Editor’s note: One of the more controversial topics in the field of ufology and exopolitics is the one of extraterrestrials living among us. We recently published an article from Karel Rasin highlighting two such cases in the Czech Republic, which generated a lot of interest, and some discussions on Facebook. So we thought it would be a good idea to ask the members of our panel what their thoughts and experiences on the subject were. Virtually all of them, however, politely declined to submit a contribution, this time. Not that the topic is taboo. But the replies were all the same: most did not feel comfortable writing about a topic that they did not have any first- or even second-hand experience with. They all were familiar with the stories, but nobody thought the available evidence was very persuasive. Only Gerard Aartsen sent in the following piece.
Gerard Aartsen: Aliens living among us
According to the latest astrobiological insights, “once life originates, the evolution of organisms functionally similar to plants or animals on Earth will naturally follow given enough time and a suitable environment.” A very similar notion was expressed at the opposite side of the spectrum that ranges from scientific reasoning to religious faith, by Pope John XXIII who said, after an encounter with a being from a space ship in 1961: “The sons of God are everywhere. Sometimes we have difficulties in recognizing our own brothers.”
So perhaps it should not surprise us when we find that many other contactees have made statements which confirm that the human form – head, trunk and extremities – is a universal occurrence, such as FIDE President, former President of Kalmykia Kirsan Ilyumzhinov; Italian science and aviation journalist Bruno Ghibaudi; Chilean author Enrique Barrios; US author George Adamski; Italian university professor Bruno Sammaciccia; Canadian engineer Wilbert Smith, Italian Consul Alberto Perego; and many others who have reported meeting extraterrestrial humans.
My latest research of original accounts of contact, which are now mostly dismissed as a result of the disinformation campaign starting in the mid-1950s, shows that their experiences are in fact corroborated by many later contactees, including the dignitaries mentioned above. For instance, George Adamski said: “The visitors have made themselves inconspicuous while on Earth, conforming rigidly to our customs; for they are aware many people still find it hard to believe advanced human beings surround us in space. They are cognizant of the ridicule those whom they contact must face…” (Cosmic Science bulletin) One of the visitors who contacted Adamski told him: “We live and work here, because, as you know, it is necessary on Earth to earn money with which to buy clothing, food, and the many things that people must have. We have lived on your planet now for several years.” (Inside the Space Ships)
In order to keep this low profile, they do ask for help from their contactees sometimes, as Howard Menger elaborates in his book From Outer Space to You: “I found I was actually helping them in little material ways, and such occasions I enjoyed as much as the periods of instruction. Often I purchased clothing and took it to the points of contact. Visitors just arriving from other planets had to be attired in terrestrial clothing so they could pass unnoticed among people.” Very similar accounts have come forward about the Italian Friendship Case of contact with well over a hundred Italians that started in 1956.
Chilean author Enrique Barrios, who wrote about his 1985 experience in his novel Ami, Child of the Stars, was told that contact with individuals, as has been the space visitors’ modus operandi, does not constitute interfering in our evolutionary development. “To show ourselves openly, to have mass communication, would be…” and if there were to be a mass landing “thousands of people would die of shock. Remember all your movies about invaders? We are not inhumane, we wouldn’t want to cause something like that.”
Another American contactee, Buck Nelson, was also told there are many space visitors among us: “The folks I talked to spoke English very well. It seems that they learn the language of the people they will be contacting. They have told me that there are many of them amongst us. They have even taken some of our government officials up in their ships, but the officials are afraid to tell about it for they have too much to lose. I have no family to suffer for what might happen to me.” In blatant violation of the freedom of thought so strictly adhered to by the space visitors, and echoing the experiences of George Adamski, the Italian journalist Bruno Ghibaudi and many other contactees, Mr Nelson intimated: “I cannot say that I have been threatened, but I was offered a check for a thousand dollars if I would never tell my story again.”
Dutch associate professor in Philosophical Anthropology at Erasmus University Rotterdam Ger Groot said in a recent article: “Who knows, humanity might one day look back with incomprehension at our future encounter with life from space. For, just as [when we ourselves encountered different cultures] in the 16th century, we will not immediately recognise the destiny we share with them. At first we will likely overlook these ‘brothers’ entirely.”
Astrophysicist Dr Carl Sagan and others before him have also said that we are all born of the same stardust, so we would do well to ask ourselves which part of (extraterrestrial) life could justifiably be called ‘alien’? Because what would it be alien to? Perhaps it would be more correct or adequate to speak of “extraterrestrials living among us”, and to reserve the term ‘alien’ to indicate attitudes and behaviours that go against the universal values that the human heart exhibits on Earth and elsewhere – respect, tolerance, freedom and justice for people and planet.
Gerard Aartsen, M.Ed., is a researcher and the author of three books about the extraterrestrial presence, most recently Priorities for a Planet in Transition – The Space Brothers’ Case for Justice and Freedom (2015).