The Abduction of Pier Fortunato Zanfretta

The alien abduction phenomena is a tricky, tricky, thing. There are a variety of different proposed explanations for alien abductions. Many feel that they are completely fabricated events within the person's subconscious. Others are convinced that abductions represent a systematic biological program which is being performed by extraterrestrials in order to produce a race of alien-human hybrids.  Some believed that these experiences stem from sleep paralysis. Still others see it is as some kind of demonic activity meant to deceive and lead people from the path of righteousness.  I haven’t decided where I land on the topic yet.

Today I wish to take a look at an interesting abduction case which isn’t discussed too often. As an added bonus, at least in my mind, it doesn’t involve those pesky Greys. On the night of December 6, 1978 security guard Pier Fortunato Zanfretta was out patrolling his route around Torriglia, a village near Genoa, Italy. An Italian journalist named Rino di Stefano, who has done an extensive amount of research into the case firsthand, tells the following version of events which befell Zanfretta that fateful night:

As Zanfretta approached a client's uninhabited country-house (called "Our Home" by the owner, Dr. Ettore Righi), in the area of Marzano, his patrol car, a Fiat 126, mysteriously stopped dead. The car engine, lights and radio all failed seemingly for no reason. At the same moment he saw four strange lights moving about in the garden of the house and stepped outside of his car to investigate with gun and flashlight in hand.At first he thought that burglars were behind the house. So he walked through the open gate and crept along a wall in an attempt to surprise them. Feeling himself touched from behind, the security guard whirled around and saw something that filled him with terror: only inches away stood what he called: "An enormous green, ugly and frightful creature, with undulating skin, no less than ten feet tall". When he directed the beam of his flashlight on the being's face, he was so frightened that he dropped it, but quickly it up again and run away. While running, he became aware of a large and very bright light behind him. Turning around, he saw a huge, flat triangular form which was blinding in its brilliance.

At this point, I have to commend Zanfretta for keeping his senses about him and getting the hell out of the area. I’d like to think I would maybe stick around and check the situation out some more. Of course I’ve never come face to face with a 10ft tall anything. So who knows how I would actually react. Getting back to the account, Stefano continues:

Zanfretta shielded himself from the light with his arm. This thing which he assured was a flying saucer, ascended from the back of the house. It was bigger than the house itself, and produced a hissing sound. Later, Zanfretta said that he felt an intense heat. He made it back to his car and tried to call his security company's operations center in Genoa. It was 12:15 A.M. Carlo Toccalino, the radio operator, has testified that Zanfretta was speaking in an excited and disconnected way. He kept saying: "My God, are they ugly!". The operator then asked if "they" were human and if they were assaulting him. The answer was: "No, they aren't men, they aren't men". At that point, the communication were abruptly broken off

The radio operator called the chief of the security force and two other security guards were sent out to look for Zanfretta. Arriving at 1:15 am the two guards found Zanfretta lying on the ground apparently frightened and near hysterical. Stefano says:

When he saw them, he jumped up, gun and flashlight at the ready. Eyes bulging, Zanfretta didn't seem to recognize them, nor to understand when they told him to lower his weapon. The other patrolmen rushed and disarmed him. To their surprise, his clothes felt warm even though the December night air was quite cold.

The Italian police were said to have launched an investigation almost immediately following these events. During their investigation, they found that nearly 52 people admitting to seeing strange lights in the vicinity of Zanfretta’s encounter at around the same time it was alleged to have occurred. Stefano tells us the following in regards to the investigation:

Antonio Nucchi, the commandant of the Torriglia station, has stated that he was every confidence in the testimony given by Zanfretta. In fact, he has known the security guard for many years and, when I asked him what he thought about him, he answered: "I can state with certainty that he is a clear thinking man with no strange fantasies in his head. When we went to investigate the scene the next day, he almost didn't want to come, he was so scared. Only something exceptional could have frightened him so."

