Letters to the Editor—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, 2020
I saw that you had info on Stella Lansing [article October 2020 issue]. I had a feeling when we spoke with you...that you were thinking of Stella Lansing, but I forgot to mention it that day we did the interview [also same October issue].
I was friends with Stella Lansing and Betty Hill. Phyllis and I stayed with Betty for a week and also visited Stella at her home in Palmer, Mass. We had some very interesting things happen.
When I went to visit Stella in 1977 with my UFO investigator and friend Fred Dennis of MUFON, I had not met Phyllis yet. My investigator had to leave after a few hours, but Stella invited me to stay over at her house in the living room. While there with Fred we had a good time as Fred interviewed Stella and Frances regarding their adventures skywatching.
Later on I saw some UFO footage she and her friend Frances took that never made it to the public and was never investigated. Stella and Frances told me that they had movie film stolen in the past by UFO Investigators with bad intentions to try to prove they were fakes.
When Fred said he was going to head back to Greenwich, Conn., Stella and Frances asked me to come into the kitchen and told me they wanted to show me something very special after Fred left. I had already agreed to stay an hour or more, so I was curious what they wanted to show me. Fred left close to 5:00 PM. I stayed on for another hour.
They took me into the room with the movie projector and Stella went into a back room where they now hid their movies. Stella and Frances were so excited and wanted to get my take on their film since I had been on spaceships before. Now I was wondering what they would reveal to me, since we all knew of the pictures Stella had. Some were placed on her film because there was nothing to see when she filmed an area.
The movie film they showed me was amazing! It showed a spaceship that was invisible that flew over the ground about 20 feet up with pine trees or other trees creating a backdrop. Stella filmed the trees and grass that sloped down from the road and it created a little valley effect. A great place for deer to graze off the road.
Since Stella filmed the spot on a road that sloped down 20 feet or more, the film showing the spaceship would be kind of eye level with the camera. In the film Stella is panning the camera from left to right and right to left, when suddenly there appeared a vertical streak moving very fast in the middle of the screen which moved from the right side of the screen to the left that just disappeared. After slowing the film down I could see from the right side a vertical line of light appear that opened up like doors on Star Trek...to reveal a group of beautiful people standing in tight form fitting Gold colored shimmering spacesuits. I could tell the people were tall compared to the trees in the background. The people were close to 8' or 9' feet tall. They had facial features like my space friends and crew, high cheek bones, sculpted chiseled looks, large eyes. They had muscular bodies and the females had perfected shapely bodies. Some of the men had long hair and some had shorter hair. Some of the women had their hair pulled back and up and others had hair to their shoulders and longer. Most of the people had blonde hair and brown to dark brown looking hair. A few people had hair that looked auburn colored and I noticed there were not any red heads.
I was very excited to see the picture of the space beings moving and a few looked like they were telepathically talking to each other yet...no mouths were moving. Some people were tilting their heads or agreeing in motioning with each other as one pointed out the door as if saying look over there. There were roughly about 12 people standing at the open giant door. I could see they stood in two rows and they were in an arc formation going back away from the door...where I could see the floor in front of the door. There were men and women in perfected body forms. Their skin was golden and looked to almost match the spacesuits they were wearing.
Stella and her friend told me when they first saw the film, they thought the people were naked. They laughed because it was confusing to see the picture moving very fast. Of course, the space people were not naked and there were no real details, but I could clearly see form fitted spacesuits and no baggy jumpsuits, or coverall type clothing.
I have seen spacesuits like that on the spaceships I have been on physically and out-of-body. The spacesuits can be in different colors from silver to gold, to shades of blue, and more. The boots usually match closely to the color of the spacesuit...or may be in a subtle contrast color, or a similar shade of the spacesuit in a lighter or darker color. However, I looked closely at the pictures and they had on spacesuits of shimmering metallic gold with matching slim waist belts as well and gold boots on. I mentioned the belts to Stella and Frances and they could see them when I pointed them out. On the left side of the doorway, there were two males seemingly talking and discussing something, and the man closest to the wall and open door on the left held in his right hand a shiny silver cylinder. He held one end closer to his hand like about 5' inches or so in his palm and the rest of the cylinder was pointing downward towards the floor.
In average human height even though the space people were taller, imagine the man is 6' feet tall and the sterling like silver cylinder appeared to be 2" to 3" inches in diameter and 12" to 15" inches long. The man next to him pointed outside the door with his right hand, as if saying telepathically..."send it over there".
The man holding the cylinder shook his head up and down twice and with his right hand...raised the cylinder over his right shoulder and threw it out of the doorway while the crew watched. The silver cylinder arced a little upward when he threw it and it fell down to the grass off to the right of the screen as the invisible spaceship continued moving to the left of the screen. Also, the cylinder did not bounce but stayed where it fell in the grass. The doorway closed and nothing was visible just the trees in the background. During the doorway opening up and seeing the people standing...the whole background was the pine trees and the forest.
