Chapter XII: Preface (9)

Perhaps the best known of the contactees is George Adamski, who on the night of November 20, 1952, in the desert of Southern California, supposedly met and talked with the pilot of a vehicle that had just arrived from Venus. Conversation was no problem; both men simply used telepathy and sign language when words failed[X-10]. In the years since then Adamski has reported many other pleasant chats with visitors from Mars and Saturn as well as Venus, and has allegedly made several journeys in their spacecraft, including an aerial tour of the moon. On this trip he observed with surprise that the moon’s hidden side contained fertile country abounding in lakes, rivers, vegetation, and prosperous cities with people strolling along the sidewalks[X-11]. He was not at all disconcerted when the Russian photographs of the moon’s far side showed no trace of these delightful features. Obviously, said Adamski, the Russians had simply retouched the pictures before releasing them to the world, in order to deceive the United States and to conceal the vegetation, trees, and buildings of the space people who had their bases there[X-12].

Clearly aware of possible skepticism, Adamski did not ask the public to accept his experiences on his unsupported word; as evidence, he offered various photographs showing cigar-shaped objects, a rocky hillside with a white blob on the horizon, and the drawing of a person apparently clad in coveralls--without the book’s explanation no one would ever suspect that he came from the planet Venus. One of the best-known pictures he published showed a bell-shaped “spaceship” with circular openings near the top and three large balls on the bottom for landing gear. By an interesting coincidence, this craft closely resembles a well-known type of chicken brooder, whose three infrared bulbs at the base look very much like the “landing gear” of the alleged spacecraft (see Figure 15). When skeptics doubted Adamski’s claim that he had traveled from Kansas City, Missouri, to Davenport, Iowa, by flying saucer, he displayed one of the most unusual items ever called upon to prove the existence of spaceships: his uncanceled railway ticket, for which he requested a refund![X-13]

_Photography and the UFO_

Those who believe in flying saucers have long hoped to obtain a good clear photograph that would establish their existence once and for all. Many “UFO” pictures show vague specks and blurs whose interpretation is limited only by the imagination of the viewer. Of the many pictures taken in good faith and offered in evidence, none shows an indubitable spaceship. Most of them are genuine photographs showing indistinct images of jet planes, birds, balloons, and other objects normally in the sky. They are puzzling only until they are compared with similar photographs of known jet planes, birds, balloons, and other normal objects; then their identity becomes obvious.

Trick photography has often been called upon to prove the reality of the incredible--fairies, ectoplasm, ghosts--and it has also played a part in the history of flying saucers. While the most detailed contact stories have usually come from the United States, for some peculiar reason the best of the faked pictures have come from Europe and South America. A widely publicized photograph supposedly taken at Taormina, Sicily, in 1954 shows four men standing on a bridge and apparently gazing at two UFOs soaring overhead [X-14]. The deep shadows cast by the men and the bridge railing show that the sun was shining brilliantly, but the objects in the sky, which look like the inverted covers of teapots or sugar bowls, show only faintly shadowed areas. Stranger yet, the shady side of one UFO is on the left, that of the other UFO on the right. The men on the bridge have their heads tilted at such an angle that they could not possibly have seen the objects pictured, but are obviously looking at the hill in the background instead of at the sky. Even a casual inspection exposes this picture as a crude fake (see Plate VIa).

An even cruder fake was offered as evidence to Dr. Menzel in South Africa in the summer of 1962. The optimistic photographer insisted that he had snapped a genuine saucer on the wing, even though the circular object shown in the print was an unmistakable hubcap, the Chevrolet trade-mark clearly legible.

_The Isle of Lovers Hoax_

Some photographic hoaxes are more cleverly executed. In May 1952, a few weeks after _Life_ magazine had alarmed the world with its article “Have We Visitors from Outer Space?”[X-15], the Brazilian weekly picture magazine _O Cruzeiro_ published startlingly clear photographs of an alleged flying saucer[X-16]. According to the accompanying story, a reporter and a photographer on the staff of the magazine on May 7 had visited Ilha dos Amores, an island not far from Rio de Janeiro, to do a feature assignment. Late in the afternoon, at a moment when the photographer just happened to have his camera pointed at the sky, the reporter suddenly called his attention to a passing UFO. During the minute or so the object was in view he obtained five pictures which, along with the reporter’s eyewitness story, were released to the public on May 17. If the editors actually believed in the reality of the saucer, the ten-day delay before informing the world of its visit is remarkable. The magazine has never admitted that the photographs were a hoax, but they inspired doubt even in sympathetic investigators[X-17].

The UFO appears in a dull sky above a mountain peak. In the first picture the object looks like a jet plane surrounded by an exhaust haze and, with a little imagination, might be called a Saturn-like object. In succeeding pictures it resembles the lid of a teapot, or the bottom view of a rubber stopper for a sink. A study of the shadows quickly reveals the fraudulent nature of these photographs: the dome on top of the “saucer” casts its shadow to the right, while the trees and mountains in the foreground cast their shadows to the left. The picture could be authentic only in a peculiar world in which the sun shone from the west on objects on the ground, but shone from the east on objects flying in the sky!

_The Trindade Island Saucer_

The most famous of all purported photographs of a UFO, the Trindade Island saucer, also came from Brazil. First published in Brazilian newspapers on February 21, 1958, the pictures showed dark mountain crags looming against an overcast sky. Above one peak appeared a startling image (much like the _O Cruzeiro_ saucer of 1952) resembling the planet Saturn--a flattened sphere banded round the middle by a dark line that extended like a platform beyond the curved sides. According to the accompanying news stories, the UFO had flown over the island of Trindade and had been observed by the officers and crew of a ship of the Brazilian Navy. The pictures, taken by a photographer on board, had been examined and supposedly pronounced genuine by Navy experts before being released to the press. Since a responsible military organization and a major world government thus seemed to accept the photographs as proof that flying saucers actually existed, the incident raised a storm of official inquiry both in Brazil and abroad. Then, within a few weeks, the storm abruptly subsided. Although no explanation was given, the object in the pictures was obviously considered no threat to our planet’s security (see Plate VIb).