Per Stefano’s insistence, Zanfretta agreed to undergo hypnosis. According to an Above Top Secret thread:

Zanfretta agreed to be hypnotized by Dr. Mauro Moretti, a psychotherapist and member of the Italian Association of Medical Hypnosis, in Genoa on December 23. During that occasion Zanfretta said that he was abducted by "monsters about 10 feet tall, with hairy green skin, yellow triangular eyes and red veins across the forehead" who brought him to a hot, luminous place where they interrogated and examined him.

During the same session, Zanfretta also indicated that the creatures came from the "third galaxy" and that "they want to talk with us and that they will soon return in larger numbers." The aliens did not speak Italian to the guard, but used a "luminous device" to translate what they were saying.

To my surprise, Zanfretta was back to work only a few weeks after the event. I have to admit, I would probably use this encounter as an excuse for a vacation, but “to each his own” I suppose. Zanfretta may have later regretted this decision to return to work as these creatures from the “third galaxy” were not evidently not finished with him yet. According to Stefano:

At 11:45 PM on that night [December 23rd], Zanfretta was at work as usual, driving a Fiat 127 inside the Bargagli tunnel, near the Scoffera Pass. Suddenly he lost control of the car. On the radio, he reported that the Fiat turned on its own and came out of the tunnel. Terrified, Zanfretta tried to work the brakes and steering wheel, but the car continued on its own along the steep road uphill.

Speaking with the radio operator, the guard said that he was having difficulty with the patrol car, and couldn't see well because of the very thick fog. After going for about a mile, the car finally come to an abrupt stop, throwing Zanfretta's head against the steering wheel. He called the radio operator and this time, in a very controlled voice, said: "The car has stopped. I saw a bright light. Now I am getting out." Zanfretta and his car were found at 1:10 AM by other guards.

The first to see Zanfretta was sergeant Emanuele Travenzoli. Zanfretta was in a field near the road. His clothes were warm and dry, and so was his head, despite the rain. The man was very scared, he was shaking and crying. "They say I must leave with them. What about my children? I don't want to, I don't want to...". Again the Carabinieri were called.

During their investigation they found that, though the car had been in the cold and rain for a long time, the roof of the Fiat was as hot as if it had spent an entire day in the sun. The interior of the car was also said to be as hot as an oven.

All around the car were disproportionately large footprints. As measured by the Carabinieri, the tracks proved were 20 inches long by 8 inches wide, with a distinct empty spot between sole and heel.

In addition, the Carabinieri found that Zanfretta's gun, a Smith & Wesson 38 Special, had been fired five times. But the guard couldn't recall at whom he had fired the weapon.

Zanfretta would go on to have many other abductions and encounters with various “extraterrestrial” denizens, far too many to name here. Instead I invite those curious to learn more to check out the links below. Zanfretta seemed to not be too bothered by the actual encounters themselves, frightening as they may have been. Instead the majority of stress and negativity Zanfretta received was from earthly sources. After Zanfretta’s story got out, he received constant harassment via telephone. People calling him crazy or phony. However Zanfretta always maintained that the events he recalled were real and had truly happened to him.

What are we to make of Zanfretta’s account? According to all who knew him, he was a reliable, stand up guy. Co-workers described him as honest and most seemed to believe that something strange happened to him, if not necessarily an abduction. He never seemed to have profited from these experiences, although he did appear on television and Stefano would eventually write a book detailing Zanfretta’s reports. I’m reserving my judgement on this case for now. I will say that I do believe Zanfretta had a genuine experience. What that experience involved remains a mystery.

Additional Reading:

ATS Thread

UFO Research Network

Rino di Stefano’s site

High Strangeness

A good portion of my childhood, and most of the origins for my interest in paranormal/fortean topics, stems from The X-Files. So most weekends while doing homework, I have the show on in the background thanks to it being on Netflix.  I watched one of my favorite episodes this past weekend. The episode is called ‘Jose Chung’s From Outer Space’. It centered around an author, Jose Chung played by the late Charles Nelson Reilly, who was sent by his publisher to write a book on an alleged alien abduction event which Mulder and Scully had also investigated. The episode is not only a fantastic example of what makes the X-Files great; it has humor, mystery, celebrity guest stars, but it is also does a great job representing all of the related weirdness which is inexplicably related to the UFO enigma.

