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Alternate Perceptions Magazine, February 2019


The Mitchell Sisters and the Space People

by: Dr. Raymond A. Keller, a.k.a. “Cosmic Ray”
author of the internationally-acclaimed Venus Rising trilogy, available on amazon.com, while supplies last







“Meet me in St. Louis, Louis.
Meet me at the fair.
Don't tell me the lights are shining
Any place but there....”

Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis
-Billy Murray (1904)

Part I: Initial Contact

It was Thursday, 2 May 1957 when Betty and Helen Mitchell of 1415 Bernadette Street in Florissant, Missouri, were in St. Louis doing some shopping. They were looking for some new summer outfits. At about the noon hour, the Mitchell sisters were getting a little hungry and tired on their feet. They went into a nearby sandwich shop and placed their lunch orders, with Cokes as their beverages. The previous customer had left a newspaper on the bench where Helen was seated. Helen picked it up and there was an article about extrasensory perception that caught her attention. “Look at this, Betty. The article says that we all have extrasensory abilities; but some have a little more of them than others. Do you think we have any kind of powers like this?”

“I just don’t know, Helen. But I am pretty sure that I can read your mind about fifty percent of the time, especially when it comes to boys.” Both of the young women, in their early twenties, chuckled. Helen was about two years older than Betty.

There were two young men at the next table; and both of them glanced in the Mitchell sisters’ direction when they heard them laughing. Betty and Helen realized that they were being observed by the men and decided to just ignore them. After all, they had no idea who they were or what their intentions were. Suddenly, one of the lads walked over to the Mitchells’ table. The sisters, being quite beautiful, were apparently accustomed to receiving wolfish attention. They were getting ready to give the approaching fellow the proverbial “brush off” when they noticed that up close, the fellow looked somewhat odd, even out of place. Helen couldn’t determine in her mind’s eye just what it was about the gentleman that she found so disconcerting, so strange. Perhaps it was his dark complexion. He looked Sicilian, or of some type of Mediterranean ancestry.

The olive skinned man finally spoke up. “I am Velas from the planet Mars; and my friend is Elan from Venus.” Elan had light blond hair.

The sisters thought this must be some kind of joke. They thought that it would be prudent to just keep their mouths shut and wait to see what would happen. Then the blond man came over to their table. The Mitchells noticed that both were dressed alike, but in a rather ordinary fashion. By the way they were dressed they certainly did not come across as space farers like Buck Rogers, Commander Buzz Corry or Flash Gordon. Both wore gray business suits, white shirts, dark-colored, conservative ties and the usual accessories. This was the late 1950s, so accessories would include such items as cuff links, tie clasps and wristwatches. The young ladies did wonder why they weren’t wearing a hat. Even President Dwight D. Eisenhower would always sport one when he went anywhere.

As the gentlemen exhibited an excellent appearance and were courteous of manner and speech, being deferential to the young ladies, the Mitchell sisters listened attentively to their unique come-on. The two men spoke in all seriousness about themselves and their lives on Mars and Venus. “I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about flying saucers on your radio and television programs,” said Velas.

“Oh, yes,” replied Helen, adding that, “but frankly I haven’t given it too much thought, up until this time.”

“The only reason I am telling you any of this,” said Velas, “is because I saw that you two are interested in such esoteric subjects as extrasensory perception.”

“Why yes, we certainly are,” chimed in Betty.

“Well good then, Betty. Then we’ll be seeing both of you again in one week, right here at this same time,” interjected Velas as they turned to head out the door.

After the alleged spacemen left the sandwich shop, Betty and Helen turned to face other, each with their mouth agape. “What just happened, Helen?” inquired Betty.

“Heck if I know. I really don’t know what to make of this. Perhaps it is some kind of elaborate hoax. But whatever it is, I kind of like Velas and want to get to know him better. You can have the blond guy.”

“Why do I always get your leftovers?”

“Don’t be so silly, Betty. I mean, Elan is from Venus, the planet of love. You might be getting the better deal with this one!”

Later that night, after the sisters turned off the Bob Cummings Show at 9 p.m. and nestled down for the night, they both dreamed about what surprises the following week might bring. As 2 May was the National Day of Prayer, Helen mulled over the possibility that their space friends might really be angels in disguise, coming to Earth in answer to her heavenly petitions.



Part II: The Space Flight

A week had passed. Betty and Helen returned to the same coffee shop during the lunch hour. They laughingly wondered if the self-proclaimed “space men” would keep their promise and show up. After having an entire seven days to ponder the matter, the young ladies began to think that perhaps Elan and Velas might really be from Venus and Mars, respectively. Helen remarked, “Betty, I don’t think they were joking about being from other planets. They seemed to have a genuine knowledge of conditions in outer space and life on our neighboring planets.”

“I was thinking the same thing, Helen,” replied Betty and adding, “Of course, it could have been contrived. On the other hand, they both had that obvious seriousness. Frankly, I was really impressed. Anyway, I hope they come back today.”