Although saucer enthusiasts regard these pictures as genuine evidence for the reality of UFOs, careful study of the facts strongly suggests that this case, which rocked the Brazilian Government and created a short-lived but world-wide saucer scare, was merely an unusually skillful hoax[X-18].

At first glance, the circumstances of the sighting seemed to be entirely clear and straightforward[X-19]. Trindade is a barren, mountainous island of about six square miles, about 600 miles from the coast of Brazil. Abandoned after the end of the Second World War, the island remained deserted except by sea gulls until October 1957, when the Brazilian Navy established an oceanographic post and a meteorological station there to carry out its research for the International Geophysical Year (IGY). To facilitate the oceanographic studies, the Navy also converted a training ship, the _Almirante Saldanha_, into a floating laboratory equipped with scientific apparatus and photographic darkroom. With a crew of about 300, the ship routinely traveled between Rio de Janeiro and Trindade Island on its duties for the IGY.

A major function of the meteorological station was the launching and tracking of weather balloons; they were painted red, inflated with hydrogen, and carried radio transmitters. Launched each morning, they were tracked by radio and optical devices to show the movements of the winds in the upper atmosphere. At a certain point (when the balloon burst, or at a prearranged signal) the balloon released a bag of scientific instruments which, attached to a parachute, floated to the ground to be retrieved.

The Trindade station began operation in November 1957. Almost immediately, UFOs were reported over the island. (Brazil had not been immune to the flying-saucer epidemic that had begun in Texas early that month [see _Chapter_ IX], and sentries at Itaipu Fort, near Santos, on November 4 had reported a UFO that knocked out the lights and electric plant.) With weather balloons going up daily, parachutes floating down at odd times, and sea gulls cruising over the island, the advent of other “saucers” was inevitable. During November and December several UFOs were reported by workmen, none of whom were trained observers. Although neither Captain Bacellar, the commanding officer at the station, nor his officers saw any unidentified objects, he radioed Rio to report the incidents and investigated each story. Some he found to be false, some were based on mistaken identification of gulls and balloons, and in others the evidence was inconclusive.

Early in January 1958, when the _Almirante Saldanha_ arrived on schedule at Trindade, it had on board several civilian guests who were to collaborate in various aspects of the research. Among them was Almiro Barauna, a professional photographer. After several days at the island, the ship prepared to leave for the return trip to Rio on January 16. Shortly after noon Barauna was on deck with his camera, waiting to film the departure. The sky was thinly overcast, the sea was rough, and waves dashing against the ship and the rocky shore created a noisy background.

According to the news accounts printed several weeks later, Captain Viegas, of the Brazilian Air Force, suddenly shouted “_Olha o disco!_ [Flying saucer!]” Hearing the shout, Barauna peered at the sky and saw a luminous oval object moving swiftly toward the island. Officers and crewmen on deck also observed the UFO, he said, and interfered with his aim as they ran about excitedly. Nevertheless he managed to take six shots of the UFO as it approached the island, disappeared behind a mountain peak, reversed direction and reappeared at a lower altitude, retraced its course, and vanished with incredible speed against the horizon. The unknown had arrived and departed in a period of about twenty seconds.

According to the news stories, the photographer had retired to the ship’s darkroom under the supervision of an officer to develop the negative, and found that four of the six exposures showed the mysterious object. He was not able to make prints, he said, because the darkroom supplies unfortunately did not include any photographic paper. However, he did exhibit the negative, and the officers and crewmen who examined it allegedly agreed that it showed the same Saturn-like UFO that had flown over the island. After the return to Rio he made prints and enlargements and turned them over, together with the negative, to the Brazilian Navy.

The question of authenticity arose immediately. Called down to Intelligence headquarters for an interview, Barauna underwent a four-hour interrogation concerning the pictures. During the questioning he was asked, “If you were going to make a flying saucer appear on a negative, how would you proceed?” He replied, as he later told a reporter, “_Comandante_, I am an able photographer, specialized in trick photography, but I could not produce one that would withstand close and accurate examination.”[X-18]

In spite of this modest disclaimer, some of the photographic evidence clearly suggested fraud, and a strong difference of opinion developed among government officials. Some accepted the pictures as a genuine record of a flying saucer; others pronounced them fakes. For several weeks the incident was kept secret, but when eventually someone took the prints to the President of Brazil, further concealment became impossible. Yielding to the persuasion of certain military advisers and newsmen, and against the advice of the Naval Ministry, he released the pictures to the press.