In the episode, which I highly recommend you watch, you have military abductions, alien abductions, inner earth new-age religions being founded, military personnel impersonating aliens and flying “UFOs”, and Men in Black! About the only thing not included, probably because it was already a jam packed episode, is the poltergeist or “ghost” activity that sometimes follows or precedes UFO encounters.  A good catch-all term for the related phenomena which occurs in tandem with UFO sightings and alien abductions is ‘High Strangeness’.

Dr. J Allen Hynek, of “swamp gas” fame, first used the term in a paper which he presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in December 1969. Hynek assigned cases a “strangeness” index as means of offering some kind of classification for UFO reports. Hynek further clarifies and defines this concept in his 1974 book The UFO Experience wherein he states that high strangeness is “a measure of the number of information bits the report contains, each of which is difficult to explain in common-sense terms.”  

Stories and personal accounts which involve “High Strangeness” have always fascinated, especially when it comes to the investigators responses towards this aspect of the phenomenon. I was looking over some specific MUFON case files from the 90’s when I came across a really weird encounter which someone had, related below, but there was a caveat before the report which bothered me. In setting up the witnesses encounters, the investigators note that “Background paranormal events have not been included in this report.” I don’t wish to go off on a tangent, but since we know nothing about what may or may not be behind this phenomena, why not include all points of data? (I suppose that is the Fortean in me coming out).

Anyway, after reading some of the witnesses experiences, I couldn't help but wonder what in the world they had left out? As it stands some of her stories certainly qualify as high strange even with MUFON investigators leaving out the “background paranormal” events. Here’s a link to all of her experiences, but I wish to focus on one really bizarre encounter the witness had with an entity she called “Marcus”. Her account is as follows:

The witness was awakened to see an entity, in the form of a human(oid) male floating to the right side of the foot of her bed.  She indicated that when she saw the entity she knew that it was male, and that she knew who he was.  She was told, in a nonverbal manner, that his name was "Marcus", and he was there for her. She felt that their relationship was, in some way, very close.

She described the entity as being tall, and approximately human in appearance, but with a catlike face.  She described his appearance as "a cross between Worf (on Star Trek) and the beast "Vincent" in the TV show Beauty and the Beast". He appeared to be dressed in a manner that suggested to her a military officer from an earlier time period, with an apparent breast plate arranged in a chevron design.

The entity held his hands out to her, palms up, and she instinctively knew to put her hands in his.  She indicated that she then rose up, and he pulled her in closer to him.  [CL Note: She indicates that she was under the covers when the entity appeared.  If this was a physical movement, it is not clear how the bed covers were removed.]

At that point she felt that they were within a ball of light, and as if they were "dancing".  She didn't remember any sound, and was not sure whether or not they were still within the room, but felt that
there was not enough space within the room to have "danced" in the manner which they presently were.  Thus, she feels that they must have been somewhere else while this interaction occurred.  She indicates that this "dance" felt more like a "complete spiritual union", than physical motion to music (the traditional definition of dance). She did not feel that there was music present.

The witness sketched “Marcus” for our benefits, I admit I do enjoy seeing the person’s representation of the figures they have allegedly seen. Here is here sketch:

I would like to highlight the “aftermath” as the investigators labeled it, because I think it is an important detail which crops up in a lot of these kinds of reports. It’s something which Jacques Vallee pointed out in a number of his books. The investigators relate:

This event appears to be the start of her consciously remembered experiences.  She indicates that since that time, she has been very interested in spiritual topics, reading extensively in the area religion and spirituality, with subsequent interest in the field of UFOs and close encounters.

I don’t know what to make of cases such as this one. It wanted to dance with her? Let’s assume for a moment that it was an ET, could it not find a dance partner on it’s home planet? I’m slightly joking of course, I don’t mean to belittle the witness or her account. Honestly, I’m perplexed by what it is she allegedly experienced. Though she is not the only one. John Keel’s books are full of high strangeness encounters which people have purportedly had. I recently spoke about The Case of Indrid Cold, which is but one example of the variety of high strangeness reports which Keel spoke about.

