Stanford & Adamski II

Ray Stanford was kind enough to respond in the comment section of my previous post. I also made the mistake assuming 'they' were all having drinks and I want to apologise for that to Ray. Being European and not fully knowledgable about American slang I also assumed 'eggnog' was some strong alcoholic concoction but despite that Ray clearly points out he had no intake of that whatsoever. I'll continue my comments after Ray's post.

I should correct "Ed V"'s statement that my twin brother and I were drinking with Adamski the morning he exposed his lies about physical contact with human-like aliens and photographing their craft during contacts.

Rex and I were not consuming ALCOHOL in any form. We were in our late teens extreme 'heath-food fanatics'' and we would not have taken any alcohol whatsoever. Although Ed V doesn't say so, it was eggnog Adamski was drinking. Rex and I drank water while Adamski drank several cups of eggnog. Yeah, yeah, we were DRINKING TOGETHER! :o)

As to Ed V's seeming wish that my account to Greg Bishop might be flawed by old and thus distorted memory, that isincorrect. I began right away, in my teens, exposing what Adamski had told and shown us (such as how he faked the mothership photos), so that in the late '50s, I became the hated enemy of contactee supporters.

My files of copies of letters I wrote soon afterward and have written from time to time since then, contain proof that time has not distorted my memory. The premier UFO historian, Jerry Clark, can confirm that I told him about Adamski's confessions decades ago.

It was Adamski's kind-hearted confession to us (I think he didn't want to see us teenagers waste our potentially productive lives wrapped up in his hoaxes.) that made me, afterward, even more determined to record UFOs and their propulsion physics with high-resolution cameras, recording magnetometer, recording gravimeter, spectrum camera, high-resolution audio recording, etc. My project and I have succeed in using all such equipment.

And, by the way, that part of Adamski's confession (that he never had any physical contacts) was made to Rex and me that morning BEFORE Alice had even finished making Adamski's very first cup of eggnog. It was after we came back from looking at Adamski's earliest book, Pioneers of Space, that Adamski drank several eggnogs and told us about, and took us into, his "lab". He wasn't visibly intoxicated at any time, but could have been a bit loosened up from the alcohol.

Finally, keep in mind that when someone has believed things like Adamski's Polish lampshade (aka, "scout ship") photos, and happens to see a domed disc in the sky, there is the perceptual tendency to perceive things in familiar or desired terms. It is unsurprising that while Adamski's photos were being frequently seen in the media, some were misinterpreting the domed disc they saw as closely resembling like the clearer photo images Adamski had provided. To not consider that scientifically demonstrated fact about perception is to display ignorance of human nature. As to persons faking photos deliberately to resemble Adamski's lamp shade (with ping pong balls glued on), as I said on Greg's Radio Mysterioso, Howard Menger crudely painted his 'scout ship' and did obvious 'table-top' photography for his 'on the moon' photos. I notice you didn't mention the Stephen Darbishire 'scout photos' so touted by Leonard Cramp. :) They were a better painted fake than Menger could ever have produced, and Stephen Darbishire's subsequent statements have made the hoax clear to anyone but fools. By the way, Stephen Darbyshire has grown up to be a professional ARTIST. See: http://www.stephen-darbishire.com/

Because of my working at least twelve hours per day toward my project's scientifically diagnostic UFO hard evidence presentation, and preparing materials for the display of my new taxon (genus and species) of dinosaur (a hatchling nodosaur) at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., later this year, I cannot take time to write out all I'd like to tell you, about the Adamski matter, Ed V. Yard".

Ray Stanford

The essence of my previous blogpost on Ray Stanford was (and is) - 'aren't matters taken out of context'. That's it. Let me make myself clear on a number of issues. I'm not claiming your memory is impaired after so many years (and besides, you reported the incident right away at the time). I believe people always capture 'the moment'. If 10 people witness a car accident, you might get differences in detail but all 10 people report the accident and not a pink elefant crashing (that is if they are not on powerful halluciogenics). Memory doesn't have to be impaired and my remark to it in my previous post was more a swipe against mindless debunking then claiming your testimony is unvalid because of the time that has passed. I guess I wasn't clear enough on that one.