_a._ Pinched lightning, August 1961. This is believed to be the first photograph of a pinched lightning discharge. (CHAP. IX)]

_b._ Ball lightning, Lincoln, Nebraska, August 30, 1930. (CHAP. IX)]

_a._ Trindade Island UFO, January 1958. (CHAP. X)]

_b._ Taormina, Sicily, UFOs, 1954. (CHAP. X)]

_a._ UFO at Boulder, Colorado, February 6, 1959. (CHAP. XII)]

_b._ UFO over Norway, July 24, 1957. (CHAP. XII)]

_a._ Images produced by lens defects, Hamilton, Ohio, steel plant. (CHAP. XI)]

_b._ Ghost images produced by internal reflections in lens system. (CHAP. XII)]

_The Brazilian Naval Ministry_

The photographs were published on February 21, five weeks after they were taken. Since the President had apparently accepted them at face value, the Naval Ministry was obviously in a difficult position; through an unofficial spokesman it issued a statement notable for its lack of enthusiasm:

“On the morning of January 16, 1958, over the island of Trindade, the crew of the school ship _Almirante Saldanha_ sighted an unidentified aerial object for a few seconds. A civilian who was aboard the ship took some pictures of the object. The Navy has no connection with the case, and its only connection with the occurrence was the fact that the photographer was aboard the school ship, and came back with the ship to Rio.”[X-20]

On the same day another Navy spokesman released a similar unofficial statement to _O Globo_:

“The news about a flying saucer sighted over the Island of Trindade was received here with utmost reserve. There will be an investigation to verify the authenticity of the sightings and photos. No officer or sailor from the N.E. _Almirante Saldanha_ witnessed the event.”[X-20]

Immediately an international furor broke out. Were these pictures indeed proof of extraterrestrial spaceships, or were they a hoax, with the Brazilian President and the Brazilian Navy as victims? Who were the witnesses, and exactly what did they report? In the United States, high officials asked for copies of the pictures. An editor of _Look_ magazine asked Dr. Menzel to fly to Brazil to evaluate the evidence, but later canceled the plan when the Rio office advised that the photographs were generally considered fraudulent. Public excitement in Brazil became so great that on February 23 the Naval Ministry released an official statement, distinguished by its air of caution, which concluded:

“Clearly this Ministry will not be able to make any pronouncement concerning the reality of the object seen because the photographs do not constitute sufficient proof for this purpose.”[X-18]

The day after the pictures were published the _Almirante Saldanha_, which had been lying outside the harbor at Rio, received orders to sail. Not until February 24, when the ship docked at Santos, did newsmen have a chance to interview the officers and crewmen who allegedly had observed the Trindade saucer and could support Barauna’s story. None of them, it turned out, had actually seen the object.

The Assistant Naval Attaché of the United States, who was then in Santos in connection with the visit of the U. S. Coast Guard cutter _Westwind_, visited the Brazilian ship to collect information about the Trindade saucer, but with little success. The commanding officer stated that he had not seen the alleged UFO; he had seen the pictures but refused to express an opinion on their authenticity; he stated that his secretary might have seen the UFO but the secretary, when questioned, preferred not to discuss the matter. The executive officer said that he had not been on deck at the time of the sighting, but that other persons might have seen the object.

During the next week arguments for and against the authenticity of the photographs filled the Brazilian papers, and _O Globo_ published deliberately faked views of a “flying saucer”--a china plate tossed into the air. A federal deputy in an official note to the Naval Ministry deplored their amazing failure to procure sworn statements from the officers and crewmen who were reported to have witnessed the UFO.

In spite of the widespread and increasing skepticism, the weekly magazine _O Cruzeiro_ used the Trindade pictures for its lead story in the issue of March 8. “Once bitten, twice shy” apparently did not apply to its editors, who seemed instead to adopt the principle, “In for a penny, in for a pound.” The photographs, they remarked editorially, not only proved the existence of flying saucers, they also established the authenticity of the Ilha dos Amores pictures published several years earlier. As though to emphasize this point, the magazine assigned the Trindade story and the interviews with witnesses to the same staff reporter who had described the Ilha dos Amores saucer in 1952. The Naval Ministry refrained from further comment and, since the military authorities showed no alarm about the possibility of extraterrestrial patrols, public interest in the pictures quickly died.

The report sent home by the U. S. Naval Attaché included the comment:

“There appear to be only two explanations for this peculiar incident, and the peculiar handling of it by the Brazilian Government: (a) Some overwhelming power has told the Brazilian Navy not to verify this incident officially (which they should easily be able to do, if it actually occurred) or to deny it (which they should easily be able to do if it is a fake). I personally do not believe that anyone has told the Brazilian Navy to keep quiet about it because there has been no hint of such suppression in either Brazilian or United States circles. I also doubt that their control of the individual officers and men would be good enough to hold the line in any event. (b) The whole thing is a fake publicity stunt.... This seems more likely....”[X-18]

_The Icarai Submarine Hunting Club_

The accounts originally printed in the Brazilian papers and in _O Cruzeiro_ contain a number of significant details that have been glossed over or ignored by UFO enthusiasts, both in Brazil[X-19] and in the United States[X-21], who apparently accept the Trindade saucer at face value. A study of the available news stories, facts gathered by Intelligence officers, and of the photographs themselves leads inescapably to the conclusion that the Trindade Island photographs were almost certainly a hoax.

Almiro Barauna was a free-lance photographer. A professional of unusual skill, he had long been interested in flying saucers and, some time before the Trindade incident, he had published a purposely humorous magazine article entitled “A Flying Saucer Hunted Me at Home” and illustrated by admittedly faked photographs. He had also published trick photographs of “treasure chests” lying on the ocean bottom. In addition, Barauna specialized in underwater photography and was a member of the Icarai Submarine Hunting Club, a group interested in skin diving and the study of life on the ocean floor.

When the _Almirante Saldanha_ left Rio for its historic January visit to Trindade Island, the ship had on board, as guests of the Navy, five members of the Icarai Club. Among the five, in addition to Barauna, were Amilar Vieira Filho, captain of the group, and José Teobaldo Viegas, a retired captain in the Brazilian Air Force[X-22]. On January 16 when the ship was getting ready to leave Trindade, these three friends were on deck, Barauna with his loaded Rolleiflex camera, the other two standing some distance away. Suddenly Vieira remarked on a big sea gull in the sky. Looking up, Viegas immediately shouted, “Flying saucer!” and Barauna snapped his pictures.