Just as Betty finished her sentence, the small bell above the door tinkled as Elan opened it, entering the coffee shop followed by his friend Velas. They walked over to the young ladies’ table. Velas reached into a suit pocket and handed Helen what appeared to be an electronic device of some kind, about the size of a small powder box. “What is this?” inquired Helen.

Velas explained, “Dear Helen, this is actually a telephone. You can use it to call us or anyone aboard our ship, at any time you need to talk. We know your hearts are pure and we trust you not to abuse it or to reveal this communicator to anyone else.”

Velas then showed both of the young ladies how the cosmic telephone worked. “Well, it sure doesn’t look like any telephone I’ve ever seen. How is it powered?” inquired Helen.

Velas further explained that, “Just like with our ventla, or scout ship, the device works on the principle of magnetic lines. Let’s just say it’s a type of technology similar to your transistor radio and leave it at that.”

Elan interjected, “We wanted you to have this device so that you would know for a surety that we aren’t making up a story about being from other planets.”

“Crazy!” declared Betty.

“Yeah, just far out!” noted Helen, followed by, “You can be sure that we’ll keep this space telephone a secret. You can depend on us.”

“How would you like to…. shall we say, ‘beat it out of here,’ girls?” asked Velas. “We can take you to our ship. It’s parked just outside of town, hidden from view, parked next to a large barn. We have a safe house on a farm not too far from here.”

Betty and Helen turned to each other and then in unison spun around toward the space men and declared, “What are we waiting for? Let’s go!”

The gentlemen followed the young ladies out the door of the coffee shop and onto the street, where a red and white, four-door Chevrolet Bel-Air hardtop was parallel parked. Both of the space men opened the back doors for their respective girl friends to seat themselves comfortably on the back seat.

“You know we’re not into any kind of ‘back seat bingo,” said Helen.

“Oh, yes,” said Velas, as he positioned himself behind the wheel. “No funny stuff. I guarantee it.”

Velas drove through East St. Louis; and about fifteen minutes later the car was outside the city limits, into Illinois. He drove off the main road until coming to a stop in front of a large barn. Elan got out of the front passenger seat and opened the door of the barn, whence Velas drove the Chrevrolet into the structure and parked it near some empty horse stalls. The sisters stepped out of the car. Then Elan opened another big door in the back of the barn that led into an adjacent clearing, enclosed by a large corral, at which time he pulled a huge tarp off of a 50-foot, bell-shaped flying saucer that was parked about ten feet from the back wall of the barn. The ship looked similar to some other photos of flying saucers that the young ladies had seen in the newspapers, except this one did not have any of the familiar portholes. There were also no apparent seams or even a door on the flying saucer.

“How do you see out of that ship to know where you are going?” asked Helen.

“Well, as you shall soon see for yourself,” replied Velas, “the walls become transparent when the saucer is in flight. It’s a little disorienting at first, but you’ll get used to it.” The Martian then clicked a button on the telephone-like device and a portal mysteriously opened up on the side of the object, whence a ladder descended to the ground. “All aboard, ladies; it is beauty before age.”

Betty hesitated, stuttering, “I, I, I don’t think so. I’ve ch…. changed my mind. I can barely ride in a car for half an hour before getting nauseated.” She paused and then turned toward her sister and asked, “Helen, are you seriously going to get into that thing?”

Before answering Betty, Helen asked Velas, “If I go with you, you are going to bring me back, sometime today?”

“Of course, my dear Helen; I will have you back this very day.”

“OK, then,” said Helen, as she ascended to the top of the ladder, lingering by the portal.

Velas said to Betty, “Don’t worry, dear; we shall have your sister back in about half an hour. Are you still sure that you don’t want to go for a ride into outer space?”

“Oh, I’m sure. Helen has always been the adventuresome one. I prefer to keep my feet on the ground. I wouldn’t even get into it if it were a regular airplane.”

Velas said, “In that case, Elan will stay behind with you, Betty, until I return with Helen. Elan can take you around the farm and show you some of our other wonderful mechanisms. He can also run a sort of brief documentary movie for you on the special color and three-dimensional television set in our parlor so you can see what Venus really looks like.

Velas then joined Helen at the top of the ladder and they stepped into the ventla. “Where are we going, in just half an hour’s time?” asked Helen.

“I thought I’d take you up to our mother ship, the Aregon, and then bring you right back here, just so that you could have the experience of traveling in space.”

With that Helen took a seat next to Velas, who was seated in the command chair at a navigation control panel. The ship lifted off the ground and the walls immediately became transparent from the inside out. The lack of visible walls made her feel as though she were on the merry-go-round in an elementary school playground. She gripped the arm rests on her chair tightly and tried in vain to dig her brittle fingernails into their hard, plastic composition.

During her short ride, Helen recognized the skylines of Chicago and Boston. When over Boston, Velas cut a sharp left and soon the ventla was hovering over the North Pole. A small and magnifying lens opened up in the floor so that Helen could get a better look at polar region. The Earth was shrinking right under her feet, or at least appeared to be. “We are now entering the realm of outer space,” said Velas. “Off to your starboard side you will see our mother ship, the Aregon, commanded by Targon of Abejar. Abejar is the name of the planet you know as Venus.”

