"I've been involved in this field for so many years, that it's hard to recall or state for certain when it all began. When I was 14 years old, I started publishing a UFO Newsletter. The first issue consisted of 50 copies and it was about five pages long. By the time I threw in the towel, it had grown to a circulation of about 1200 and it was 50 pages in length. In those days there were no quick copy centers or anything like that. I had a little mimeograph machine. I had to type the stencils and there were a lot of mistakes. And there was ink! I know my mother used to have a fit, because I would get the ink all over the kitchen, the refrigerator, and in the bathroom. I was always determined to carry on with this work in the face of many adverse conditions. Although, I never professed to be a spokesman for the field of UFOs, I've continued on in this, somewhat behind the scenes. I've always been involved in the publishing end of this. Of course, now, most of the other magazines in the field have gone out of business mainly because of economic reasons, not because of any great censorship. Although, I believe, there are the powers that be who are glad to see it this way.
My own experiences began at the age of six. I lived in a house that was haunted: we had poltergeists, lights going on and off, and doors opening and closing. I remember one time a big china plate on the kitchen table slid right across in front of the entire family and fell to the floor. It didn't break; it just landed there which I thought was very unusual.
My grandmother, who just passed away about four years ago at the age of 91, was somewhat psychic herself. She kept a book of her dreams which unfortunately was in Hungarian. I could never read it, but she did tell me about some of her experiences and her dreams. Even her stepfather in Hungary had experiences of a precognitive nature.
He had been swimming one day and had contracted pneumonia and was laid up in bed. Of course in those days, there was very primitive medicine and one could die of almost anything, even a mosquito bite. He was lying there in bed, trying to get well, and apparently he dozed off into a coma or deep sleep of some type. When he came out of this coma, he told those around him that he would be the third in the village to die. There would be two others before him and he named the names of other people who were to pass away. Apparently, he got this information or revelation in some other world whether it was heaven or some other dimension, whoever keeps records of these things. He accurately predicted his own death. Of people that he mentioned, one was driven over by a horse; and the other one drowned, in the order as he predicted. How did he get this knowledge? Usually we find in talking to contactees or people who are psychic that there does seem to be a genetic or inherited ability to be psychic n some cases.
So at the age of six, I had some rather unusual experiences. My sister, who's a few years older than I am, is still living in a house that's haunted. It seems that every place that she moves, the spirits follow her. Later on, when I was about eight or nine, I had an out of body or astral projection experience, where I found myself floating above the bed one night enveloped in this purple or blue haze. I heard voices or music, actually. I don't think it was actually somebody talking. It seemed like celestial music of some kind.
My first UFO sighting was at the age of ten. It was a warm summer night in July or August and we were out on the front stoop. This was in New Jersey back before people had air conditioning or at least most people didn't. It was pretty warm. I guess it was about 8:20 or 8:30 and somebody came running up to the front stoop and pointed out two bright lights in the sky. Now I won't tell you that I had contact with the ETs on board; or that I even saw landing gear or portholes or anything of the type. What I did see was mysterious and strange. I still can't explain it, even to this day.
There were two bright lights, one directly above; and one directly over the factory building across the street. And they would rotate, one would be here and one would just change places in the sky. We watched that for about 25 or 30 minutes. Then it looked like somebody pulled out a light switch on the object across the street, over the factory building. We continued to watch the other one for some time and then we finally just went into the house after it got a little cooler. The next day there was an item in the newspaper, to the effect, that other people had witnessed these strange objects but the authorities were saying that it was nothing more unusual than a weather balloon. Even at the age of ten, I said, "Weather balloon. That can't possibly be!" because these things seemed to be under intelligent control. They were not bobbing or weaving along with the air currents. They were turning around and around and around. The only explanation that I thought about was that they might be some kind of searchlight beacons playing on the clouds, which seemed to be down rather low that night. However, I ruled that out because the searchlight beacons would have to be within a radius of a few hundred feet, because these lights were very close overhead. We did not live in a neighborhood where there would be a theatrical opening or a new movie house or supermarket or anything of that type. So, I remain doubtful about that particular sighting.
This is what gradually led me into this field. I started collecting information and reading books on the subject between the ages of 10 and 12. I found myself drawn to UFOs. Although, I was also interested in the psychic phenomena, in those days, there wasn't the blending of the two fields like there seems to be today. I read some of the early books by Major Keyhoe and Edward Ruppelt, and some of the early contactee books.
Many of you here today are probably unaware that the contactee aspect of the UFOs has been going on since the late 1940s and early 1950s. We had people back in those days who actually were taken aboard UFOs. They were not abductees like Betty and Barney Hill, but they were people who claimed they went aboard these ships and were taken to other planets in the physical body. We had people like George Adamski, who is probably the best known of the Contactees. There were people like Dr. Dan Fry who lived in Arizona; and he claimed that he went on board a UFO and traveled from the White Sands Proving Ground to New York City and back, in one half an hour. Well, that was said to be a trip of about 8,000 miles an hour. Of course, scientists in those days said that it was impossible, that nothing could travel that fast. Anybody on board would be crushed to death. Dan had to stand an awful lot of ridicule and of course he's been proven out. Luckily with his academic degrees and his knowledge of science, he was able to withstand the test of time. Now we realize that we sent people into outer space, and rockets to the moon, and that man can withstand pretty incredible speeds without being crushed to death. So a lot of the excuses the skeptics used in the early days to dismiss the existence of UFOs, science would be ready to admit now; that space travel is possible. We're still in the infancy of all this. It was less than 100 years ago that Orville and Wilbur Wright took off at Kitty hawk. So how can we say as a human race that, in another 50 to 100 years, we won't be traveling out among the stars. I think that many of us may be aboard these ships. If they're not extraterrestrial ships, they may be craft built right here on this planet.
I was also influenced a lot in the early days by a gentleman who is now deceased, a radio commentator by the name of Long John Neville. I don't know how many in this room have heard of Long John. He was the first all night talk show host and he had the first call in telephone show on radio. He broadcast every night from midnight to 5:30 in the morning from a radio tower in Caterac, New Jersey, right off the Jersey Turnpike. He was the only talk show host in those days who had the guts or the interest to put on some of these far out types. And, far out types they were. Some of these fellows were Howard Menger and George Van Tassle. Buck Nelson was a farmer, who used to go around to all the conventions dressed in his overalls. He had a big Venusian dog named Bo, that he had clips of hair from, and gave it out as souvenirs. There were some pretty wild guys in those times, who told some pretty incredible stories. And of course, a lot of the public listened, and a lot of the public laughed.
There are people today who are telling the same kind of stories. I still remain pretty open-minded about all this. Although I do like to think that all of us, even those who have the spiritual and psychic experiences, can every once in a while get those feet planted down on terra firma, at least long enough to try to convince the scientific community and other people that there is something substantial and solid to this. Because while we may be off on our astral voyages somewhere, there are still some people who are seeing physical, down to earth UFOs. There are hundreds and hundreds of cases over the years, where these objects have actually touched down. They have left indentations in the ground. They've left burn marks. They've caused power blackouts. I think if we're going to convince the people, the general public, of what we're saying, not only do we have to tell them of our unusual psychic and mental experiences, but we've got to prove to them that these things are also solidly planted in some sort of reality. There certainly is enough evidence that this is the case. Even though some of us here may like to downgrade the work of groups like MUFON, they all serve their purpose in trying to get across to the scientific establishment the fact that there is evidence to show, that some sort of physical objects are coming here and visiting our planet.
"Continued tomorrow