No other eyewitnesses have been found, even though the deck was crowded with sailors. The ship’s dentist has been listed as a witness (in one document he appears as two persons, under two different versions of his name) but no newspaper yet examined mentions his story. Captain Bacellar, returning from his post as commander of the Trindade station, has also been listed as a witness but, according to his statement, he was not on deck when the incident occurred.

Vieira, the first man to sight the object, had called it “a big sea gull.” When interviewed five weeks later, in the midst of the saucer excitement, he had changed his mind about its being a sea gull, but he was no longer certain just what he had seen. He stated that the unknown had been in view for twenty seconds at most, and had disappeared too quickly for him to note any details; it was simply an oval gray object that seemed to flash briefly before it vanished. He did not mention the Saturn-like bands around the middle that are a conspicuous feature of the photograph.

_The Trindade Photographs_

Accounts of the Trindade affair often remark that the photographs must be genuine because no opportunity for fraud occurred. On the contrary, there were ample and repeated opportunities. Since Barauna was not under observation when he loaded his camera, he could easily have inserted a prepared film, with no one the wiser. With the type of camera used, the operation would have been simple. He was again free from observation when he developed the negatives. Captain Bacellar escorted him to the door of the darkroom but remained outside, on guard at the door. The only person to accompany Barauna inside (to help by holding a flashlight) was his friend Viegas--the same man who had cried “Flying saucer!”

When Barauna emerged with the dripping film, Bacellar examined it but what he expected to find is a question, since he had not observed the UFO. The witnesses allegedly agreed, however, that the negatives showed the object they had seen in the sky--an amazing feat when we remember that the Rolleiflex film frame is small, only about 2.25 inches square.

In the print of Frame 3 shown in _O Cruzeiro_[X-22], the UFO is slightly more than ¼ inch long and less than ⅛ inch thick. Assuming an enlargement factor of a little more than three, we find that the UFO on the negative would have appeared merely as a pale blur about 1/16 of an inch in length and no thicker than a pencil line. Miraculous eyesight would have been required to distinguish a “Saturn-like” or any other shape.

The Navy’s officers on board showed astonishingly little interest in the film and did nothing to prevent the possibility of fraud. All during the homeward trip the photographer had both the camera and the negative in his own possession. When the ship stopped at Santos, he and his fellow club members were allowed to debark (with camera and negative), and they completed the journey to Rio by bus. The ship had been anchored at Rio for two days before Captain Bacellar, of the Trindade station, finally called on Barauna and asked to see the prints so that he could show them to the Navy. Thus the photographer had been free of supervision for days. In that time he could have produced pictures of little men from Mars, if he had wanted to.

The pictures themselves raise many questions. The three witnesses had emphasized the brilliance of the UFO, yet the prints show merely a gray shape with no suggestion of luminosity. Barauna had used a Rolleiflex camera, 2.8 Model E, f/8 lens, set at 125. Finding that he had overexposed the film, he said, he had treated the negative with silver salts after development in order to increase the contrast. (During this procedure he was, again, without official supervision.)

The prints used in _O Cruzeiro_ have obviously been cropped since, unlike the film frames, they are not square. Frame 1 shows the UFO above the sea, some distance from the island; Frame 2 shows the UFO above rocky crags, at the right of a peak. Frame 3 shows it at the right of the peak but at lower altitude. Frames 4 and 5, not reproduced, did not show the object, and in Frame 6 the UFO is a mere speck low on the horizon.

Frame 3, the only one showing the Saturn-like shape, deserves special attention. In the published print the mountains in the foreground are quite clear, while the UFO is little more than a dark line with an indistinct beginning and end, with a faint suggestion of rounding at top and bottom; without the dark line the curves would scarcely be visible, so completely does the object merge into the background of overcast sky. The picture widely distributed by news agencies is a further enlargement of the section containing the UFO. In the enlarged section, the foreground rocks are a mere black blur, but the UFO has gained greatly in clarity. The central band is darker, particularly at the left, and the outlines of the object are no longer vague.

The Navy’s study of the negatives revealed several dubious features. The details of the land in the foreground were very sharp but the UFO disk was hazy, showed little contrast, and was essentially without shadows. The object in Frame 2 seemed to have been inverted, as compared with Frames 1 and 3. From the reported high velocity of the saucer and the fast shutter speed, some lateral haziness might have been expected, but no such blurring appeared.

Exactly when and how the fraudulent images were produced--if they were fraudulent--cannot be known. Experienced photographers can easily think of a dozen possible devices. The probability that they were faked is overwhelming and, but for the embarrassing fact that the Brazilian President had seemed to sponsor them publicly, the Naval Ministry would undoubtedly have exposed the entire hoax.

In summary, the facts are these: The man who made the Trindade pictures had no connection with the Brazilian Navy; he was a professional photographer noted particularly as an expert at trick photography. No officer or crewman of the Brazilian Navy reported seeing the UFO; in addition to the photographer, only two persons are on record as actual eyewitnesses; both of them were personal friends of the photographer; neither of them had any connection with the Brazilian Navy. The photographer had ample time and many opportunities to fake the pictures. A Rolleiflex camera can easily be used for double exposures. A series of pictures of a model saucer against a dark background could be rerolled and exposed a second time to provide the background, an old and well-known photographic trick. The pictures themselves show internal inconsistencies. The Brazilian Naval Ministry never accepted the pictures as authentic records of a flying saucer.[C]

[C] During a visit to Rio de Janeiro in February 1963, Dr. Menzel discussed this case with some of Brazil’s leading astronomers; they concurred in the view that the Trindade saucer was a hoax.

