Page 72 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - October 2015
P. 72
72 Who Is: George Adamski
Who Is : expressed a desire to take a nap in his hotel Alfred Bailey, had retracted his testimony,
room, and waited outside and a small café.
George Adamski There she saw a young man who “looked very saying he had seen neither spaceship nor
distinguished and well-dressed, with dark blond
Continued from Page 71 hair neatly cut and brushed it down over his spacemen and doubted any of the others had
forehead in a fashion much in vogue when I was
Soon thereafter a bizarre episode took place in a young girl.” Later she asked Adamski if this either. Jerrold Baker, a young man who had
England. Ernest Arthur Bryant, a gardener in was a spaceman, and he said yes.
Scoriton, Devonshire, reported that on April 24 lived at Palomar Gardens between November
he saw a flying saucer with three occupants. C. A. Honey provides a more cautious
One, who looked to be about 14 years old and account: “I was with Adamski in 1958 during a 1952 and January 1953, told Moseley he had
spoke in an east European-and American- meeting with three little people who he claimed
inflected English, identified himself as had come to earth from Venus. I saw them and heard a tape recording of “what was to transpire
“Yamski” from “Venus.” Yamski said, as Bryant talked with one of them but I don’t know if they
(who claimed never to have heard of Adamski) were anything other than what I saw-little in the desert, who was to go, etc., Several days
told it, “If only Des or Les were here he would people.” In an earlier, somewhat different
understand.” Ushered inside the saucer, Brian version of the story, however, Honey reported before the party left Palomar Gardens” for the
saw a purple robe with a “red rose beautifully that while on a trip to Oregon, Adamski had
embroidered on the sleeve.” Adamski suddenly insisted they stopped at a café, where celebrated contact. One of the three Venusian
enthusiasts pointed out that Adamski had they met a small blonde woman. When
confided to associates that he would return as a Adamski appeared shocked, Honey examined saucer photographs allegedly taken on
boy and that the rope was precisely similar to her carefully. He would write: “She looked
the one Adamski wore to the Saturn conference. from a distance as if she was about 12 years old. December 13, 1952 was credited (in Flying
The reference to Desmond Leslie was obvious. Close up, however, she looked… about 45 years
The subsequent investigation produced a book, old.” The next morning Adamski Kemper Saucers Have Landed) to Baker but was
which is sense lee endorsed Bryant’s claims, expressed Honey’s expressed opinion that this
and a monograph detailing the further was a space person, and the morning after that a actually taken secretly the day before by
investigation that conclusively established space person called to confirm that the woman
Bryant’s unreliability as well as familiarity with was a sister of the Venusian woman “Kalna”, Adamski and probably was of a model. Baker
Adamski’s writings. Even Adamski’s most whom Adamski described in chapter three of
determined partisans do not dispute investigator Space Ships. claimed to have seen what looked like the
Norman Oliver’s conclusion that this was a
convoluted hoax. To Adamski’s detractors the absurdity of model Adamski used in his pictures. He also
his claims was self-evident. Even in the early
The Controversey 1950s his assertions about surface conditions said the plaster of paris had been purchased
on, habitability of, Venus, Mars, and the other
To Adamski’s followers the truth of his claim planets of the solar system flew in the face of some days before the contact. The purchaser
was self-evident. To them-at least he’ll his last massive scientific evidence. As that evidence
two years, when evilspace people or mounted ever higher, some Adamski partisans was Lucy McGinnis, not Williamson, had the
manipulators from the Silence Group led him insisted that Venus, Mars, Saturn, and the rest
astray-his sincerity should have been obvious to were merely “code words” for planets in other material with him on November 20, contrary to
all but the most cynical. Yet attempts were solar systems; there is however, nothing in
made to answer scoffer’s derision with evidence Adamski’s public readings to support this the account in Flying Saucers Have Landed.