In his book Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits, and Haunted Places, author Brad Steiger relates another classic example of high strangeness which accompanies a, relatively, mundane UFO sighting. The story is below:

An Iowa farmer named Gary C. saw a UFO one night as he was working late in the field during spring plowing. The next morning over breakfast, he learned that his wife, Melanie, 14-year-old son Jake, and 12-year-old daughter Lisa had also seen the bright object as the kids were getting ready for bed.

That day at school, a man who claimed to be from the state board of education asked to interview Jake. He told the principal of the junior high school that the boy had attracted attention because of his high scores in the state tests and that Jake had been selected to participate in a special educational project ... A call to the state office revealed that they had no one on their staff by the man’s name, and they had no special project for junior high students in progress.

When the principal entered the private room to confront the imposter, he found a puzzled Jake sitting alone. The teenager could only shrug that the special state project must be about space travel, for all the man asked him were questions about UFOS, aliens, and life on other planets. Jake had glanced away from his interrogator for just a moment, and when he looked back at him, he seemed to have vanished.

About the time that Jake was being interviewed by the mysterious stranger at school, out on the farm Gary and Melanie received a visit from two men dressed in black while they were eating lunch. The men identified themselves as agents of a special government task force investigating UFOS and said they had learned that the family had sighted a bright object in the sky on the previous evening.

Melanie and Gary were puzzled, since they had not told anyone of their sighting. The alleged government agents suddenly adopted a threatening manner and demanded that Melanie and Gary turn over any photographs they may have taken of the UFO. The farm couple said that they had taken no photographs, but the two agents refused to accept their denials and threatened that they had better cooperate if they knew what was good for them. “You must cooperate,” the taller of the two men said, “for your own good, the good of your country, the good of your world.”

Later that afternoon, Gary was certain that he saw the two men watching him from the shadows of his machine shed while he fed the cattle on the feedlot. In the farmhouse, Melanie answered the telephone on four occasions to hear nothing but a peculiar static. Finally, on the fifth ring, a voice in a strange accent told her to forget all she knew about UFOs or terrible things would happen to her entire family.

That night, shortly after the children went to bed, Lisa began screaming that some animal had crawled under her covers. When Gary and Melanie investigated, they found nothing, but then Jake yelled that his bed was jumping up and down. As they ran to his room, they could hear the thumping sounds of his bed lifting and slamming to the floor. Such poltergeistic disturbances continued on a nightly basis for nearly a week before dissipating.

What are we to make of these strange tales? Why would strange “government” agents show up after a sighting of a light in the sky? Why would the family see strange creatures and experience poltergeist-like activity following the sighting? It seems obvious that something peculiar is going on. I remain unconvinced that we will ever have an “answer” or solution to the UFO enigma, but I think that by looking into the High Strangeness reports (or the “damned data”) we may come closer to an understanding. Otherwise we will have failed to learn the lesson which Charles Fort attempted to teach. Data, no matter how bizarre or strange, needs to be taken into account. 

You don't know Jack!

In the long, varied, history of the paranormal there have been a wide menagerie of strange creatures and humanoids sighted. From hairy dwarves to “michelin men” and just about everything in between. Picking a favorite is sometimes difficult to do, though there is one character which captures my imagination above the rest; Spring-Heeled Jack. There is just something about a man leaping around Victorian England and, in some accounts breathing fire, frightening people, apparently for no reason.  

In Unexplained!, Jerome Clark gives the reader an overview of how this whole “Spring-Heeled Jack” thing began:

The figure’s presence was first noted in September 1837, when he assaulted four separate persons, three of them women, at locations in and around London. In one instance he allegedly ripped off the top of victim Polly Adams’s dress, scratching her belly with fingers that felt as if they were made of iron.

What made these incidents different from conventional sexual crimes was the attacker’s appearance. He was tall, thin, and powerful, wore a cloak, and had fiery eyes. On occasion, it was said, he spat blue flames from his mouth and into victims’ face. He also could effect enormous leaps that enabled him to move with such rapidity that it was impossible to escape or catch him.