The final paragraph from a United States Intelligence report provides perhaps the most appropriate comment on the affair:

“It is the reporting officer’s private opinion that a flying saucer sighting would be unlikely at the very barren island of Trindade, since everyone knows that Martians are extremely comfort-loving creatures.”

_Project Ozma_

Astronomers have found no evidence suggesting that intelligent life exists on any of earth’s sister planets. Most scientists would agree, however, that life of some kind probably does exist in other parts of our galaxy and in other galaxies. Even if this probability were certainty and space travel were possible over the vast distances we measure in light years, the chance that earthman and alien will ever establish physical contact remains infinitesimally small. An explorer (whether from earth or from a planet of another sun) would have to begin by locating, among the millions of stars in the heavens, a particular star that had a family of life-bearing planets. If he were able to identify one of these needles in the cosmic haystack, he would next have to find out which of the planets supported living, intelligent organisms. If he could find the planet and set down his spaceship, the explorer would then have to try to identify and to communicate with creatures that might be unimaginably strange--so strange that he would not recognize them as either living or intelligent.

At present, only light waves and radio waves can bridge the immensities of space. Physical travel to other star systems is not now and may never be possible. Nevertheless, men are making attempts to find out whether other intelligent beings do exist outside the solar system and, if so, where. The earliest effort, known as Project Ozma, started a few years ago at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia. As the first step in a systematic search, the astronomers began to listen for possible radio signals from the neighborhood of certain stars. Tau Ceti, Epsilon Eridani, and 61 Cygni were chosen as the first targets because they lie within range of our radio telescopes--ten to eleven light years distant--and because they resemble our own sun in age and type and therefore might have planetary systems not unlike our own. So far, the radio telescopes have detected no phenomena that might be interpreted as artificial signals.

The problems involved are incredibly difficult. A background of radio noise--“swishes,” “whistles,” “tweeks”--comes in constantly from the universe at large. Deliberate signals, if they occurred, would be hard to distinguish from the random noise. Even if signals came in and were detected, they might still be indecipherable just as the written records of some early civilizations on our own planet remain a mystery. Egyptian hieroglyphs were meaningless pictures for millennia until the Rosetta stone provided the key, less than 200 years ago. The many pages of text and pictures left by the Mayan Indians cannot yet be read, except for some dates and a few astronomical symbols. Hundreds of inscriptions exist in the Etruscan language, written in an alphabet that resembles the familiar Greek, but scholars have deciphered only a few words.

If we are not able to interpret the records devised and set down by human beings like ourselves, we will not easily understand signals that might possibly be broadcast by aliens from the planets of other suns.

[X-1] Wiener, J. S. _The Piltdown Forgery._ London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1955.

[X-2] MacDougall, C. D. _Hoaxes._ New York: Ace Books, 1958.

[X-3] Fry, D. W. _The White Sands Incident._ Los Angeles: New Age Publ. Co., 1954.

[X-4] Redondo Beach (Calif.) _Daily Breeze_, September 25, 1953.

[X-5] Bethurum, T. _Aboard a Flying Saucer._ Los Angeles: De Vorss & Co., 1954.

[X-6] Van Tassel, G. W. _I Rode a Flying Saucer._ Los Angeles: New Age Publ. Co., 1952.

[X-7] Cahn, J. P. “Flying Saucers and the Mysterious Little Men,” _True_ magazine (September 1952).

[X-8] Menger, H. _From Outer Space To You._ Clarksburg, West Virginia: Saucerian Publications, 1959.

[X-9] Peterborough (N.H.) _Transcript_, Oct. 30, 1958.

[X-10] Leslie, D., and Adamski, G. _Flying Saucers Have Landed._ New York: British Book Centre, 1953.

[X-11] Adamski, G. _Inside the Space Ships._ Abelard-Schuman, 1955.

[X-12] ---- _Flying Saucers, Farewell._ Abelard-Schuman, 1961.

[X-13] _UFO Investigator_ (June 1959).

[X-14] Michel, A. _The Truth about Flying Saucers._ New York: Criterion Books, 1956.

[X-15] “Have We Visitors from Outer Space?” _Life_ magazine (April 4, 1952).

[X-16] Rio de Janeiro: _O Cruzeiro_, May 17, 1952.

[X-17] Civilian Saucer Investigations _Quarterly Bulletin_ (September 1952).

[X-18] Air Force Files.

[X-19] _UFO Critical Bulletin_ (March-April 1958).

[X-20] Fontes, O. T. “The Brazilian Navy UFO Sighting at the Island of Trindade,” _Flying Saucers_ (February 1961), p. 27 ff.

[X-21] Maney, C. A., and Hall, R. _The Challenge of Unidentified Flying Objects._ Washington, D.C., 1961.

[X-22] Rio de Janeiro: _O Cruzeiro_, March 8, 1958.

_Chapter_ XI

ANGEL HAIR, PANCAKES, ETC.

If thousands of aircraft from other planets have indeed been patrolling the earth for many years (according to some authors, for centuries), they have achieved an incredibly perfect safety record. Disabled or wrecked flying saucers have occasionally been reported, but the debris and bodies to be expected from such incidents have never been located.

