What Planet Am I On? (19 page)

‘What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to?’ wrote Churchill. ‘What can it mean? What is the truth? Let me have a full report at your convenience.’

There is also a file in which a scientist who said his grandfather was one of Churchill’s bodyguards accused Churchill of covering up a close encounter between an RAF aircraft and a UFO during the Second World War. This scientist explained how his grandfather, who served with the RAF in the war, was present when Churchill and US General Dwight D. Eisenhower discussed how to deal with the UFO encounter.

The man, who is not named in the files, said Churchill was reported to have exclaimed: ‘This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic amongst the general population and destroy one’s belief in the church.’

When some other geezer who was in the meeting said he thought it was a UFO, Churchill declared that the incident should be classified ‘for at least 50 years and its status reviewed by a future Prime Minister’. Which is why we’ve only just found out about it now, sixty years later. Makes you wonder what has happened more recently but won’t be announced until another fifty or sixty years have gone.

There’s also a file in the National Archives about some geezer from Leeds who had put a bet on at Ladbrokes in 1990 on whether alien life would be discovered before the end of the century. The actual betting slip says, ‘Aliens to have landed (dead or alive) on Earth before 31 December 1999’. Ladbrokes gave him 100–1 and he stuck £3 on it. Apparently the geezer was pissed off because he reckoned that he had won his bet, but Ladbrokes wouldn’t pay out because the United Nations had not confirmed the existence of aliens. I saw he had another bet on the same slip – he’d stuck £2 on Germany to win the 1990 World Cup, so at least he made his money back!

Spending a day with Nick going through the files at the National Archives has been fascinating. There is evidence from a lot of credible witnesses, including police officers, military police and members of the Air
Force, not just fruitcakes or bubblegum heads. The vast quantity of UFO reports in the National Archives prove that many people in the UK believe they exist.

For someone like me who is fascinated by UFOs, it makes me feel reassured that I’m not alone in this world.

In more ways than one.

AFTER SPENDING SOME
time with Nick Pope at the National Archives, I begin to think about how UFO witnesses in this country are treated. When UFO stories are covered in the media, they’re more often than not the jokey item at the end of the news, despite the fact that large numbers of the population believe they exist. Perhaps that is one reason why there are specialist UFO groups and societies. It must be hard if you’ve had an experience but people around you don’t believe a word you’re saying – no wonder you’d go looking for people who had had similar experiences.

The next day I meet with a former clinical psychologist, Dr Peter McCue, who I mentioned earlier. He worked for many years as a clinical psychologist in the NHS, and has a longstanding interest in psychical research and
ufology. I want to learn more about his take on why people join these groups and whether or not they help validate UFO sightings. Peter seems a bit wary of some of these groups.

‘I suppose if people believe and have a certain belief they might want to recruit to make other people share that belief. It makes them feel better and there may be processes within the group where someone becomes a kind of guru figure, and if they’re believed then other people will follow that. I think that sort of activity is one that can bring the whole subject into doubt in other people’s minds.’

I can see Peter’s point – some UFO groups can be seen as a bit wacky, but I want to check one of them out for myself.

After doing some research, me and the team decide to check out the UFO Academy, which is based in a gaff called High Elms Manor in Hertfordshire, just outside Watford. High Elms Manor is a Grade II listed Georgian house, which is owned by Sheila O’Neill and the UFO Academy is run by her daughter Catrine and Catrine’s partner Edwin. It’s a group for people who want to share their experiences and ‘investigate all aspects including the spiritual connection’.

It’s a lovely gaff and Catrine is really welcoming to me, but after that nice introduction the evening starts to go downhill as far as I’m concerned. I’m sitting there in this group of people for about three hours in total, but it feels a lot, lot longer. Almost as soon as the evening starts,
I’m actually a little shocked about how amateur it all is. I don’t want to be rude to anyone, but the majority of stuff that the group presents to us about their experiences is just so . . . small time. It’s just really bog-standard stuff that might have impressed people in the fifties, but not in this day and age. At one point someone gets up and shows the whole room a projection of a picture they took, which looks to me like a Reni hat – you know the kind of hats that Reni from the Stone Roses wears? – and claims it’s a bloody UFO. I’m like, ‘Really? Come on, man!’ I’m sorry, but I’m really just not impressed at all.

Someone gets up at one point and starts talking quite happily about how they have been abducted by aliens and all about the experience. Now, I’m sorry, but I don’t think you would be that happy about being abducted if you had been. The people who are believable to me are the ones who say they have been abducted but are obviously still traumatized by it. The ones who look like they have just come back from Beirut, Vietnam, Northern Ireland and the Normandy landings all rolled into one. The people here look like they have just come back off holiday.

I’m not having it. But most of the congregation are lapping it up. It feels more like a group therapy session than an investigation into the paranormal, it really does. At one stage one of the speakers says, ‘Make it normal, make it real, speak from your heart . . .’

At the end of the evening, I just feel like all these people might have slightly empty lives and are looking
for something to believe in, and for someone to believe them. I almost feel they believe it more than Catrine and Edwin who run the gaff. I think it’s good that there is a community for believers, but it’s not for me.