The attacks by this entity continued with a rampant frequency which eventually led to Sir John Cowan, London’s Lord Mayor, declaring him a public menace.  Groups of vigilantes gathered in order to hunt Jack down.  Jack had other plans as he evidently eluded the would be captors with his signature leaping or jumping capabilities. In fact, Jack continued his bizarre attacks undeterred. The accounts of his nightly attacks were recorded in many newspapers of the time. Clark reproduces one such attack, calling it a pretty standard one, Unexplained!. The attack occurred on February 28 in a district of London called Limehouse, it was written up in the London Morning Chronicle on March 8. From the article:

Miss [Lucy] Scales stated that…. at about half-past eight o’clock, as she and her sister were returning from the house of their brother, and while passing along Green Dragon-alley, they observed some person standing in an angle in the passage. She was in advance of her sister at the time, and just as she came up to the person, who was enveloped in a large cloak, he spirited a quantity of blue flame right in her face, which deprived her of sight.

They were close enough to the brother’s house that he was able to hear their screams and went out to investigate. Once he had safely escorted his sister’s home, the brother asked the other sister for a description of their attacker. The sister stated the following:

She described the person to be of tall, thin, and gentlemanly appearance, enveloped in  a large cloak, and carrying in front of his person a small lamp, or bull’s eye, similar to those in the possession of the police. [As] her sister …. [came] up to the person, he threw open his cloak, exhibited the ;lamp, and puffed a quantity of flame from his mouth into the face of her sister

Throughout his reign of terror, it seems that the police were convinced that they were looking for a human perpetrator of these crimes. Though in my mind the feats are, if not paranormal or non-human, exhibit capabilities that I’ve not found in people. If the reports are to be believed, this figure was jumping some 9 or 10 ft fences. That’s quite a feat.

Whoever, or whatever, Jack may have been. he was never apprehended by the authorities. For all we know he leapt back into whatever strange dimension he escaped from. Although that’s not quite the end of our story, as a figure who shared many of the same characteristics as our man Jack has shown up in other parts of the world since he first arrived on the scene in the late 19th century London. Theo Paijmans back in Oct of 2013 wrote an article for Mysterious Universe which was entitled, “Spring-Heeled Jack in America”. Rather than reprinting the cases which he pointed out, I will instead implore readers to read the article yourself and check out the exhaustive work Paijmans did in exploring the apparent leaping, pardon the pun, of the entity called Spring-Heeled Jack from London to the United States.

While I was researching for this post, I came across another encounter with a figure which sounded very similar to Spring-Heeled Jack, only this time it was back in London.  Writing for allvoices.com, Lee Walker shares a story which was related to her from a man named Steven Gee. Walker writes:

A very close friend of mine by the name of Stevie Gee, (who we'll be meeting again a bit later on in this issue, in connection with a UFO sighting in the skies above New Ferry), recently reminded me of a frightening childhood encounter with a mysterious entity near to his former home on Bromborough Road, Merseyside, an incident, which though it occurred over a quarter of a century ago now, he still recalls with near-perfect clarity.

'One bitterly cold winter's evening back in 1975, when I was 11 years old, I raced outside straight after tea in the company of my sister, Pam, who is two years older than me, eager to meet up with a group of mutual friends at our usual hang-out, the line of garages situated at the back of our road. One of these friends was actually a near-neighbour, named Robbie Lyons, who was the same age as Pam, and who, I suppose it's fair to say, I regarded with something akin to admiration, not least because he attended 'The Big School', something that had always commanded wide-eyed respect amongst kids my age, due to him having successfully made the transition from the comparatively carefree, halcyon days of life at Church Drive Primary and Junior Schools, to spending five days a week at the towering Victorian monstrosity that was Bebington Secondary – where, according to local, pre-teen folklore, all manner of dreadful horrors lay in wait ready to pounce the second you stepped through the wrought-iron, rusted gates.