A “mummified man,” sometimes referred to as proof of such a catastrophe, may be seen at Caspar, Wyoming. Found in the Rocky Mountains in the autumn of 1932, this little creature measures 6½ inches high in a sitting position and weighs three-quarters of a pound. Paleontologists recognize it as _Hesperopithecus_, an anthropoid denizen of earth during the Pliocene period. The mummified body of another such creature, supposedly found in Arizona, has also been called the remains of “a little green man.”[XI-1] In 1952 four spaceships were supposed to have crashed in the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona, carrying the bodies of thirty-four “little men”[XI-2], but the only evidence offered for this disaster was a chunk of “unknown metal” that proved to be ordinary aluminum, and the entire drama was shown to be the work of a known hoaxer[XI-3]. Although a few flying-saucer organizations regard such “humanoid” evidence with some doubt, others, such as the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) are less skeptical of the reality of “little men.”[XI-4]

UFO publications have reported the finding of various substances alleged to have been produced by UFOs. The offices of Air Force investigators at Dayton house a small museum of such “pieces of saucers”--old batteries, meteorites, parts of primitive radios, rocks, corroded lead pipe, tangles of wire, strips of tin foil. Although a few of these specimens have been sent in by optimistic hoaxers, most of them have been submitted by genuinely puzzled citizens. When analysis shows the normal origin of such an object, the finder usually accepts the verdict calmly, whether he is disappointed or relieved, but occasionally he rejects the identification and indignantly accuses the Air Force of theft, substitution, or plain lying to suppress the “truth.” Nevertheless, not a single fragment studied so far--animal, vegetable, or mineral--shows any evidence that it grew or was constructed on an alien world.

_Angel Hair and Spiders_

Some centuries ago the primitive inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands, observing the feathery, hairlike threads of volcanic glass left on the ground from ancient eruptions, accounted for the substance by the legend that the goddess Pelee had once stopped somewhere in the neighborhood to comb her hair. “Angel hair,” a term in UFO parlance used to describe any unfamiliar fibers, strands, threads, liquids, granules, and powders found on the earth and supposedly deposited from flying saucers, offers an interesting analogy.

_Fils de la Vierge_--the hair of the Virgin Mary--is the usual French phrase for gossamer or cobwebs, whose origin was long a mystery. Similarly the English “gossamer” commonly means cobwebs. According to one source, the word may be derived from _gaze à Marie_--the gauze of Mary. According to legend, cobwebs were formed from threads that fell from the shroud of the Virgin Mary on her Assumption. UFO enthusiasts in France began to use _fils de la Vierge_ in 1952, to describe the cobwebby material that allegedly fell from flying saucers. Translators of the French UFO publications, instead of using the English equivalent “gossamer” or “cobwebs,” chose to create the new term “angel hair” which, unlike the French, implies an entirely strange substance, one that has no apparent connection with such ordinary earthly phenomena as spiders.

Two remarkable falls of angel hair were reported in France on October 17 and 27, 1952. In both incidents, witnesses observed in the sky a strangely shaped, cottony cloud at a height of several thousand feet. Above it was a long, narrow, cylindrical object trailed by a white plume, moving slowly across the sky and accompanied by twenty or thirty smaller objects that looked like puffs of smoke. Following a broken path, they made rapid zigzag motions, and left a broad ribbon of white substance that slowly drifted to the ground and clung to trees, telephone wires, and roofs of houses. These masses of white threads were described as like wool, nylon, or Fiberglas. When rolled into a ball they became gelatinous and disappeared within a few hours; set on fire, they burned like cellophane.

One witness was able to disentangle a single strand more than ten yards long. None of the material, unfortunately, was preserved for study.

Students of UFOs pondered the unusual phenomenon: “If the observers really did see what they described, and if all these objects were machines guided by a single intelligence, then what mysterious experiment were they performing? What purpose was served by the strange ballet of paired saucers? What was the meaning of the whitish streak appearing between two saucers on separation? What, finally, was the ‘angel’s hair’ that sublimed so readily in the air?”[XI-5, p. 150] UFO enthusiasts have suggested various theories of the nature and origin of the mysterious substance. According to one hypothesis[XI-5, p. 149], angel hair might be produced in the wake of a spacecraft moving in a force field; ionization of the atmosphere would produce ultraheavy particles which would react with ordinary air to form a kind of precipitate-angel hair--which would disintegrate as ionization decreased (see _Chapter_ IX). Another theory suggests that angel hair might be a chain polymer of cellulose containing radioactive carbon 14 (the carbon 14 being produced by the action of cosmic rays on atoms of nitrogen in the atmosphere), hydrogen, and oxygen from moisture in the air, the three elements combining under the action of ultraheavy particles produced by ionization[XI-6]. This theory overlooks the fact that cellulose is not formed from a combination of carbon dioxide, oxygen, and hydrogen in air. Rather, it is made by living organisms in a series of complicated enzymic reactions. Even if cellulose could be made by the hypothetical reaction suggested, it would contain no more carbon 14 than does the ordinary carbon dioxide in the air.

To French entomologists, the angel hair seen in October 1952, was no mystery at all. The objects dancing the strange ballet were not spaceships, but spiders. Far from performing a mysterious experiment, they were merely carrying out the well-established routine of migration.

Each year the young spiders of most species leave the nests of their infancy and prepare to establish their own homes. Crawling by the hundreds or the thousands to the tops of fence posts, walls, or trees, they spin long silken webs which, inflated by the air, carry the tiny emigrants up from the ground. These gossamer parachutes drift up and along on rising air currents, sometimes to great heights; they may soar for a few yards or for many miles over hills and valleys. These migrating balloonists have been observed as high as 14,000 feet, and at sea 200 miles from any land. Eventually drifting back to earth, the spiders detach the now useless parachutes and move off to build new nests for the coming year, while the abandoned gossamer may pile up in great masses on trees, fences, telephone wires, and ground, to decay and vanish in a matter of hours. These gossamer showers sometimes include so many outworn webs that the filmy blankets of fine silk may be several inches deep and may cover an entire landscape like snow.

These migrations occur in spring or, more frequently, in autumn--but only when the weather is exactly right. Spiders may sit patiently for days, waiting for a calm, clear, windless day. On such days the steady upward currents of air from the sun-warmed ground carry the spiders gently aloft[XI-7]. The association of angel hair with UFO sightings is completely natural. The drifting patches of gossamer reflect the sun brilliantly. A whole armada of saucers can appear overhead and then vanish as the gossamer cascades to earth.

