was that Laurie couldn’t recollect the farmer’s name. He told me he had written all this down in notes, but he had not been able to find them. I stayed in touch with Laurie for a while, but despite attempts to come up with a name, without his notes we couldn’t progress the investigation unless we had a vast amount time and resources available. 

I circulated a brief account on Paranet (a favoured research Internet facility) at the time but nothing came of it. The story stayed a sleeper until Dr Haines’ comments on the Discovery Science programme. I immediately accessed my notes and tapes and began to evaluate whether the considerably improved resources of the Internet, social media and other resources would now allow another attempt at getting to the heart of the story. Sadly, I learnt that Laurie passed away about seven years ago.

I contacted George Simpson and shared the story with him. We both agreed that despite the bizarre nature of the story, we should try to see if we could track down anyone who had knowledge of the story and see if we could get a name for the farmer. We have since tracked down all sorts of clues.

I described the results of our investigation of this bizarre story in a report on my OZ Files blog entitled “Strange Days, Strange Tales – a Valentich connection” back in October 2013 (see http://the
ozfiles.blogspot.com/2013/10/strange-days-strange-tales-valentich.html). 

Victorian UFO Action (VUFOA) put on a 40th-anniversary event that featured a panel of people involved in the Valentich affair and its investigation including Steve Robey, Rhonda Rhuston and George Simpson. Videos of the event are available on VUFOA’s YouTube channel. The 3rd edition of Jerome Clark’s massive two-volume work The UFO Encyclopedia appeared in 2018 with my report on the Valentich disappearance.

While there is now a wealth of data on the case, what happened to Frederick Valentich and the Cessna he was flying remains a mystery.

For further information on this case, see my work: “The Missing Cessna and the UFO: a preliminary report on the Bass Strait-King Island Affair”, Flying Saucer Review, Volume 24, No. 5, March 1979, 3-5; “Vanished – A report on the Valentich – Bass Strait Affair”, Australian UFO Researcher (No. 56 & 57, No. 58 & 59, No. 60, January 1979 through to December 1979). This report included details on the widespread UFO activity on the same day as the incident, the precedent for UFO activity over Cape Otway, Bass Strait and King Island, precedents for UFO-related plane disappearances or crashes; “Valentich-Bass Strait (Australia) affair”, in Ronald Story’s The Encyclopedia of UFOs, 1980; “Vanished? The Valentich Affair re-examined”, Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 30, No. 2, 1984; “1978 and the RAAF” and “Frederick Valentich and Delta Sierra Juliet – Vanished?” in my lengthy online document “UFOs Sub Rosa Down Under” at www.theozfiles.com/ufos_subrosa4.html and www.theozfiles.com/ufos_subrosa6.html; I also describe the affair extensively in my 1996 book The OZ Files – the Australian UFO Story.

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From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 14 No 1 (Jan 2020)

“The universe is an ocean, the Moon is the Diaoyu Islands, Mars is Huangyan Island. If we don’t go there now even though we’re capable of doing so, then we will be blamed by our descendants. If others go there, then they will take over, and you won’t be able to go even if you want to. This is reason enough.” 

Ye Peijian, a Chinese aerospace veteran and head of the Chinese lunar exploration programme, speaking at the 2017 Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) annual plenary sessions in Beijing, was explaining why China was going to the Moon. Both Diaoyu and Huangyan are contested localities in regions that China regards as Chinese territory. The message couldn’t be more explicit. China going to the Moon and Mars is not just about scientific achievement or national pride – it’s also about forging Chinese power in the celestial empire of beyond. 

The successful Chang’e 4 lander and Yutu 2 rover landing and deployment on the far side of the Moon on 3 January 2019 were both firsts. In January 2020, the China National Space Administration and the Chinese Academy of Sciences released data collected by the lander and rover acquired via a dedicated Chinese communications satellite positioned beyond the far side of the Moon. 

US President Trump’s citing of “space threats” and mandating the Pentagon to establish the US Space Force had been anticipated and already developed by the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), in a restructuring of Chinese military intelligence. Namely, the PLA Strategic Support Force (SSF – Zhanlue Zhiyuan Budui), which focuses on space, psychological, cyber and electronic warfare, under the direction of General Gao Jin, including the Aerospace Reconnaissance Bureau (tianjun bu). 

A document published by the State Council in Beijing in 2015 declared: “Outer space has become the new commanding heights in international strategic competition. Countries concerned are developing their space forces and instruments, and the first signs of weaponisation of outer space have appeared.” 

On the back of the paperback edition (2016) of Tom DeLonge & A.J. Hartley’s ‘Sekret Machines’ fictional trilogy Book 1: Chasing Shadows, which is about “alien” threats, former US Major General Michael J. Carey, special assistant to the Commander, Air Force Space Command, gave an endorsement in similar terms to the 2015 Beijing State Council declaration, namely, “Our military leaders have been saying space is a contested environment for years now, perhaps we should believe them!”