Robbie was, therefore living proof that those brave enough to rise to life's challenges could, like a knight in shining armour on a holy quest, or a hero of ancient Greece, set an impossible task for the cruel amusement of Olympian Gods, not only survive the ordeal in one piece, but emerge all the stronger for having done so…...

I remember Pam and I chose to secrete ourselves behind the back of the garage where my Dad kept his pride and joy; a metallic-brown Hillman Avenger. ….

there we were, my sister and I, crouched low behind the walls of the garage, trying desperately to keep our teeth from chattering, and cupping our hands to prevent the plumes of smoky breath giving us away. when Pam suddenly whispered harshly; 'Steve, what's that up there on the garage roof?'

A strange, dark figure was crouching on the roof of the garage directly above us, and although I couldn't make out any facial features at first, (the bright winter moon was directly behind it, rendering it little more than a cartoon silhouette), still I instinctively knew it was staring intently at us, and I felt what I can only describe as overwhelming malice, radiating from the form in near-visible waves.

And then, as we watched, paralysed with fear, unable even to cry out for help, the figure slowly rose to its full height, with its arms outstretched as if in supplication to the to cruel, diamond-chipped void above.

Eventually Steve and Pam would run for their lives and accidentally bumped in Robbie Lyons. Near breathless, the pair informed Robbie of what they had just witnessed. Walker continues:

Ever the brave, stoic defender of those in mortal danger (although I think his motivations were probably more along the lines of 'the eternally horny protector of the damsel in distress,' given Pam's presence), Robbie took us at our word and raced towards the garages, whilst Pam and I waited anxiously for news in the warmth and safety of our parent's living room.

We didn't have to wait too long.

A couple of minutes later, there was a frantic rapping at the front door, and I opened it to find Robbie standing there, his pale face and the look of wild fear apparent in his eyes, enough to confirm that he had likely encountered the same thing we had.

'He was thuh-thuh-there, juh-juh-just like you said,' he stammered, (and whether it was due to the bone-freezing temperatures or abject terror, it's difficult to say). 'I saw him, all dressed in buh-buh-black, standing on the garage roof..'

'But that wasn't the worst of it,' he added quickly, swallowing a click in his throat. 'As I got near to the figure, it suddenly looked at me over its shoulder, and then, Christ Almighty, it just leaped high into the air and landed on another garage roof, about thirty feet further along. And then in did the same again. And again. And again until it cleared the entire row of garages and jumped onto the roof of one of the houses on Ellen's Lane, and I lost sight of him. I've never seen anything like it. And I hope to God I never do again!'

Be sure to go read the full article here, as I think it’s well worth taking a look at. So, what in the world was, or is, Spring-Heeled Jack? Could it have been a prankster or joker playing a tricky, albeit a cruel one, on folks? If so, not only were they fairly athletic, they also traveled around the world and waited a good number of years before showing up again. I don’t rule out that a bit of hysteria could have played a part in some of the reports and sightings, but taken together they make for an interesting entry in the history of fortean creatures.

Alien Contact in Human Places

Stories of encounters with extraterrestrials are just about a dime a dozen in Ufological literature. Persons have come into contact with these ET’s outside of their craft, in the woods, out in the desert, or on top of mountains. What seems to be a little less common is encountering those same ET’s at a later date in a more normal or mundane place. For me, these accounts are far more entertaining and, somehow, even more bizarre and surreal than a so-called “CE-3”. Or maybe they’re not so bizarre after all? Could they be clues that some of the UFO’s have bit of a more terrestrial origin?  I’ve come across a few such stories which I will relate below and will give links to the sources so that you can read more about these events and let you decide for yourself as to what you make of these accounts.

In Timothy Green Beckley’s The Authentic Book of Ultra-Terrestrial Contacts a story is told of a woman who encountered a group of UFOnauts. It starts off as a “typical” UFO occupant account. Her story is as follow:

A local resident was driving towards town one afternoon when she suddenly saw a strange ship resting on tripod legs. As she approached the craft, she observed a normal looking woman and two men standing near the vehicle. They were talking to each other and eventually walked over to a parked auto and drove off. ….