After my experience at the UFO society, we decide to delve a bit deeper into the spiritual side of ufology, which is all new to me. I don’t really have any other beliefs apart from UFOs, so there’s no real spiritual slant to my own personal belief in UFOs. But I’m about to find out a bit more about those people who mix religion and the extraterrestrial.

I’m visiting a worldwide organization called the Aetherius Society at their headquarters in London. It was started back in the fifties by people who believe that contacting extraterrestrials is the key to healing humanity and restoring balance on planet Earth. They also combine their beliefs in UFOs with bits that they nick like a magpie from other religions, as well as a bit of yoga. I’m sure it won’t surprise you that I’m not exactly a massive yoga nut. The only geezer from round our way who’s into yoga is Ryan Giggs, who lives just round the corner. Mind you, it’s done him all right with the football, he’s about sixty-three now and he’s still playing for Man United.

After my last group experience at the UFO Academy, I’m feeling a bit apprehensive. Especially as I’ve read up
a bit more about the Aetherius Society on their website, which explains how they believe they are ‘cooperating with the Gods from Space’. I don’t want to start prejudging anyone, but when someone tells me they’re ‘cooperating with the Gods from Space’, then forgive me if a little alarm bell starts ringing.

Shaun’s X-Files

The Aetherius Society is a UFO religion founded by George King in the 1950s, which combines belief in UFOs with yoga and ideas from various religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Theosophy. The society was set up by King after a voice said to him, ‘Prepare yourself! You are to become the voice of Interplanetary Parliament.’

Its goal is ‘to prevent the annihilation of the Earth by improving cooperation between humanity and various alien species, and by improving the spiritual lives of the world’. The society claims that various disasters may be prevented by prayer, often aided by ‘Spiritual Energy Batteries’ that store healing psychic energy.

The members are preparing for the ‘Next Master’, a messianic figure who they believe will descend to Earth in a flying saucer. The society is named after Aetherius – King said he was in telepathic contact with this being who is believed to be a ‘Cosmic Master’ from Venus, along with Buddha and Jesus.

One of the first things I notice on my visit is that there seems to be quite a lot of money pouring into the place, with Bentleys and Mercs parked outside – I don’t think many of the members had taken two buses to get there, put it that way. The headquarters is in a pretty respectable area and the people I meet there have good jobs – company directors and what have you. It does make me think that perhaps it is no coincidence that the Aetherius Society is located here, in a leafy party of posh London, rather than in Burnley or Doncaster, you know what I mean?

I meet Richard Lawrence, who is the Executive Secretary of the Aetherius Society for Europe, and a Bishop in the Aetherius Churches. He’s a really nice bloke, and we have a good conversation, with him explaining the background of the society and me letting him know where I’m coming from. He doesn’t even get the hump when I rib him a bit about some of the more far-out elements of their beliefs. He’s done loads of TV and radio over the years, everything from GMTV to LBC, and had a column in the
Observer
newspaper. He discovered the Aetherius Society in 1971 when he was a student at Hull University, and he found that it answered a lot of his questions, so he got more and more interested in it.

Tonight, I’m here to sit in on their two-hour service or prayer meeting, and I appreciate them letting me do that because it’s quite a private thing, isn’t it?

If I thought the UFO Academy was slightly weird, then the Aetherius Society is next-level stuff. At one
stage they all start chanting a mantra, ‘ommmm, titty, titty, ommmmmm, titty’. I’m not being funny, it’s hard work. Sitting there for two hours chanting the mantra and everything is enough to make you lightheaded and dizzy.

Towards the end they’re all praying to a box and the spiritual energy inside it, or the ‘Spiritual Energy Battery’ as they call it. Basically, as far as I can work out, they’re all channelling their energy into this box, which they then send out to the universe. I mention to Richard that I’m not sure about the whole putting-energy-inside-a-box thing and that it all seems a bit farfetched.

He says, ‘It
is
different, I admit, and I don’t really expect you to take my word for it, I just invite you to see what we do. We discharge this, as we call it, in cooperation with beings from other planets, and we keep a log of the discharges and where it goes to and when, and we see what the effects are over a period of time.’

It’s exactly the sort of stuff that Louis Theroux would lap up, you know what I mean? He’d play along and be really dry through it all, like he was smarter than them. As I’ve said, I’d rather not do that. I don’t want to just rip the piss out of people’s beliefs, but I’m just not buying this lot at all. To be honest, this is not exactly the type of ufology I was mad keen on exploring for this book and my TV show, but I suppose you’ve got to look at all avenues, haven’t you?

Richard and the people in the Aetherius Society obviously believe it and at the end of the day, is there much difference between praying to a Spiritual Energy
Battery and praying to a tabernacle in a Catholic church? Catholics reckon that Christ is in the tabernacle, so these Aetherius dudes believing that energy and all their prayers are in a box is not that different. My vibe is that if they believe it – and I can tell by the look in the eyes of some of the congregation that they really do believe it – then just leave them to it, let them get on with it. They’re not exactly hurting anyone, are they? There are thousands of people in churches across Britain every Sunday morning who are involved in ceremonies that are not too dissimilar. So I’m prepared to try and respect the Aetherius stuff like any other religion or belief. But I won’t be back any time soon.