Still Waiting...
Part 2: The List

What I Saw After I Waited

1. "I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate from the tower of Syrene even unto the border of Ethiopia. No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited 40 years." Ezekiel 29: 10-11. Less ostentatiously, Ezekiel also prophesied Tyre would be taken by Nebuchadnezzar and trodden down by horses and chariots, never to be rebuilt. Nebuchadnezzar never destroyed Tyre and the city flourished for centuries. St. Jerome of the fourth century professed astonishment at Ezekiel's prophecy failing so utterly.

2. Doxographic sources ascribe to the early Pythagoreans, among them the cosmographer Philolaus, belief in the moon being inhabited all over by big, beautiful animals and plants. "The animals in their virtue and energy are fifteen degrees superior to ours (and) emit nothing excrementious." There was believed to be a danger of their destruction by means of a weather catastrophe involving suffocation in the glassified, cool water element of the moon-heaven. It is suspected this cosmic catastrophe was being predicted to occur at the end of a world period such as that found in Babylonian and Indian religions. Even allowing an ambiguity of a few thousand years for expiration, this prediction can be declared impossible by virtue of the failure of the Greek system of teleological physics.

3. "What retribution thou dost destine for the two sides, O Wise One, by thy bright fire and by molten metal, give a sign of it to souls, to bring harm to the wicked, advantage to the just." Thus spoke Zarathustra (628-551 B.C.) in the Persian text Yasna. Zarathustra was hoping for the imminent transfiguration of the world, the renewal of existence. Good was to totally triumph over evil by the will of Ahura Mazda. Zarathustra's proclamation of imminent eschaton was among the first to depart from the cosmic cycles predominant in preceding religions. Zarathustra has been considered a contactee in Oahspe.

4. Roman writers such a Pliny, Lydus, and Obsequens spoke of flying shields and their aerial kin as portents of future evils and worldly disorders. Joannes Lydus treats UFOs in prophetic terms in De Ostentis. When they moved east to west it was said to foretell "a future movement of the hated Parthians." North to south movements signaled thunderstorms.

5. Deferring to that faction of UFO study that advocates the contactee status of Jesus, we enter him because some theologians, especially those following the studies of Albert Schweitzer, feel his prophecy that the Kingdom was "at hand" was central to his ministry. Matthew 10:7. Its subsequent failure prompted some interesting hedging by his disciples.

6. April 14, 1561. The Nuremberg Broadsheet illustrates a "dreadful apparition" of crosses and rods and globes fighting vehemently among themselves in the morning sky till they fell from the sun down upon the earth where they burned and wasted away with immense smoke. Its author warns against ridiculing these high signs or "God may send us a frightful punishment on account of our ungratefulness." By this reasoning, "the God-fearing will by no means discard these signs, but will take it to heart as a warning of their merciful Father in heaven, will mend their lives and faithfully beg God, that he avert His wrath, including the well-deserved punishment, on us, so that we may, temporarily here and perpetually there, live as His children." The Nuremberg apparition would have been more timely had it preceded that century's violence rather than follow it.

7. Emanuel Swedenborg was strongly driven by a millenarian impulse that held the Christian Church was due to be overthrown. He taught that the Flood ended the Most Ancient Church and the Crucifixion ended the Ancient Representative Church. The third judgment, prophesied by Christ and foretold in Revelations, would usher in a new age. The many evils of his age he catalogued in his Spiritual Diary served to confirm to him his expectation of Apocalypse. Swedenborg felt The Last Judgment occurred in 1757 in the world of man's spirit, but the state of the mundane world admittedly had not changed outwardly. Swedenborg has been credited with more material prophecies such as the Stockholm fire of 1759, but these accounts are not first-hand and have debatable worth.

8. November 17, 1896. One of the first sightings of the Airship Mystery includes a comment by the operator of an airship that almost hits a tower on a brewery. "We will get to San Francisco about half-past 12," was what R.L. Lowery overheard. If they got there, nobody noticed. Sacramento district attorney, Frank D. Ryan, surmised the signs and wonders meant the advent of the millennium. A letter to the Stockton Evening Mail a couple days later theorized whimsically, "It is probable that in a short time (the Martian Lord Commissioner's) ambassador will make a call on the President," but it was waiting for McKinley to take charge of things.

9. April 9, 1897. An encounter between James Southard and the occupants of an airship in Nebraska reveals an intention to destroy the Spanish Navy within the week.

10. A.C. Clinton, alleging to be an airship inventor, promises to appear before the directors of the Omaha Trans-Mississippi Exhibition on April 17, 1897 and demonstrate his craft. Similarly, guys descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel in the North Pole area claimed they would appear at the Nashville Exposition on June 18 and 19. This was according to Judge Love and his fishing partner, Mr. Beatty of Waxachiw, Texas. Neither airship exhibited themselves.

11. The prophecy received from the Virgin at Fatima contained an assurance World War 1 would end that very day, October 13, 1917. Some accounts misreport the prophecy as being about Communism.

12. Eros Urides, a Martian communicating through a medium in 1920, predicted a great awakening for the earth and promised communication with Mars and other planets would be "realized in a short time."

13. During the mediumship of George Valiantine a prophecy came through that the Martians would get through to us before we got through to them. They were saying, in the 20s, this would happen before long and, incidentally, they were already trying to communicate with us.