The description of the material and the date of the fall both indicate that the angel hair observed in France in October 1952 was of arachnid origin. Even the weather was exactly right--“superb, with a sky of cloudless blue”--for the migration of a smother of spiders.

A similar fall of angel hair occurred in the United States on October 22, 1954, near a school in Marysville, Ohio. At afternoon recess the pupils of the Jerome Elementary School noticed a dazzlingly bright object in the sky. It disappeared, and for the next forty-five minutes both children and teachers watched white, cottonlike tufts floating slowly down to the ground. The material was in long strands, very fine and soft, could be stretched and rolled into a tiny ball, but quickly vanished to nothing and left a green stain on the hands. The stuff clung to grass and cars, draped the telephone wires for a distance of three miles, and was like a misty canopy over the road[XI-6].

Unfortunately none of the material was preserved and no analysis was possible. Marysville is near Columbus, Ohio, an industrial center, and the stuff might have been waste products from one of the many factories. Since similar falls were reported in Indiana during the same period, the substance more probably was gossamer. As in the French incidents, the time was late October and the weather was perfect, a warm autumn day with a sunny, cloudless sky. Both the time and the weather were ideal for migrating spiders to take to the air, float down to earth on their fluffy parachutes, and then discard the no longer necessary _fils de la Vierge_.

Many falls of angel hair that occur in the warm days of Indian summer are probably abandoned gossamer. It is significant that of fourteen such incidents reported in Europe and the United States, all but three took place in October and November, the season of spider migration[XI-6]. In one of the three incidents reported in other months (Horseheads, New York, February 21, 1955) the angel hair was identified as waste products from the local milk plant.

One of the most recent reports of angel hair came from Sebree, Kentucky, on September 11, 1962, when state police and the local Civil Defense director were called in to investigate a strange substance that looked like spun glass, which had been floating down near the residence of Mr. Y in great quantities for more than an hour. The Air Force, when called for advice, suggested three possibilities: the material might be chemicals used in cloud seeding, might be refuse from a defective filter in a chemical or industrial plant, or might be gossamer formed by migrating spiders. The first two possibilities were quickly ruled out. The witnesses, when requestioned, remembered that they had indeed noticed spiders clinging to several bits of the material they had picked up. The troopers’ report concluded, “It is the belief of this unit the substance observed was gossamer formed by huge quantities of migrating spiders moving, which is normal for this season.”

The yearly migration of spiders and sloughing of gossamer is an established fact. As an explanation of angel hair it is far less fantastic than a still-hypothetical cruising spaceship.

_Other Varieties of Angel Hair_

Several types of angel hair not of arachnid origin have been reported in industrial areas, particularly in and near cities that have textile factories. When the filtering system of such a factory fails to work properly, lint and waste residues may be thrown into the air to be carried away by the wind and eventually deposited on the ground. Drifting fibers of nylon, rayon, and other fabrics can mystify an observer, especially if the residues break and disappear when touched. Some cities, such as Cincinnati, maintain an Air Pollution Center to deal with the problems resulting from air contamination by industrial wastes. Scientists at this and other centers often collaborate with ATIC in identifying unknown substances reported in connection with UFOs.

Late in the afternoon of September 25, 1956, a housewife in Cincinnati noticed a strange substance floating down into her yard, a white, fibrous material that curled when she touched it. Wondering if she had found some angel hair, she described the incident to the editors of _Orbit_, a saucer publication; in addition, she collected some of the material in a jar and sent it to the Air Force for analysis[XI-8]. Working in collaboration with the Air Pollution Center at Cincinnati, ATIC investigators subjected the material to chemical and microscopic tests and identified it as waste products from fibers of cuprammonium (Bemberg) rayon, from a local industrial plant[XI-9].

The possible varieties of angel hair increase with the development of new technologies. During March and April 1959, the Air Force received many reports that flying saucers were cruising over the mountains near Coburn, Virginia, regularly used a landing strip on an inaccessible peak of Sheep Rock Mountain, and frequently dropped angel hair on the nearby countryside. The investigating officer collected some of the material and identified it as a type of “window,” the rolls or long strips of aluminum foil used by the military in World War II to produce spurious radar echoes and confuse enemy anti-aircraft fire. The Coburn angel hair was identical with the foil used by Air Force planes carrying out experiments in the area. “Window” falls very slowly; dropped from a height of 40,000 feet, it may easily be visible for some time to ground observers, as well as interfere with local radar reception[XI-10].

A similar angel-hair incident was reported on November 23, 1960, when many residents in southern Michigan and the Midwest reported a mysterious, glowing white object in the eastern sky that was dropping strange material to the earth. Witnesses described the object variously as a comet, a satellite with a tail, or a saucer-shaped UFO. The angel hair was quickly identified as foil dropped by planes that were conducting a test of radar reception[XI-11].

Reports of angel hair still come in occasionally to ATIC and, if the explanation is not immediately obvious, are investigated. On the afternoon of October 12, 1959, officials at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, received a telephone call stating that unidentified substances were falling from unknown objects in the sky near the town of Washington. Two Air Force investigators arrived in the town before evening to interview the witnesses and examine the material.

The first sighting had occurred shortly before noon, when a farm woman noticed an object in the sky, traveling not particularly fast from southeast to west. A stream of peculiar-looking substance, broad as the vapor trail of a jet plane, was trailing behind and floating toward the earth. The object itself was “as large as a football,” brown or black in color, and maintained a perfectly straight, even course. A few hours later in a town a few miles northeast, a man mowing his lawn noticed on the grass two whitish-gray streaks about ten feet long and eight inches wide, extending from east to west. Deciding that the peculiar streaks were a fungus or a mold, he mowed across them; at once a gray dust rose about twenty inches into the air and then settled back to earth.