Time will tell if it’s more than only Earth-spawned military war zones at play here, but there seems to be a lot of data nudging us towards what seems an ‘alien’ take: It’s not from around here, mate.

The March to First Contact

China has even been leading the march to ‘first contact’ in more traditional scientific ways with radio telescope astronomy and its massive observatory dish in China’s Karst mountain region in the Dawodang depression, Pingtang County, Guizhou, southwest China. Formally called the Five-Hundred-Metre Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (“FAST”), and nicknamed Tianyan or “Eye of the Sky/Heaven,” the dish has been dedicated to detecting interstellar communication signals.

Chinese Ufologists associate Guiyang, Guizhou province with the 1 December 1994 mini ‘Tunguska’-like event in the Duxi forest farm. This was a destructive UFO presence observed by local residents as a strong flaming light with an associated train-like rumbling noise. While some roofs were damaged, most of the destruction happened to 160 square metres of forest in which trees were broken off at the same height. This may have an association with an ‘airburst’ related to an astronomical event, but Chinese researchers argue for an alien-related UFO event. 

In that same year – 1994 – the best-known alien abduction in China took place. Meng Zhao Guo, a young tree farmer from Wuchang near Harbin in Heilongjiang province, and two other farmworkers working at Red Flag logging camp saw something unusual on nearby Mount Phoenix. The complex and bizarre encounter that followed involved Meng being hit by a beam of light, as well as allegedly experiencing an abduction and a sexual encounter with a female alien.

Like so many of the worldwide cases of alien abduction, Meng Zhao Guo’s story is essentially just that – a story – and a bizarre one at that. In China, I was able to have extensive discussions with the principal researcher of the case, Professor Chen Gongfu. 

Another Alien Abduction Case

While visiting China in 2005, I obtained detailed information on a particularly interesting abduction case. Zhang Jingping of the World Chinese UFO Association had investigated the case which had a ‘forensic’ twist.

In December 1999, Cao Gong, a middle-aged man from Beijing, claimed to have been abducted by aliens and flown to Qinhuangdao in their UFO. “They looked like humans but had large hands and were very pale,” Cao told investigators. He said he had met a Chinese girl in the flying saucer. 

Zhang’s investigation began in April 2000. The first step was hypnosis by a famous psychologist from Suzhou. He brought Cao to the Beijing Bureau of Public Security for a lie detection test. “He passed the test,” says Zhang. 

The Chinese girl in the flying saucer looked around 13 years old. “The aliens cured her disease in the flying saucer,” Cao claimed. In order to find the girl, Zhang brought Cao to the Tangshan Bureau of Public Security in July 2000. “The policemen made up a computer image photo-fit of the girl’s face according to Cao’s description,” says Zhang. 

In November 2002, Zhang led a group of students from Beihang University (previously known as Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics) on a trip to Qinhuangdao in search of the mysterious girl. 

“There was only a narrow glimmer of hope of finding the girl with only a computer image of her,” says Zhang. 

They arrived in Qinglong County to the north of Qinhuangdao and began their blind search among the county’s 400,000 population. 

“Amazingly, we found a clue on the second day of our search. An old man in the county recognised the girl in our picture,” says Zhang. They found the girl soon after that. She was 15 years old. Zhang brought her back to Beijing to meet Cao Gong. She was identified by Cao as the girl he had seen in the UFO. 

Fortunately, while in China, I was able to discuss this fascinating case in detail with Zhang Jingping and other researchers, and also talk to Cao Gong himself. Apart from the “healing” aspects, it also includes other aspects of particular interest such as the apparent use of “solid light.” (See my article ‘UFOs & the Solid Light Enigma’ in New Dawn Special Issue V13N1.)

Chinese Ufology 

I attended the 2005 World UFO Conference in Dalian, China, which provided me with a good opportunity to witness various manifestations of Chinese Ufology. 

I was drawn to the event to further my understanding of UFO research activity in China. I was able to conduct a number of interviews and meet with key researchers and identities such as Professor Sun Shili, Zhang Jingping, Professor Ling Huan Ma (a very helpful Beijing based ‘UFO learner’), and Professor Chen Gongfu. Efforts to develop a World UFO Federation were spearheaded by the energetic Jan Fan (who I met in Dalian) of the Dalian UFO Research Association.

An indirect outgrowth of these efforts was Moon Fong’s Hong Kong UFO group organisation of the 2011 International UFO Conference which featured the major mainland Chinese UFO researchers who I extensively interviewed at the 2005 Dalian UFO Conference – Sun Shi Li, Professor Chen Gongfu and Zhang Jingping.

Lost in Translation?

There’s scant information on China’s UFO organisations, so an item in the South China Morning Post (SCMP) online edition of 22 December 2017 by Liu Zhen caught my eye. The headline ran: “Is anyone out there? The days when UFO fever gripped China: Stories about aliens and flying saucers once grabbed the public imagination in China but hardly generate interest now.”