I also want to clarify my position on Adamski a bit more. Do I believe everything in the Adamski case is true? No. Did Adamski exaggerate? Yes. Is everything false in the case? No. At the heart of the matter something genuine was going on, that's my take on it. There are a number positive testimonies and unusual incidents which point to that, and which I feel is blatantly ignored by many people. I'll get back to that later.
What I find so strange Ray is that you had experiences of your own yet often you reach a negative conclusion about another person. You spoke on Greg Bishop's show that you conducted a telepathic experiment on the beach and saw a UFO appear. I have no problem with that. In fact, and here comes another kicker, a number of people tried that and had surprising results. Some people even made telepathic requests wanting to see the 'ufonauts' and had strange experiences. Here's one from a fellow named David Hughes Narborough. This is one of ufology's open secrets. If you go out and make requests, you can get exactly what you ask for. . .

I realise that if you want to portray yourself as a bonafide researcher you have to display a degree of skepticism in your work. There is such a thing as peer review in ufology and naturally the emphasis should be on evidence. However eyewitness testimony shouldn't be discarded as irrelevant. If 10 people report a strange occurrence in similar detail, it becomes increasingly likely that the event actually transpired and that's also a point I want to make here. Aside from damaging testimonies regarding George Adamski (such as the one you make), there are a number of supporting testimonies. Lucy McGinnis had this to say during an interview in 1979;

"Here came this great big ship that looked like a dirigible. And George said, quick, get me up there. I want to go
and set up the telescope. So I drove him and Al Bailey up to where he said we should go. I kept looking out of the car and that
ship turned and just followed us. And he said, here stop! So I stopped, and he got out, and that dirigible stopped - quite a ways away. I couldn't very well judge how far away it was. And he set up the telescope. And after he got everything set up, he said, Now you go back."
"My attention was attracted by a flash in the sky and almost instantly a beautifull small craft appeared to be drifting through a
saddle between two of the mountain peaks and settling silently into one of the coves about half a mile from me. It did not lower itself entirely below the crest, while the upper, or dome section, remained above the crest and in full sight of the rest of my party who were back there watching. Yet it was in such a position that I could see the entire ship"
"You couldn't see very much detail that far away, they were far away enough to look like fenceposts. But they stood talking to each other, and we saw them turn and go back to the ship. Now I didn't see (Orthon) get into the ship. And when it left, it was just like a bubble or kind of like bright light that lifted up. Then George went out on the highway and he motioned for us to come out. He told us that he got too close and his arm had caught in the radiation from the craft. And he suffered from that quite for a while. . . You could see where the two of them had walked on the ground. There's no question about that at all."

Here's a comment from Bill Hamilton regarding Alice K. Wells;

I met Adamski and stayed the weekend at Palomar Gardens in 1969. Years later I interviewed Alice Wells for about 4 hours. She was very sincere and vouched for all that was written in that first book and described the mother ship to me in some detail. She told me about an orange oval symbol on the side of the mother ship and how jets came in and it moved on. She declared that she could see "Orthon" clearly through the binoculars. She also recited the story of another visitor that appeared in the little restaurant at Palomar Gardens one day and answered all the questions about what it was like to travel in space.

These 2 comments, made years after the event, are still supportive of the original claim. No kind off retraction like in the case of George H. Williamson. But lets expand beyond the confines of Adamski's inner circle. A mister Alan Tollman, a retired aerospace engineer, claims to have witnessed events on the Palomar Gardens property. Here's his affidavit in his own words;

" In 1956, I was visiting George Adamski. One night, he let me use his telescope and while looking through the scope, I saw a bluish streak that filled the field of view. I quickly looked up but saw nothing. Suddenly, I saw a blue white glow, elliptical in shape just beyond the grove of trees. George was talking to friends in his house. I walked toward the craft and as I got closer, could hear the soft, pleasing "humming" sound. At about 100 yards from the craft, I heard people from the restaurant down hill from George's house yelling loudly, " there is a UFO on the ground." From the restaurant, the people had an unobstructed view of the craft. Suddenly, a man from the restaurant almost knocked me down, saying " there is a UFO out there" and then disappeared. The craft increased in brightness, going from blue white to intense white that seemed to shimmer. The hum sound increased in frequency, until I could not hear it anymore. The craft shot straight up making no noise, into the stars, until it looked just like a star. It then shot off horizontally to the horizon. I went in to George's house and told him what had happened. He said he heard all the ruckus outside, and then just look at me and smiled."

Laura Mundo, a hired promoter for Adamski, had this to say;

Despite that I went on to promote his out-of-town lectures for several years and in time I had my own proof beyond my intuition, of his authenticity. The same type of bell-like saucer he had photographed over his home in California came over my home in Dearborn, Michigan, later in 1954.