The Air Force investigators took samples of the dusty earth and grass for analysis. Chemical tests showed the presence of silver iodide. Finding silver in such an unlikely place posed a problem, but it also pointed the way to a solution. Silver iodide and other silver halides are used in cloud seeding to produce rain; long “plumes” of this material, ejected from planes, have been successfully tracked in mountainous country for distances of thirty-five miles downwind. A few questions in the right places produced the answer: research teams from the University of Georgia at Athens and from the Lockheed plant at Marietta had been in the air that day, carrying out experiments in cloud seeding. The angel hair was the silver iodide used in the experiment[XI-10].

Angel hair of less mysterious origin has now found its way into the culinary world. The restaurant of the Hotel Bristol in Córdoba, Argentina, offers “Angel-hair soup,” very fine threadlike spaghetti in chicken broth.

_The Wisconsin Pancakes_

Of the many substances offered the public as proof of extraterrestrial visitors, probably few have evoked more publicity than the Wisconsin pancakes. According to a plumber named Joe Simonton, of Eagle River, Wisconsin, a flying saucer with three peculiarly dressed occupants appeared in his yard on April 18, 1961, and hovered a few feet above the ground. When one of the saucermen indicated by sign language that he was thirsty and held out a two-handled jug, Simonton obligingly filled it with well water and handed it back. Looking through the open hatchway, he saw another spaceman cooking something on a kind of grill. When the spaceman noticed the terrestrial’s interest, he presented him with three “pancakes” from the grill--thin, oblong, greasy, rubbery pastries perforated by small round holes and smelling strongly of goose grease. The saucer then departed. Although Simonton’s curiosity apparently stopped short of tasting these gifts, he took them to a friend of his in Eagle River, a county judge and a member in good standing of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP)[XI-12].

Eager to learn whether the flapjacks came from this world or another, the judge promptly mailed one of them to NICAP headquarters in Washington, D.C., explained its history and requested an analysis. At the same time he gave the story, as far as it went, to the newspapers. After two weeks of anxious waiting, on May 7 he again wrote to NICAP, protesting their failure to acknowledge his parcel and demanding either an analysis or the pancake. This time he received a prompt reply: NICAP deplored the publicity involving the organization with such a fantastic-sounding claim, but agreed to send the stuff to a chemist.

Meanwhile time was passing and pancakes, at least terrestrial ones, don’t last forever. Without waiting for the report from the chemist the judge submitted one of the remaining pancakes to Air Force investigators of UFOs. On May 25--the cakes were now more than a month old--he wrote a third letter, excoriating NICAP for its lack of enthusiasm over the evidence, and sent a carbon copy to Ray Palmer, editor of _Flying Saucers_, who in the early days of UFOs had been their staunch proponent (see _Chapter_ II). The magazine promptly published the letter, with comments, as well as an editorial that solemnly reproached NICAP for its attitude toward contactee stories in general[XI-13].

If the magazine and the judge had planned the entire episode deliberately to embarrass NICAP, they could not have timed it better. Busy trying to promote a Congressional hearing on flying saucers, NICAP apparently had no time, facilities, or inclination to investigate flapjacks of such dubious origin. Interrupted by phone calls, besieged by reporters, and generally harassed, NICAP mailed the cake to an Ohio physics professor, a member of the organization, in the hope that he could induce his colleague in the chemistry department to analyze the cake. Since the chemistry professor was ill, the physics professor returned the specimen to headquarters in Washington. Old and tired as it must have been by this time, the cake then was dispatched to New York to another NICAP member, a chemist, who began some preliminary tests.

Sometime during these weeks the Air Force announced the results of its analysis. The pancakes consisted of starch, fat, buckwheat hulls, soybean hulls, wheat bran, and other common substances; bacteriological and radiation readings were normal[XI-14]. Obviously the specimen had been an ordinary pancake fried on earth--or else the spacemen’s home planet produced grains that are indistinguishable from those flourishing on earth.

NICAP, however, had the last word. Preliminary tests by their chemist had shown that the cakes contained a common type of hydrogenated oil shortening that melted at body temperature. Further tests were temporarily delayed because of the expense. However, NICAP assured the judge, the tests would be completed sometime, and any fragments left over would be saved and returned![XI-15]

_The Moon Bridge_

On the evening of July 29, 1953, Mr. J. J. O’Neill, a science reporter for the New York _Herald Tribune_, was looking at the moon through his small telescope when he saw what he believed to be a shaft of light shining from the mountainous ridge above the Mare Crisium crater and fanning out into the shadowed area of the crater wall. According to his interpretation, the light was coming from underneath a new structure, a gigantic natural bridge twelve to twenty miles long that arched over a gap in the mountainous rim. This region of the moon had been thoroughly studied and mapped during the previous century and no such feature had ever been noticed. The sudden appearance of so spectacular an object, if true, would indeed require explanation. Alerted by news reports of the moon bridge, a British amateur astronomer, H. P. Wilkins, reported a few weeks later that he, too, could see the mysterious arch through his telescope (see Figure 16).

To saucer enthusiasts these reports constituted proof that the moon was inhabited. Since Nature alone could not have formed such an arch in so short a time, they argued, the bridge must be artificial. The structure might have been built by creatures living on the moon, perhaps in enormous underground cities. These beings might be native Selenites, or they might be colonists from Mars or from planets belonging to another solar system who were using the moon as a base for their spaceships[XI-16].