supporting Adamski’s claims. interpretation and considerable testimony to the
contrary. Ufologist Isabel Davis remarked, in Moseley’s debunking of Adamski’s
Adamski himself brought six an important early analysis of the contact
“witnesses” to his first contact and supplied literature that besides being scientifically claims remains the definitive one, but in
photographs of Venusian “scoutcraft” and dubious, the cosmologies of Adamski and the
“motherships.” Engineer Leonard G Cramp other prominent contactees who came in his subsequent years further negative evidence
argued that the object depicted in the scoutcraft wake contradicted each other. She wrote that
photos and an alleged UFO photographed by “everything about these books is inconsistent would come to light. Ufologist Ray Stanford,
two young Lancashire boys on February 15, with the theory that they are true, and fatally
1954, were identical. At sunrise on that your ret consistent with a theory that they are who was a teenager spent much time with
20, 1962, while in orbit around earth, mercury inventions.”
astronaut John Glenn reported seeing thousands Adamski, said that Adamski had confided to
of little “fireflies” outside the window of his Mainstream ufologist such as Davis
space capsule. Adamski defenders were quick (affiliated with the group Civilian Saucer him that he had gotten into “all this saucer
to point out that seven years earlier the contact Intelligence of New York) were almost
the head use the word “fireflies” to describe uniformly hostile to a Adamski, holding not cracked” for monetary reasons and further
what he had seen well in space. In fact, only that his and similar contact stories were
Adamski was referring to the appearance of the fraudulent but that the contactees were making intimated that he had never been aboard a
stars and deep space, whereas Glenn, serious UFO investigators look ridiculous and
considerably closer to earth, was seeing some drawing attention away from authentic spaceship. Mark Dowding claims that Adamski
light reflecting off debris from his orbiting evidence. At one point Donald Keyhoe, director
vehicle. The usage by the two men of the word of the National Investigations Committee on once admitted to his father, World War II fighter
“fireflies” was simply coincidental. Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), fired a pro-
Adamski employee, Rose Hackett Campbell, pilot and Wing Commander Derek Dowding,
Some of Adamski’s friends believed who had secretly given a Adamski (along with
they had seen space people passing as six other contactees) a NICAP membership that he “had fabricated the whole story.” In 1978
earthlings. His biographers Lou Zinsstag and card.
Timothy Good both believe or suspect they a tape in which Adamski recounted his meeting
encountered such persons dressed in But the first serious investigation by a
conventional clothing. In one instance, which critic of Adamski’s claims was conducted by with Orthon was subjected to analysis by a
occurred during Adamski’s 1959 European tour, James W Moseley in the mid-1950s and
Zinsstag laughter companion, who had published as a special issue of his magazine controversial “lie-detection” technique,
Saucer News. Moseley found that the
“witnesses” to the first contact or close Psychological Stress Evaluation (PSE), at the
associates and that moreover, at least one,
conclusion of which evaluator Forrest Erickson
declared, “Mr. Adamski does not appear to be
telling the truth about Orthon.” In 1957 NICAP
had challenged Adamski-two take a polygraph
test, but he refused to do so. Photoanalysis of
one of the December 1952 photographs
suggested that the “UFO’ measures less than 8
inches in diameter” and “represents a crude
hoax.”
In 1985 William L. Moore found that
“Adamski’s for photos of the Venusian scout
ship are really pictures of a model, the design of
which is virtually identical in every detail to an
artist’s conception of a prototype space vehicle
which appeared in a technical paper written and
published during February 1952, nine months
before Adamski’s alleged encounter of
December 13, 1952. The technical paper, which
was entitled ‘The Flying Saucer: The
Application of the Biefeld-Brown Effect to the
Solution to the Problem of Space Navigation’,
was written by Mason Rose, Ph.D.” Rose told
Moore that his paper was “quite widely
circulated at the time.” Noting Adamski’s
reference to “blustery” whether in Los Angeles
on the night of the April 22, 1953, contact
recounted in Space Ships, Chapter 7, Richard
Heiden checked records and found only the
lightest of breezes recorded that evening.
These developments were not reported
until well after Adamski’s death, but aside from
Moseley’s, the most damaging expose to occur
during the contactees lifetime was engineered
by Arthur C. Campbell of the NICAP Kansas
City Affiliate. (Continued on Page 73)