Madeline Rodeffer, who became friends with Adamski much later on in time, had this to remark about the footage taken in Silver Spring, 1965;


Lets hop around the world shall we;

'I never thought I would see a flying saucer, much less photograph one,' said Lima architect Hugo Luyo Vega, following the sighting of an unknown flying machine, identical to George Adamski's 'scoutcraft', which Vega photographed on 19 October 1973. On the day in question, Vega had taken a client into the Lima countryside in search of a home site. They had driven about 54 miles inland along the Rimac River when they took a break near a valley surrounded by tall hills. Suddenly, Vega told reporters, 'my client, obviously exicted, told me he saw a shining object in the bottom of the valley that was advancing towards us extremely slowly.'

"The car was not far away. I ran back for my camera, because in that fraction of a second I thought I, too, had seen something interesting. When I pointed my [Polaroid] camera and took the picture, the object was less than 50 yards away from us and about 20 yards off the ground. Suddenly, the object changed direction, headed toward the east and increased its speed. It rose off the ground as if trying to avoid some high-tension wires that came down from the top of one of the hills and crossed the valley, and disappeared from view. It was of the colour of burnished silver [and] shaped like an overturned soup plate with a cupola on top. At the very top of the cupola, there was a round object giving off a fixed, sky-blue light. Lower on the cupola, we could see a row of small windows like port-holes in a ship."

On the bottom of the craft was what appeared to be 'the propulsive force of the object. . . a dark red throbbing light that was aimed toward the ground from a sort of turbine in the middle of the upside-down plate. Near the turbine-like part, we could see protuberances like half-eggs.' The architect said that only about 30 seconds from the time they spotted the object until it disappeared. 'For a moment I didn't actually think the picture would come out all right, for I don't consider myself all that good a photographer, and I was greatly surprised when I saw that it had come out,' Vega continued. 'All the photo showed was the thing's shape, but at any rate this little piece of evidence is enough to prove that it was a real "UFO" and not an invention of the mind.' It took the witnesses some 20 minutes to recover from their astonishment. Vega was reluctant to disclose the identity of his client. 'He is a wealthy man who prefers no publicity,' he explained.

Off to 'John Bull' country;

On a January night in 1978 Sergeant Tony Dodd and Police Constable Alan Dale were driving in the vicinity of Cononley, near Skipton, Yorkshire, in their official line of duty, when a strange aerial machine came into view. 'We were going down a country lane,' Sergeant Dodd explained, 'and you know what it's like up there - it was dark - and the only light you've got is your headlights. Suddenly the road in front of us lit up. Of course, the immediate reaction is, where's the light coming from? But it was coming from above. We stopped the car, looked up, and there was this thing coming from our right to our left.' The object was about 100 feet away, moving at less than 40 mph.' It was glowing; like a bright white incandescent glow, and it came right over our heads,' the police sergeant recalled.' The whole unit was glowing. It was as if the metal of what this thing was made of was white hot. And there were these three great spheres underneath, like huge ball-bearings - three of them equally placed around it. There was a hollow area underneath and like a skirting around the bottom, but these things protruded below that.' It was absolutely awe-inspiring to see it. I don't know how to explain it to you - it was such a beautiful-looking thing. It seemed to have portholes round the dome - an elongated domed area. And what stood out more than anything else was the coloured lights dancing round on the outside of the skirt at the bottom. . . which gave the visual impression that it was rotating. Now whether the thing was going round, or whether it was just the lights that were going round and give that impression, I don't know.I would say it was the lights that were going round because, when you were looking at the portholes, they didn't seem to be going round in a circle as you would have expected.' The object was completely soundless. 'When the thing had passed over our heads it sort of went into the distance then suddenly appeared to come down: there's a big wood to our left, right on a distant hillside, and it appeared to go down in that wood,' said Sergeant
Dodd, who added that a third police officer had seen the object. 'We carried on along this road and as we got towards the village we could see these lights coming towards us from the other direction - it was another police car. We stopped, and he said, "I've just been watching this damn great UFO, and it seems to have come right down somewhere over here!