A few weeks later…. The woman was shopping for the weekly groceries when she noticed, over at the next counter, a familiar-looking face. Edging closer, she was shocked to find that it was the same “person” who was seen months before, driving off from a UFO.

The bewildered woman followed the UFOnaut, the female of the trio, to the check-out counter. Once they were both in line the witness said, “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” With this, the “space woman” bolted from the line, leaving her parcels next to the cash register and disappeared out onto the street….”

What are we to make of this story? Who knows? Why was an “alien” grocery shopping at the local grocery store? Was she out of eggs and milk?

The next account also comes again from The Authentic Book of Ultra-Terrestrial Contacts. I don’t really know how to set it up, I’ll just let the story speak for itself.

This young man, whom I will call Bill, had been sitting in the Greyhound Bus Depot. He was at the end of the line…. an alcoholic. He had only the bus fare over the East Bay Bridge to Oakland. God knows - maybe eh was going to take a leap from the bridge. Well, along comes a wonderful looking man and takes Bill in hand. He took Bill to the hotel Ogden. This beautiful stranger put Bill to bed. And in passing, Bill said that this stranger was just as human as my earth-man. Bill watched this stranger shower and should know.

The ending to this story is perhaps the strangest part. Bill’s life was turned around after spending some time with this “Stranger” and later Bill felt compelled to seek out “Prof” George Adamski. Up on Adamski’s wall, Bill noticed a painting of his “stranger”; it was none other than ‘Orthon’ the Venusian!

In his book Alien Base, Timothy Good relates a story of an early contactee who meet his alien contact in a “traditional” setting and then later in a not quite so traditional one. The story was originally related in the Contactee’s book which was titled The Shocking Truth. Here is Albert Coe’s tale:

In June 1920, then 16 year old Albert Coe was on a canoeing vacation in Ontario with his companion Rod. Alone at the time, Coe heard the muffled cry while clambering to the top of an outcropping of rocks in remote and rough terrain on the Mattawa River. Looking around, Coe could see no one, so he let out a yell. Slightly to his right and ahead came an answer. ‘Oh help me, I’m down here’

As Coe rescued this person, he began to notice some peculiarities. The stranger was dressed in a “silver-gray, jumper type suit”. On this suit was an instrument panel with all manner of knobs and panels upon it. After helping this stranger up from the cliff which he had fallen over, Coe talked the man into allowing him to assist the man in making his way back to the “plane” the stranger had used to  make his way into the woods where Coe had found him. Coe’s description of the plane is as followed:

A round silver disc, about 20 feet in diameter, was standing on three legs in the form of a tripod, without propellor, engine, wings or fuselage.

I was musing over its lack of windows and portholes and wondered how he could see out, unless they were over on the other side. Just then, the perimeter edge began to revolve. At first it gave off a low whistling sound, picked up speed mounting to a high-pitched whine, finally going above the audible capabilities of the ear.

With that, the craft flew off. Coe returned to his normal life for a time. About six months after this surreal encounter, Coe received a note from “Xretsim” setting up a meeting at the McAlpine Hotel, Ottawa. (These aliens really seem to have an attraction for hotel rooms). Coe had many more meetings with this stranger, who called himself Zret for short, often with Zret driving a very human car.

Zret would eventually reveal to Coe that he was a part of a group of extraterrestrials who came from both Mars and Venus. This group of aliens had infiltrated every major nation on the Earth. Again, according to Zret, they had some sort of mission here that was dependent upon some event they were hoping to stave off. Coe meet with Zret and others of his kind for many years to come, but seemingly never again saw any more unusual “planes”. You can read more of Coe’s account in Good’s book.

It seems that more often than not I’m at a loss for words when it comes to stories of these nature. I enjoy them from an entertainment standpoint to be sure. As for the inherent validity of the accounts? I can’t say. Why are “aliens” hanging out in grocery stores, hotels, and driving human cars? Have they truly ‘infiltrated’ society to that large of a degree? Or is the fact that they resemble humans, interact in the human world, and have human transportation probably closer to a real explanation for what’s going on in these cases? I think so. These strangers fit in with humans so much because they’re might actually be humans.