Helen was surprised that when they were in close vicinity to the Aregon, the Earth exhibited a reddish hue. “What happened to the beautiful blue orb of the Earth?” she asked Velas.

“Do not fear, dear Helen. You are viewing your world through the ionization flux curtain of the scout ship and upper atmospheric particles activated when we passed through the magnetic field of the mothership. There is nothing wrong with the Earth or the space vessels.”

“That’s a relief,” said Helen.

Having glimpsed the mothership, Helen was immediately returned to the farm in Illinois, to be reunited with her sister. While Helen was up in space with Velas, Elan showed Betty the documentary about Venus, its majestic cities and many natural wonders. She also viewed on the special television a scene from a Venusian spaceport where various types of craft were landing and taking off. She paid particular attention to the landing of a traditional flying saucer with portholes in the temple city of Azure. As that scout ship first came in under the cloud cover, it was accompanied by a swarm of large bees. Elan explained that the bees were harmless, and that Venusians and the bees were intimately connected at many levels.

Pioneer ufologist and researcher, editor of the Saucerian Bulletin, Gray Barker interviewed the Mitchell sisters about their experience in August 1959. He asked Helen why she and Betty, as well as so many others, were being contacted by the space people. Helen explained that at least as far as the Martians and Venusians were concerned, that there was a definite problem insofar as the military antagonisms on Earth might be carried to the extremes, resulting in all-out wars and even atomic conflagrations. Not only would this keep our entire solar system from ultimately moving into yet higher vibratory planes, it might reduce our entire planet to a smoldering, radioactive cinder. Helen declared that she and other contactees were spreading the words of our brothers and sisters from other planets in order to prepare the people of Earth for mobilization in creating a better world for everyone and a future filled with many wonderful sights and events as we all transition into the new age of Aquarius.


Part III: Gray Barker’s “Psychic” Interpretation

Gray Barker popularized the contactees in all of the publications of his Saucerian Press, headquartered in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Barker believed that there was some basis to all of the accounts provided by the contactees. The ufologist mused, “There must have been some stimulus, probably a meeting up with the unknown, such an alien and complex meeting that the contactees may have built a mental framework around the experience which would allow them to explain it in everyday terms. They probably did not consciously make up the framework. Instead, their subconscious minds may have provided some basis of reality with which to make the experience understandable.”

When referring to the Mitchell sisters’ encounter with the space men, Barker noted that insofar as he and the editorial staff of the Saucerian Bulletin were concerned, they made a lot of sense, especially since Helen and Betty asserted that our entire solar system was moving into a higher vibratory plane. In the September 1959 issue of the Saucerian Bulletin (Vol. 4, No. 2), Barker wrote, “If that were true, could it not account for many of the strange things man has been witnessing in such great numbers since 1947? Some of the saucers just don’t seem to be genuine material craft. Some of them are obviously amorphous, appear as strange masses which can change shape and even vanish before your very eyes.”

Barker began to think that other researchers like Meade Layne of the Borderland Sciences Research Associates of San Diego, California, or New Zealand’s Trevor James Constable, the author of the popular flying saucer book, They Live in the Sky (San Diego, CA: Book Tree, 1958), might not be talking through their proverbial hats after all. Both of the referenced researchers had stated unequivocally on numerous occasions that they believed that some UFOs were indeed of an ethereal composition and came from other dimensional planes.

They also believed that there were other physical objects intelligently controlled and directed to Earth from other planets on our own third-dimensional plane of existence.

In the November-December 1958 issue of the Borderland Sciences Research Associates’ Round Robin newsletter, Layne profoundly took note that, “Our planet, our culture, our philosophy, religion and science are (so to speak) rushing headlong into an incredible ‘psychic’ adventure. We are knocking at the doors of all mysteries, not without hope, and not without apprehension and imminent danger. Now the keys to these doors (many of them) have been known from old times, though the West has disregarded them; they are found in occult studies and the concept of oriental metaphysics--- distasteful as this truth may be to Western scientism, is not science.”

“So,” opined Barker, “if the Mitchell sisters and their spacemen friends are right, we can expect to see more saucers, and even weirder things, as time goes by. Maybe it’s because I am interested in such things, and read more about them; but it seems to the editor that there has been a definite step-up in man’s interest in the borderland sciences, such as telepathy, spiritualism, reincarnation, and other strange subjects; and that this interest has been intensified or maybe brought about by flying saucers.”

(Note: Dr. Raymond A. Keller will present a power point discussion on the history of the top secret Project Diana and the Flying Saucer Connection as well as the early beginnings of UFO research groups and contactees in the Garden State at the Monmouth County Library, Atlantic Highlands Branch, 100 1st Ave, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, on Saturday, 16 January 2019, 2:00-4:30 p.m. The doctor will answer questions and autograph books following this important event. You won’t want to miss it! POC for additional information is Joseph Foster of Central New Jersey Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Also, the “Cosmic Ray” will be on tour throughout the People’s Republic of China from mid-March through the first week of April, being sponsored by Rob Potter’s Victory of the Light and a coalition of Chinese UFO and paranormal study groups.


Friday, March 29, 2024