And Down Under;

My first sighting took place in Stawell, Victoria Australia, in about 1958. (Boy, how does anyone remember back that far.) I was around eleven years of age and it was probably spring or summer of that year as it was a fine cloudless day. Not usual at all, in the other months of the year. I remember the occurrence vividly. It was 11:30 AM and I was about to leave the house by the front door. This door faces due west and if not for the house across the street it would have been possible to see the Grampians Mountains around 20 Km away. As I left the house, I noticed a gleaming silver object the size of a dot at an elevation of 15 to 20 degrees dead ahead of me. It was later estimated by all witnesses to be around 10 Km distant which would mean its height would have been around 1,500 to 2,000 feet. It was giving off a series of repeated bright lights from underneath, Blue, Red, Green, White, in that order. I couldn't see what the “dot” was, but it was hovering in the one spot without moving. I watched it for a few minutes and then called my parents who came and saw the same thing as I did. After a while we called the neighbors from across the street, who brought over their tripod mounted telescope. It was only a 4 inch 'scope but it brought the object into clear and undisputed view. It was a classic early 1950s flying saucer.
A flat bottomed disc with a turret type dome on top with windows and the old 3 ball type undercarriage protrusions beneath it. The flashing lights were coming from a point directly under the middle of the disc. I had seen pictures of the original flying saucers, which by that time, had been resoundingly debunked by officialdom and ridiculed by the press so I was not a stranger to what it was. Nor were my parents and my neighbors. There was one difference I noted from the pictures though. Where the old pictures showed round porthole type windows, this craft had vertically elongated rectangular windows with rounded tops. Just like the narrow church windows you sometimes see. All of us watched that disc hovering there without movement or change until after 1 PM, almost 2 hours. Having other things to do, we gradually broke up and went away and the next time I looked for it, it was gone. With multiple witnesses watching this UFO in daylight for such a long period through a telescope, I conclude that there is no doubt it was an alien constructed flying machine. What its reasons for being there and all the other question as to where it came from, etc., remain unknown, but one thing is for sure…. It shaped my belief in the phenomenon for the rest of my life. Brad Mildern January 5, 2004

Hugo Vega, 1973

Here's my problem Ray. I have your testimony where Adamski spills his guts out and confesses the whole thing is a hoax, and I have many people (independently) claiming the exact opposite. Those few anecdotes I listed above are just the tip of the iceberg. There are more on file (and on the internet) and there's no telling how many testimonies got 'lost' over time or where people never made their story public. If 10 people report a car accident and 1 person claims nothing happend, who am I to believe? If this was a court case, and 10 people point to one perp, and one person says that perp didn't do it (because the perp said so!), how would the jury react?
I also have problems with your statement that "there is the perceptual tendency to perceive things in familiar or desired terms". Adamski's "scoutcraft" is so distinct that it is hard to imagine that people would mistake its form. There are eyewitness accounts where people clearly notice distinct features such as the 3 ball underside, just look at the qoutes above. Then there are also people who didn't report seeing the 'scoutcraft' but some strange light or other anomaly while their observations are associated with the case. It's more complicated, not to mention simplistic to label such observations as "perceptual tendencies".

You assert that "Howard Menger crudely painted his 'scout ship' and did obvious 'table-top' photography for his 'on the moon' photos". Really Ray! If I didn't know any better I would say such words came straight out of the mouth of a debunker and not an objective researcher who saw UFOs himself.

Howard Menger himself stated that the 'moon shots' are not conclusive evidence and that the pictures came out blurred. Not all of them, the one on the left is somewhat reasonable. Like in the Adamski case, Howard Menger had many eyewitnesses. There are many similarities. Howard's wife Conny, ex-wife(!) Rose claimed that they witnessed some of the strange events. Howard's father went on the Long John Nebel show, going on record. What does such testimony say to you? Personally I find it highly improbable that all the people involved are frauds or mistaken.


Howard Menger film, notice the lights. . .

A couple of days before I listened to Greg Bishop's interview with you I came across Ed Komarek's blog-piece on you, that was actually the point of origin. Lots of interesting information. You claim to have close up photos of occupants in crafts. That's somewhat reminiscent of contactee material wouldn't you say? You also seem to have a gift for being in the right place and the right time for confessions by other parties. Perhaps you can see why that would arouse suspicions on my part and how some of my remarks originated, but I want to stop right here.
I'm not interested in a cyberfight and I think we can respectfully agree to disagree. I still have my doubts if matters weren't taken out of context but I'm going to give that a rest. I have plenty of material to defend my theory that some of the early contactee accounts are in fact genuine. Your testimony, although damaging to Adamski, doesn't diminish that. It's also my theory that the early contactees weren't about disclosure but rather about gradual awareness. Take that into the equation and other intelligences might even find discrediting information desireable. In that context it might be even possible that Adamski told you exactly what you needed to hear. I hope you forgive me when I take some pleasure from that notion.