14. Kenneth Arnold, after his sighting, received media attention and got a call from a Texas preacher who was getting his flock ready for the end of the world because the saucers were harbingers of doomsday.

15. Reverend Lester Carlson, pastor of a La Grande, Oregon tabernacle, was witness to a flying saucer on June 27, 1947 and was led to predict the end of the world also.

16. M.F.S. Hehr, who was in contact with Venus, reports saucers were manned by Atlanteans in training "for the salvage work necessary in 1960." Persons and material must be collected for the restart of civilization.

17. The national commander-in-chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Louis E. Starr, of Portland, Oregon, revealed on July 5, 1947 he was momentarily expecting word from Washington which would "help explain the discs." A telegram concerning the "fleets of flying saucers" was due 3 p.m. EST, but it apparently never arrived.

18. "Saucers were all a part of a prophecy - one of the things man was to see and not understand," explained an elderly Negro man to Louisiana governor Jimmie H. Davis. "The time was not distant when the world would know no seasons - winter will come in summer, spring in fall, and fall in spring - men will walk before they crawl, cotton will open before it blooms, the watermelon will come before the vine. The governor commented, "The watermelon thing I gotta see."

19. Speaking of the saucer craze in July 1947, Orson Welles said, "I'll bet ten to one this will fizzle out." Newsweek also assigns them a premature burial with an item titled "Broken Saucers." It lamented, "As quickly as they had arrived, the saucers disappeared into the limbo of all good hot weather stories."

20. Donald Keyhoe, in his historically important article for True magazine in January 1950 intimated we might get a surprise revelation like contact by spacemen in 1950. Keyhoe also noted that since saucers showed peak activity in July 1947 and July 1948, we could expect it to peak again in July 1950. (No. It peaked in March that year.)

21. March 9, 1950. Mexico's government newspaper El Nacional quoted a Mexican scientist as saying his claim that flying saucers carry visitors from Mars would be confirmed in the near future.

22. "The official explanation may be imminent." --Donald Keyhoe, 1950, in his book The Flying Saucers are Real.

23. Mr. Silas Newton, infamous from the Scully hoax, prognosticated that saucers soon would land on the Earth, because they had nearly completed their survey. The date might be winter 1950, or at least by the fall of 1951.

24. Is Another World Watching? was Gerald Heard's question titling one of the first books to appear on the saucer mystery. Heard speculated Martians were concerned our A-bombs might blast Earth into a cloud of dust which would yield a nuclear winter on their world. Inversely, they might also be concerned the bombs would accelerate sunspot growth such that an X-ray summer would follow or even, physics forbid, a nova.

25. In February 1951 Keyhoe predicted an upswing in UFO activity for the spring of 1951 due to scheduled atom bomb tests near Las Vegas, Nevada. (No.)

26. Lonzo Dove, Chief Astronomer of the IFSB, advanced one of the droller claims of having made a successful prediction. Dove was floating a Martian launch theory derived from prior saucer sighting dates and charted a 1952 arrival date for the space armada between April 14 and 16. On the 16th, Dove felt he had been vindicated when he photographed "a huge cloud 30 miles in diameter and 15 miles up in the sky, a double track a mile wide." He found added significance in the simultaneous appearance of an "equally abnormal double cloud" hanging some 60 to 90 miles over a region of Mars.

27. Walter Winchell, the columnist, announced on June 30, 1952 that "Scientist at Palomar Observatory, California are supposed to have seen a 'space ship' land in the Mojave Desert, in May last. Four persons stepped out, took one look, and went off again. The U.S. Army may officially announce it in the fall." (No.)

28. "Within the next few days, they're going to blow up and you're going to have the granddaddy of all UFO sightings. The sighting will occur in Washington or New York - probably Washington." A few days later the great Washington National flap began. The timing is indeed uncanny and it has the impressive distinction of having been made to the head of Project Blue Book. The scientist based this on a buildup of UFO cases then happening on the East Coast. The scientist was unnamed however because of security reasons. Nobody gets credit. Funny how that works.

29. Writing for Look magazine in 1952, Donald Menzel put forward his mirage explanation for certain UFO sightings and concluded triumphantly, "I believe these experiments will eventually cause the saucer scare to vanish - most appropriately into thin air, the region that gave birth to it." A less sanguine colleague, Urner Liddel, penned remarks for the Optical Society of America that proved better grounded. "I have no delusions that all 'explanations' which may be given will stop the flood of saucer stories. They are but facets of this stage of history. People believe what they want to believe - not necessarily what is true."

30. Readers responding to a major article in Life magazine in the summer of 1952 gave editors the impression that they were resigned to visitations from space and they expected a landing momentarily.

31. In January 1953, Edgar L. Plunkett predicted we were on the verge of a breathtaking discovery with respect to saucers.

32. Between January 14-18, 1953 the Robertson Panel predicted UFO sightings would "increase again this summer." (No.)

33. In April 1953, Albert K. Bender editorializes on natural disasters he sees wreaking havoc and predicts a pole shift may be due in 1953.

34. In July 1953 Edgar R. Jarrold, President of Australian Flying Saucer Bureau suggested saucers occur in two-year cycles and might be connected to Mars in some way. Because Mars would be even closer in future oppositions, he said we should anticipate greater number of sightings in 1954 (No) and 1956 (No). The years 1953 and 1955 should be fairly light ones. (Yes & Yes) In fairness, 1954 saw a heavy flap in France, but not here.