A reference to my friend Zhang Jingping and the journalist’s take that he was “one of the few people on the mainland still interested in the subject” was such a huge disconnect from the reality I know of. 

The SCMP story clearly got kickstarted due to the revelations on the secret Pentagon UFO program reported by The New York Times a few days earlier. It does capture some of the history of Chinese Ufology, but its suggestion that China’s “UFO fever” is a thing of the past seems out of touch with what’s going on.

Here are extracts from the SCMP story:

“Stories about aliens and flying saucers once grabbed the public imagination in China but hardly generate interest now.

“The national conversation about UFOs took off in China after 1978, with the revival of science and technology, an area that had been neglected during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. At the same time restrictions on the media loosened in China, and new science journals and periodicals launched across the country.

“But Qi Lian, editor-in-chief of The Journal of UFO Research, said her publication was the first of its kind in the country and really put the topic on the map.

“Back then the general public did not have access to scientific knowledge, and there were many myths surrounding subjects such as physics,” Qi said.

“By the early 1990s, the Lanzhou-based magazine had a circulation of more than 300,000 per issue, with the readership ranging from top scientists and civil servants to senior citizens and schoolchildren.

“The enthusiasm for all things extraterrestrial was shared by Spanish translator and former diplomat Sun Shili. Sun had long been interested in aliens and translated Sacerdotes o cosmonautas? (Priests or Cosmonauts?) into Chinese. The book was written by his friend Andreas Faber-Kaiser in 1971, and after the translation came out, Sun was soon regarded as an expert on the subject.

“That book is a summary of more than 300 books in the world about UFOs, and it was one of the first few on the topic available to intellectuals in China,” Sun said. “The very act of translating it probably made me one of the most knowledgeable UFO experts in China.”

“Sun went on to co-found China’s first UFO association in 1979, and served as an adviser, before becoming chairman a few years later. By 1988, the China UFO Association had grown to include 50,000 members, and became affiliated to the China Qigong Science Research Association.

“But the partnership between the qigong and UFO associations ended nine years later due to a controversy over whether qigong was a pseudoscience.

“Meanwhile, scores of provinces and cities on the mainland formed their own UFO organisations registered with local science and technology administrations.

“Zhang Jingping, an advertising company owner and a keen UFO hobbyist, dates his obsession with aliens back to the 1990s when he was in his early 20s. Zhang has travelled the country, interviewing people about their claims of extraterrestrial encounters. In some cases, he has hypnotised his subjects to get at the truth. The passion has taken him to the ends of the country, including Heilongjiang province, where a man claimed to have had a child with a female extraterrestrial. The man offered a meteorite as proof of his experience, Zhang said.

“I spend a lot of my own money to travel and investigate claims of alien sightings in China, purely out of personal interest,” he said.

“But Zhang is one of the few people on the mainland still interested in the subject.”

The SCMP story of December 2017 offered up a picture of Chinese UFO interest in its twilight years, but the opposite seems the case. 

In July 2018 there was a US Roswell UFO Alien Civilisation Theme Exhibition in Chongqing, China with a Walmart connection! Jan Fan attended, promoting the World Chinese UFO Federation. In his opening speech, he said: “Welcome guests from all over the world. So, does UFO really exist? Are there really aliens? For thousands of years, these problems have been lingering in everyone’s heart… The facts will be used to answer everyone’s confusion.”

Researcher and writer Donald Schmidt, who was a special investigator for the late Dr J. Allen Hynek, also attended to discuss Roswell and UFO research. Chinese UFO research pioneer Sun Shili was also present. Filmmaker James Fox (UFOs: 50 Years of Denial?) was also on hand. On his blog he reported that he got a lot of UFO “gold” from his China visit. James interviewed my friend Zhang Jingping. 

Zhang investigated an incident he refers to as the 1997 Datong “UFO crash” in which two “aliens” were allegedly present. Zhang interviewed an ex-military source, a young soldier who served three years in the third battalion of the Datong military training division. Zhang shared some details of his investigation with me, and I await with interest possible further developments. At this stage, the 1997 Datong account seems an intriguing story derived from a single witness.

The momentum of the Chongqing event led to a Moscow conference – Chinese ufology in Russia – which was attended by a few Western researchers including Gary Heseltine, editor and publisher of UFO Truth. The conference sought to progress a world coalition on ET Contact. I was asked to be the Australian representative but declined as the organisers asked for a declaration of belief in ET Contact. I’ve been advised that the conference objectives and plans were not fully delivered by the Chinese delegates, and it seems the initiative is now left to Western delegates to progress. Maybe that might change with further developments. 

All these developments suggest to me that the South China Morning Post article was itself “lost in translation.” The UFO question in China seems to be ongoing and full of possibilities.

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