35. Max B. Miller of Flying Saucers International interpreted Nostradamus as predicting for 1953 "A third world war will come to the world. A great ship from another world of higher intelligence shall land and intervene."

36. Donald Keyhoe hoped his book Flying Saucers from Outer Space would prepare Americans for the "final act of the saucer drama." He termed 1954 a "possibly fateful year" in which Russians could stage a mass A-bomb attack by paralyzing defense efforts with rumors that alien machines were actually secret Red weapons.

37. E.R. Chamberlin, in his study AntiChrist and the Millennium singles out the first contactee work, George Hunt Williamson's The Saucers Speak, as a technological dispensation of the millennial impulse. Telepathic communications with Saturn's tribunal established "A new Golden Age is about to be ready to be born on the earth." It was understood that a fleet of Martian spacecraft would arrive in 1956. Chamberlin observes, "In the 1963 edition of the book, the author speculated that the fleet may, in fact, have arrived as promised - but in secret, a curious echo of Charles Russell's belief that Christ arrived in 1874 - invisibly."

38. The Yada proclaimed in 1953 that the discs portend the expansion of the sun into a supernova, the heating and crystallization of the understrata of the earth under increasing cosmic radiation, and the forming of hollows in the Earth.

39. Three Men-in-Black told Albert K. Bender in September 1953 that the U.S. Government would reveal the secret of the UFOs in either 5 months or 4 years. A 1976 prediction by Bender stating, "In 1977 something spectacular will take place involving space" fared no better.

40. In 1953, a pair of miners reasoned that since flying discs had appeared at Brush Creek, California on April 20, May 20, and June 20, it might reappear on July 20. John Black's June encounter had been so close he even saw the pilot - a little guy dressed in green trousers, a tie, a jacket, and a green cap. "He looked like someone who had never been out in the sun much." A crowd of over 200 people assembled in anticipation. It included cameramen from United Press Movietone and Telenews Corporation and a pair of telepaths. Someone attributed the no-show to bow-hunters being present.

41. Orfeo Angelucci's alien friends were right about one thing: "There would be no mass contacts." Promises that their next campaign would be "more revealing than the one of 1952" seem less on target. Intelligence about atomic warfare with Russia being imminent, success over cancer arising, and Christ's reappearing soon can be deemed disinformation. There are a great many other predictions offered up in Angelucci's Million Year Prophecy. Those that have already expired include a Grand Committee of the world's finest humans coming into full flower by 1984, an exodus from an economically bust California in 1984, a subsequent turnaround for California by '75, George Wallace's Third Party becoming a might force by '72, the disproof of evolution in '69 leading to its complete discrediting by 1999, and lastly, the mystery of life and the mystery of Sleep being known by 1980.

42. July 28, 1954. Affa of Uranus passes along a message through contactee Francis Swan indicating, "This earth is really going to end as stated in the Holy Bible around 1956."

43. In October 1954, James Moseley announced "The Flying Saucer Mystery - Solved." He had in his possession irrefutable documented evidence from a high official source solving the saucer saga. He promised it would "be presented in full in the November issue" of his publication Saucer News. In the next issue however he apologized and revealed only he was not permitted to publish the information and would not elaborate why. Eventually it did appear. In the June-July 1956 issue the solution was finally unveiled. Saucers were built by the "The Organization" - a super-secret group entirely separate from the U.S. Government. Their mission: "absorbing excess radioactivity in our atmosphere."

44. Easily the best account of a failed prediction concerns the saga of Dr. Charles A Laughead and Mrs. Dorothy Martin that was chronicled in the famed sociological study When Prophecy Failed. It tells of the reception of a prophecy from Sananda of the planet Clarion. Chicago would be flooded at dawn on December 21, 1954. A great tilting of the American continent would follow it. Other continents would variously submerge or rise up. A group of believers in these teachings were to be picked up some time before the cataclysm. Phone calls from a Captain Video informed them the pickup time would be 4 P.M. on the 17th. These and other predictions never came to pass. "The cataclysm was stayed by the hand of the God of Earth." That excuse was a bit too pat for some believers and they left. Others stayed and stepped up their proselytizing efforts. Not one new convert was made however and circumstances caused a dispersal of the band of disciples. While the sociologists were correct in predicting increased proselytizing, their expressing a faith that the group would have grown under the publicity they received had not circumstances intervened, hints that the absence of converts ran counter to their expectations.

45. By his own account, Aime Michel, in the spring of 1954, correctly predicted a wave would occur at the end of that summer. He then predicted a new wave would occur in eastern Europe or the Middle East near the end of 1956. (No)

46. George Adamski's aliens suggested they were foretold by ancient prophecy as a sign of deliverance. His aliens acclaimed the approach of a Cosmic Age for the Earth, but they also warned a drastic tilt of the earth "could happen at any moment" and change the face of the planet. They were concerned this would alter the lanes in which they travel through space. In his final book, Adamski berates in no mealy terms the landing prophecies and evacuation promises of "phoney" contactees and attributes these "dubious" psychic messages to subconscious origins.

47. Aliens informed George van Tassel that the explosion of the hydrogen bomb would "extinguish life on this planet." There was a clarification after this failed to happen that only the detonation of a "true" hydrogen bomb would do this. Bombs using deuterium and tritium isotopes didn't count.

48. George Hunt Williamson, in Other Worlds - Other Flesh, indicates an event his space friends call the "Great Telling" must be getting close. On that day, millions of citizens would know "beyond the shadow of a doubt" that aliens exist because every device capable of receiving a message, from phones to radios, would be made to give their announcement of intent. It was going to happen soon because weird events in Canada proved they were running tests on earth equipment. These events consisted of radios turning themselves on and off, phones ringing with no one on the line, and automobile gauges that go wild - except when at the garage for repairs.

49. Based on theories that saucers levitate through the action of sound, Desmond Leslie predicted that with more jets crashing through the sound barrier "soon an entire house will be raised and put down in another site." After authorities investigate this, science would soon be "well on the path to Adeptship in the dark arts."

50. Harold T. Wilkins wrote in August 1955, "We cannot for one moment doubt that the artificial earth satellite to be launched within two years - by the United States and/or Soviet Russia - will definitely establish the existence of space ships in our atmosphere." Wilkins also hints that a Martian "Death Ceiling" is meant to prevent future lunar and interplanetary voyages by terrestrials.

51. August 30, 1955. David Ankenbrandt was given one week to deliver a message to the government. "If there were any more wars here, 'they' would have to take over." He did not deliver it, even after he received a second visit emphasizing the matter. Blue Book found out anyway and, as the kid feared, they dismissed him as a head case.

52. December 25, 1955. "The next war, if fought, will be on American soil. America will be destroyed, then civilization all over the world will be destroyed," according to Bucky of Venus.

53. If free will does not prove our undoing, mankind will culminate his evolution by attaining the age of light and life wherein mortals will experience final fusion with divine Adjusters. This will take place in the safety of Morontia temples that can withstand the blazing glory that consumes and obliterates the physical body. Afterwards, evolution will proceed unto yet higher levels till the superuniverses settle into light and life and the totality of the grand universe will be perfected and its finite destiny fulfilled in the achievements of life, harmony, beauty, truth, and goodness. A Mighty Messenger temporarily assigned to Earth's Archangel Council says that after this most profound occurrence in the annals of eternity "There are those who hold the Supreme Being himself will emerge from the Havona mystery enshrouding his spirit person and will become residential on the headquarters of the seventh superuniverse as the almighty and experiential sovereign of the perfected creation of time and space." The timescale implied by the Urantia Book presumably forbids calling this a miss in our lifetime or in billions of years, but every consumer knows if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

54. Truman Bethurum jotted down some impressions he received during his visits with the people of Clarion. These include the absence of atomic wars, a return to the soil via small farms and country estates, and the disappearance of class with equality for all. These are arguably correct in a small, measured degree, but there were other predictions much farther off the mark. Political partisanship was to disappear but did not. The third new President was to be female but was not. Battleships andbombers were not obsolete by 1980. Nations were not eager to settle their differences by 1961.

Building for destruction multiplied horribly rather than ceased in the decades after Bethurum's contact. Space travel was to proceed after the elimination of greed, class, and race hatred. Lastly, and tragically, Bethurum was wrong in predicting the five-year-olds of 1955 would not have to carry guns into battle when they grew up. Vietnam happened.

55. "I wouldn't want to hazard a guess as to what the final outcome of the UFO investigation will be, but I am sure that within a few years there will be a proven answer." When Edward J. Ruppelt of Project Blue Book began, he was still divided over whether that answer would be the ETH or the "It's All Nonsense" theory. Eventually he entered the latter camp and warned that until we actually meet up with spacefolk, "we're stuck with our Space Age Myth - the UFO." He also predicted "Project Blue Book will live on." Blue Book is no longer with us though, in fairness, it did survive over a decade after Ruppelt wrote that. Whether there was a proven answer depends on whom you talk to.

56. Gray Barker, in They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers, included Hugh Brown's theory that cosmic ray bombardment directed at the North Pole was melting the polar ice cap that might yield a poleshift cataclysm.

57. Waveney Girvan predicted reports would continue, maybe increase, and yield more believers (Yes) In time it will turn into a landslide (Yes). A stream of books or, less likely, a landing in Hyde Park may gradually sway timorous scientists. They won't affect our behavior (Yes). They may bring a revolution in our transportation (No).

58. Rolf Telano, engineer or whatever, predicted on January 23, 1956 that "some great catastrophe is likely to take place very soon." The magnitude and nearness are uncertain, but there would be relatively severe loss of life and property. It would manifest as a series of natural calamities like earthquakes and floods caused by ethereal stresses generated by atomic experiments and certain mental attitudes.

59. In Morris K. Jessup's ufological study of the bible, a large section is devoted to a reinterpretation of the 13th chapter of Mark. To Jessup it prophesied the coming of a shining powerful Mothership that will rescue the remnants of those who survive a cataclysm that might be either a pole shift, a meteor bombardment, or atomic holocaust. They would live for a time after this event in celestial regions. Jessup finds signs of the endtime in contemporary thermonuclear devastation by assigning its identity to the earthquakes in divers places mentioned by Mark. Developing a line of logic presuming Christ's prescience, Jessup figures "if we have a margin of about a generation in which to anticipate destruction, then we can say roughly that something should be expected within a thirty year period starting sometime during the postwar decade. Should we say then, between 1950 and 1980?"

60. June 16, 1956. Jaoa de Freitas Guimares is taken on a brief hop through space chauffeured by two tall aliens. They arranged to meet again on August 12, 1957. The appointment was not kept.

61. "Will they perform cruel experiments with us, to see what makes us tick? ...This may sound frightening, terrifying, and unbelievable, but it may be part of your Incredible Future." Criswell, New York Enquirer, October 22, 1956. Did Criswell foresee the abduction phenomenon? That's wild!

62. In the waning years of his life, Wilhelm Reich believed he was involved in a war being waged from outer space with deadly orgone energy. The environment was drying and dying and he declared seeing far and wide a DOR emergency. "Complete destruction of the globe of mother earth looms on the horizon of the future."

63. In the May/June 1957 Flying Saucer Review someone expresses the opinion there is credence in the possibility "that authorities may shortly announce that saucers exist and that they consider them hostile."

64. August 20, 1957. A lone sentry tried to draw on a disc but the gun stuck in his holster. A voice reveals they are concerned over man's use of atomic energy and would establish contact shortly.

65. "This is the year that the American people shall begin to thoroughly understand these Ophanim, or flying saucers, as the world would like to call them." - H.R.H. Mystikita Fa Sennta, High Priestess of the Helien Temple, 1957.

66. Dino Kraspedon's alien contacts from Ganymede and Io revealed plans to study the effects of a monstrous celestial body that would soon become visible and catastrophically join our solar system towards the end of the century. Survivors would peacefully set up a new millennium under the light of two suns.

67. The first contact account after Sputnik was turned in by Reinhold O. Schmidt; the infamous contactee who would eventually be convicted of fraud in association with the promotion of quartz that saturnians claimed had healing properties. In the first meeting with Schmidt they spoke of planned satellite launches and warned "the first two will never leave the ground and the third will go up, but won't send back much data." Schmidt, writing in 1959, claimed this prophecy was proved. The nation will never forget the embarrassment of the Vanguard TV-3 blowing up on the launch pad on December 6, 1957. The second launch on January 31, 1958 however successfully put into orbit Explorer 1. It lived longer than later Explorer satellites and is not regarded as a disappointment by history. The third launch, TV-3B, flew 57 seconds before breaking up. What is curious about this affair is why Schmidt did not phony up his tale to be more historically accurate.

68. "Do you want to see a flying saucer?" the unusual stranger asked John Whitworth in his shop in Bedfordshire, England. John was game and drove to an isolated spot he was directed to. He was not disappointed. A year goes by and the unusual guy turns up again. This time Whitworth gets a convoy of pressmen to come with him to the spot on December 2, 1957. Nothing. An anonymous call explains he should not have brought a crowd.

69. August 3, 1958. Necoma of Jupiter warns Americans by ham radio that they must stop hydrogen and atom bomb tests because they will eventually cause the entire solar system to blow up.

70. A warning of imminent attack by Venusians was relayed to UFO groups and VIPs around the world. All nuclear weapons and atomic energy plants would be destroyed. A world republic would be set up. For money you get a position in the new government. Karl Mekis, Venus Security Commissar and ex-Gestapo agent amassed $300,000 selling survival kits and graft. Postponements were issued and Mekis ended up serving time on 17 counts of fraud.

71. A little group at Point Reyes Station, California headed by an amusing, yet frightening dark-haired female believed extraterrestrials would transform their Inverness meetinghouse into a flying saucer when the world ended on April 22, 1959. The group inspired Phil Dick to write his novel Confessions of a Crap Artist.

72. Richard Hall disclosed a scientific evaluation of UFO flaps suggested that UFOs came from Venus. Expect a flap in June 1959. (No)

73. Margit Mustapa did some dictation for a Venusian Brother around 1958 that revealed the Earth was "destined to become a sacred planet." The process would take some decades and would involve elimination of the self-pride of mankind. Thought reading would have to become common as well. One prediction now testable was that the children of her time would become representatives of a "new race" that would bring in a culture founded on fourth-dimensional thinking. To the extent this was connected with the inner man and his growth, it was arguably a correct prediction. To the extent these new age individuals should have felt increased spiritual speed and velocity in a vortex of radioactive love calling from the planet Venus, it appears certainly wrong. A later prediction that Mustapa relayed from Saint Germane also seems wrong: "An immediate release from the evil powers will be introduced during the Xmas time of 1959."

74. The world-famous psychologist Carl Jung wrote his book Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky as a warning that UFOs signaled the end of the Age of Pisces, i.e. the era of Christianity, and the changing of the "gods" attendant with a long-lasting transformation of the collective psyche that would lead to the Age of Aquarius. Well there was the Sixties radicalism and the death of god theology fad, but they were short-lived and Christianity seems firmly entrenched in American society now even as UFO belief continues as strong as ever.

75. Ray Stanford falls unconscious and a voice speaks through him. "Have your cameras ready: we are going to give you an opportunity in broad daylight to film extraterrestrial craft in the skies over Corpus Christi within eight days." Six days later, two cameras run by Stanford and a friend do manage to capture an image of an UFO or UFOs that they sight from Corpus Christi on the afternoon of July 29, 1959. The image on the films however lacks any identifiable structure because the UFO is too far away. Some opportunity. Next time, don't call us, we'll call you.

76. In an emergency transmission from Master Aetheius to the Space Scientists of Earth, we were warned our behavior was being closely watched. "Throw a bomb in to the Serene Face of the Moon, Earth, and you, will die!" Ranger flights and Apollo boosters have been deliberately crashed into the Moon without apparent retaliation. More benevolently, they acclaimed, "The time when a great beam of Understanding and Transmuting Light, which will be thrown deep into the foul, black, cancerous growth (of great conspirators from the centre of the Earth) is shortly due to come."

77. Dr. George Marlo had his secretary Ottmar Kaub send invitations to Jack Benny, Jack Paar, Arthur Godfrey, Art Linkletter, Long John Nebel, Gray Barker, and Ray Palmer for an all-star excursion in an alien vessel sometime in early 1960. The trip was later rescheduled and eventually canceled.

78. Beings from a pure crystal Venus reveal to Ralph Lael in 1962 that man is on the verge of splitting the electron. Correct! Electron-positron annihilation is now a common research tool in nuclear physics. Lael spoiled the feat however by adding "When he completes the process he could start a chain reaction that will blow up the whole planet." Venusians said it happened once before when mankind used superweapons while on Pewam.

79. Richard Ogden passed along some predictions he received in mental communication with a scientist on Neptune. One includes the information the President would die in the first term. The President would be either Stevenson or Nixon. When Kennedy received the nomination, Ogden revised this to involve Kennedy. This becomes almost interesting, but is diluted further by the failure of his other predictions like the beginning of World War 3 in West Germany in 1966.

80. Using the theory that Martians time their arrivals with respect to the oppositions of Mars, Harry Lord of the Tynesdale UFO Society predicted flaps would occur in late '62/early '63 (No), early '65 (No), late '67 (Yes), late '69 (Way No!), and a large peak in late '72 (No). This looks worse than chance expectation.

81. Andy Sinatra, the Mystic barber of Brooklyn, revealed during a February 4, 1962 demonstration that if the Peoples of the World would not unite within 90 days "terrible destructive forces" would be released and probably lead to the toppling of the U.N. Building by his invisible army of Martians.

82. Daniel Fry's aliens indicated it would be at least 4 years before they adapted to our environment, but they added a loophole that existing political tensions would have to be eased before they made a mass landing. Fry to have correctly predicted the youth revolt of the sixties, but his Curve of Development mistakenly had the high school students of 1963 standing on the surfaces of Mars and Venus before they were 30.

83. Gary Wilcox, a dairy farmer in Newark Valley, New York encountered two UFO beings on April 24, 1964 who mentioned that astronauts Glenn and Grissom would die of exposure in space within one year. Quite wrong, but John Keel adds an annotation that Yuri Gagarin died exactly 3 years later on the date of the encounter. Grissom died in the Apollo launch pad fire of 1967. John Glenn remains alive as I write in 1998 with word he would fly on a Space Shuttle mission.

84. February 21, 1965. The Toba tribe of Argentina/Paraguay's Frontier at Chalas performed a sun-worshipping ceremony for halo-enveloped entities. A voice tells them not to fear. The Space People would soon reveal themselves to Earthmen and bring peace to the world.

85. July 21, 1965. Felipe Martinez was told by a little Martian they would soon reveal themselves to people everywhere and they return for him and his family on December 3, 1965 before burning up our planet for not accepting their existence. The story purportedly started a large wave of reports that 'They' would invade Earth on that date.

86. Two parties of students from Mexico City were taken to a space station in August 1965. The extraterrestrials told them they would make a mass landing in October 1965 and make a peaceful conquest to teach man how to use the power of creative thought effectively.

87. Raymond Fowler tells an amusing anecdote associated with the Exeter incidents. People had been gathering for UFO watching at an UFO site and an officer of the military finally decided to put this folly to rest by proving to them that they were simply watching reflections of light from Pease AFB. He joined the crowd and radioed the base to turn the lights on. After a brief wait, he repeated the order. The base informed him the lights were on. Oooops. Fetridge's Law strikes again.

88. "I think our solar system is drifting through space on a collision course with a large body of matter, mostly hydrogen, in a very rarified state. I estimate this mass to be about 330 times that of our sun and about 150,000 times the diameter of our solar system. Within this embryonic star there is bound to be quite a collection of cosmic debris; and if we are due to pass through the middle of it we shall be in for a pretty tough time...increased solar activity...increase in temperature...earthquakes...general change in topography" --Anthony Brooke.

89. Arthur Shuttlewood indicates that prophecies about the end of the world are being reexamined and reinterpreted and the day of revelation may come between April 1966 and the end of 1967.

90. Frank Edwards, author of the popular Flying Saucers-Serious Business, wrote in 1966 "the Overt Landing or deliberate contact cannot be far away. If we have indeed gone through 6 phases in 19 years - then the final phase would seem to be due in the next 2 or 3 years - or it could come tomorrow..." In his 1967 sequel Flying Saucers-Here and Now he intimated "ultimate contact with the UFOs is possibly imminent - or probably imminent" and suggested that astronaut transmissions are tape-delayed because "it would make good sense for the UFOs to contact our astronauts in orbit."

91. Coral E. Lorenzen warned in the 1966 book Flying Saucers-The Startling Evidence of the Invasion from Outer Space, "The UFO problem embodies an urgency which defies expression. Certainly procrastination is no solution. To leave matters as they are would indicate we are anxious to relearn the bitter lessons of history: Billy Mitchell - Maginot - Pearl Harbor - and so on." In the sequel there is a slightly less ominous prediction: "If UFO events continue as they have in the past year, it should be evident before the end of 1968 just what the UFOs are."

92. In his Project B 1966, John Keel was also emboldened by the heady atmosphere of the flap then ongoing to write how "altogether these thousand of reports mount up to an alarming picture. Perhaps they indicate that the UFOs are now engaged in a massive final stage of operations." Next year, he also wrote, "The final solution, however, will never come from the Air Force or the government but will be delivered by the UFOs themselves. That day may not be far off."

93. James McDonald predicted the UFO issue "is soon going to blow wide open" to Jim Hughes in 1966. McDonald was even gathering references for a post-breakthrough nose-thumbing of exobiologists who had slighted the UFO problem. T.H. Hoult, head of sociology at Phoenix, predicted McDonald's interest in UFOs, and the saucer craze itself, would soon wane and McDonald would wonder why he ever became involved.

94. "I think that 1967 may well be a vital year in respect of the UFO enigma." Dr. John Cleary-Baker.

95. Case 19 - The Condon Report: "A project investigator was at the site of a predicted UFO landing. The UFO landing did not occur." Condon took a fancy to this one guy's claim that he was in telepathic communication with extraterrestrials and decided to play out the invitation in the best scientific tradition. He claimed 'they' would land in Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats at 11 a.m. on April 15, 1967. Condon dispatched committee member Wadsworth along with several patrolmen and a brass band to the scene and had them wait for the arrival. To insure 'they' had not confused Mountain and Pacific Time Zones, the group even waited an extra hour. It rained at Noon. They left 12:30. We thank Condon for this replication, as should all good scientists.

96. In the spring of 1967, a communication from planet Ummo indicated an Ummite spaceship would land at a place outside Madrid, Spain, pick up some of their contacts, and take them to their planet. Witnesses are said to have seen an UFO and photographed it at the predicted time. The photos however were hoaxed and the alleged many witnesses were anonymous or untraceable. In the Nineties, the whole Ummo affair was confessed to be a hoax.

97. An entity named Karne contacted Arthur Shuttlewood and predicted that trouble would soon erupt in the Middle East. Some would mistake this as a sign of World war 3, which it would prove not to be. War between the Arabs and the Jews broke out a few days later, in June 1967. Another prediction, cast-iron, was that there would aerial manifestations in late October to make disbelievers sit up and take notice. That they did. They ridiculed the sighting of flying crosses at the end of that month. Karne also warned Shuttlewood not to buy into a prophecy being made by Interplanetary Masters that the first minute of of the first hour of Christmas 1967 would be of momentous importance to our planet. Rumor said it would be the Second Coming. Karne announced, "Christ, the Alpha and Omega of our Solar system, will arrive not later than 1975 and possibly before the end of 1972." Shuttlewood concluded, "By the end of 1974, at latest, my humble guess is that many amazing things will come to pass."

In a sequel, Shuttlewood meets two Visitors, Joab and Micah, who prophesy a spiritual war of Purification which would be signaled by the Sun rising with a grey halo. This would bring about the Complete destruction of the earth or usher in a New Age. Other events at Warminster cause Shuttlewood to speculate the Awakening would involve a confusion of tongues (ala Tower of Babel) as normalized hydrogen streams through a breach in the Van Allen belts and cause human to squawk like Donald Duck. It would also cause blackouts, the befouling of water, and the stilling of autos. An outflowing of Cosmic consciousness during the adaptation to the new state of affairs would make it all a vibrantly joyous event. The wake up call was scheduled for 1974-5, but the broader impression he got was that "1971-1980 will be a momentous decade for Man on Earth."

98. John Keel's extraordinary odyssey through the UFO phenomenon climaxes in a series of prophecies related by contactees and purportedly originating from an entity named Apol. The style and atmosphere of Keel's books cannot be captured by mere iteration of the events reported by him. One feels like a vandal trying to offer a summary like the following chronology, but it would be a greater crime not to include some sort of account of so important an example of this phenomenon.
May 1967: Silent contactees predict giant power failure.
June 5, 1967: A massive power failure occurs in the Northeast USA. Its scope is less than the 1965 Blackout.
June 19: Apol predicts things will get more serious in the Middle East. The Pope will go there on a peace mission and be knifed to death. Then, the Anti-Christ will rise up out Israel. Apol adds the Vatican would send food and aid to refugees.
June 21: Keel hears by way of another ufologist that a famous newsman in the Midwest would soon die.
June 23: Frank Edwards, a newscaster and author of two flying saucer books, dies of heart failure in Indiana.
June 28: The Vatican announces they are sending assistance to war victims. Apol and others step up their warnings about the Pope. They add a man in a black suit with a black knife would attack him in an airport. More predictions warn of impending plane crashes and Robert Kennedy being in grave danger.
Also in June: In the wake of '67 Blackout, there is a warning a yet bigger power failure would happen. This would be followed by natural catastrophes. New York City would slide into the Ocean on July 2. Rumors spread and hardware stores sell out of candles and flashlights. Keel, himself, stocks up on water.
July 2: Nothing.
July 20: The Vatican announces the Pope will visit Turkey. Contactees date his assassination for the 26th. They add it would be preceded by an earthquake and followed by three days of darkness.
July 22: A deadly earthquake hits Turkey.
July 25: The Pope lands in Istanbul.
July 26: The Pope leaves Istanbul. The visit is without incident. Keel however does see UFOs on this date. Ha-ha-ha. Undaunted, Apol and company predicts a new big event for December 15. They also predict the dollar would be devalued (No), Red China would join the U.N. (Yes), and Keel would move to a New York apartment on the ground floor. They also foretell a terrible disaster on the Ohio River - people will die. They imply a plant will blow up. With time, details of the December 15 event fill in. Space people would time a countrywide blackout to happen the moment Lyndon Johnson lit the White House Xmas tree. Considering this the sort of thing those perverse aliens would do for yuks, Keel buys into this prediction, albeit warily, and prepares for a blackout.
October: "Hopi and Navaho Indians will make headlines shortly before Xmas."
December 16-26: There is a rescue effort to help Southwest Indian reservations hit by a snowstorm. Among them are Navaho and Hopi.
December 15: LBJ throws the switch. Immediately comes news that a bridge along the Ohio River has collapsed during rush hour. Keel had crossed that bridge many times in the past. People died.
December 17: The Prime Minister of Australia goes for a swim in rough surf and his body vanishes. This was predicted, says Keel.
December 18: An Air Force jet plows into a Tucson shopping center. Keel indicates this was predicted the day before. (This is incorrectly dated in his account as December 11.)
Undated: An unprecedented event is scheduled for December 24. A great light will appear in the sky and then...
December 24, 1967: Nothing
June 6, 1968: Robert Kennedy assassinated.
November 27, 1970: A man dressed in black and wielding a kris, a black knife, attacks the Pope in an airport. Not Istanbul: Manila International Airport. Benjamin Mendoza AMR Flores, a surrealist painter, was outfitted in a priest's cossack to do the deed. An art critic commented that Flore's art was contrived, but betrayed no madness. Those familiar with Keel's concept of reprogrammed humans doing things in the name of the phenomenon may be puzzled to find Flores had no voices in his head egging him on. His act was in opposition to hypocrisy and superstition - an act of ideology. On September 2 of that same year an individual who had been hearing voices in his head did attack the Pope, but with stones.
Keel interprets all this as some sort of perverse game to lure people in and then make them appear foolish when they have people's attention. Acceptable, but one could alternatively interpret this pattern as a working out of Fetridge's Law. It is always the most important events that fail to live up to expectations.

99. Fourth grade students in Roosevelt, Utah are playing with a Ouija board and are informed that a flying saucer would appear above Roosevelt Hospital at 8 p.m. on February 23, 1967. On the scheduled evening, the children of Clyde McDonald's family rush outside to keep the appointment and run back inside. It's out there. The parents confirm there is indeed a big orange ball of light in the southeast over the hospital. It was the talk of the school the next day as many of the other fourth grader saw it, too. Several other people are documented as having seen the round light traveling in a south to north direction over Roosevelt. An orange ball may not be a flying saucer, but this still seems to be a impressive sounding success given the multiple witness status, the specificity of the predicted time, and the lack of an obvious source of misinterpretation (Hoax balloon?). As Frank Salisbury point, "the really perplexing thing" is that the prediction came from a bunch of kids playing with a Ouija board. "What can a non-superstitious twentieth century scientist say about this?" Perhaps it is precisely because no important person would ever take such a prediction seriously that this particular prediction came to pass.

100. In August 1967, an unnamed American researcher of note was promised he would get the Nobel Prize in 1972 for a cure for cancer the aliens would give him. He nearly suffered a nervous breakdown before he wised up to the fact that this was not going to happen. He subsequently dropped out of the field.

101. Knud Weiking, with friends, built a lead-lined bomb shelter preparatory to a holocaust scheduled for December 24, 1967 by a space entity named Ashtar.

102. "The growing UFO problem must be solved in 1968 or the explosive situation of unidentified flying objects may easily get out of control and reap a real disaster beyond all imagination," according to saucer researcher George D. Fawcett.

103. In a pair of whimsical notes to Scientist magazine, Walter F. Cannon offered this prediction: "Since William Dunbar had square UFOs, and we have round UFOs, the next step would seem to be triangles. If NASA would only make our spacecraft a little pointier...we may not have to wait for the twenty-first century." Later he wrote, "I still believe triangles are the coming thing, although my reasoning, being more Freudian than documentable, is not such to convince a skeptical astronomer. The Space Shuttle conforms to Dunbar's requirement of a pointier spacecraft. Oddly this prediction seems to be coming true. The Grand Boomerang of March 1983 was a well-publicized early example and more recently a flap in Belgium starred triangular craft. They do seem to be much more numerous than when Cannon wrote his note.

104. Larry Klein, a researcher believing fallen angels are behind the UFO phenomenon, issued 12 predictions based on his analysis of the Bible - an analysis we might fruitfully note included the identification of Satan as a gynecologist. Several involved UFOs The U.S. would soon capture saucers and their fallen Angels would be shown to be non-human and in top government positions. By 1983 there was to be a Landing en masse near Egypt and by 1984 Archangel Michael