Normally watching the movie speeding by it would look quickly like people were levitating or flying and suddenly were gone! The whole outer part or shell of the spaceship was invisible and there was no movement anywhere to even suggest a wind blew through the grass or the trees.
Stella and Frances were filming the area landscape where they saw a UFO sitting over a telephone pole. It was a year since they saw the UFO to the day and Stella and her friend went to film the spot as an anniversary shot.
It was one of the famous UFO pictures she and her friend took where we can see inside the small car sized spaceship of three people sitting looking out from behind a control area.
Stella told me a month or so later that she and her friend Frances had a falling out and that Frances took the film, claiming she owned the film, because she bought it. The film was never seen by any investigators.
In 1978 when Phyllis and I went back to visit Stella she mentioned that she tried to get the film back to show another trusted investigator, but couldn't get Frances to release it.
In 1979 on March 3, at 3:00PM, SBI Investigators came to see my UFO picture and super 8 films.
In June or so of 1983, I told my investigator from the SBI that Stella and her friend had an incredible film showing people on a spaceship. My friend and SBI investigator Pete Mazzola tried with me also on the telephone, to offer Stella and Frances $500 to let him look at the movie and then he would return it to her. She wanted to try again and asked Frances telling her that Pete was offering some cash just to let him look at the film and have it looked at by his trusted scientists and he would return it in a week. Pete said that he would sign papers and all attesting to that as well and notarize the papers. Frances told Stella the movie film was lost and Stella suspected Frances' husband destroyed it, or tossed it out. She said Frances' husband was always jealous and did not like his wife going out at night looking at UFOs with Stella.
I wish I had taken a snap-shot of the picture off of the movie. Even so, my camera was not a good one to do that with. I even said to Stella and Frances that day I saw the film, you should have let Fred take a picture off of the screen with his 35 millimeter cameras that had great focus and more. I told them that Fred was a good guy and could be trusted, since he had taken my cameras to get tested and I got my film and cameras back. (It seems that they just assumed Fred was not a 'good guy' investigator.)
Stella's friend Frances had died many years ago in the 1990's and they never made up. Sadly, Stella passed away in 2012. The last time I spoke to Stella was in 2010.
She was a wonderful person and I was honored to meet her and have her as a friend that I spoke with on rare occasions by phone. Thought you might like to know that information.
Have a good day.
Peace, Marc Brinkerhoff
New York City
Dear Mr Raynes;
Hello. Greetings from the UK.I hope you don’t mind me contacting you out of the blue like this, but I just finished reading your book John A. Keel, the Man, the Myths… & wanted to mail you while it’s still fresh in my mind.
First of all, let me congratulate you on producing such a wide-ranging analysis of Keel’s contribution to Ufology. Some of the biographical material frankly strains credibility to breaking point (i.e., the bleach-drinking MIB, etc.), but in general it’s a thoroughly enjoyable overview of his life & work. The main reason why I’m writing is to add a postscript to one of the cases discussed in chapter 5, specifically the alleged experiences of an unnamed Tennessee man who “... suffered spells where he’d wake up paralyzed, seeing a dark evil figure nearby, often inches from his face [with] a deep creepy voice ...” At first glance these remarks appear to describe nothing more remarkable than episodes of sleep paralysis, but for me the real zinger comes immediately afterwards, when you add that “... this would always happen at 3.33am.” This curious detail gave me a genuine frisson for the simple reason that I often wake up at exactly the same time. I don’t sense the presence of a dark menacing figure, or hear a creepy voice, but the very fact of waking up suddenly, for no apparent reason, & seeing the digital alarm clock registering 3.33, is disturbing in itself. As a sometime occultist, I’m uncomfortably aware that 333 is bad juju.The number of Choronzon, lord of the Abyss & demon of dispersion, it’s associated with all manner of weird & downright scary arcana (cf. Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian Trilogies. etc.). Have any other readers contacted you to relate similar experiences? Is it a widespread phenomenon? Please let me know. The entire subject is boggling my mind - & if there’s one thing I hate it’s a boggled mind.
Like a lot of old-time UFO enthusiasts I have always been fascinated by Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies (originally published here in the UK as Visitors from Space) & regard it as a true classic of paranoia & creeping unease. In a way it resembles a typical HP Lovecraft story: narrator visits isolated rural locale, meets discombobulated locals & encounters shambling bat-winged ‘Night Gaunt’. I once corresponded with Keel, who told me that the true story of the Mothman/Point Pleasant case had yet to be disclosed. He hadn’t revealed it in The Mothman Prophecies, he said, because it was so far out that no one would believe it. What did he mean? I’ve no idea.
Are you familiar with the case of the Brentford griffin? It caused a mild stir here in the UK circa 1984-85, when several residents of Brentford, West London, reportedly saw a strange winged ‘cryptid’ with a doglike face. Author Andrew Collins, who interviewed key witnesses at an early stage, & went on to write the definitive account of what took place, later suggested that his investigation may have somehow “invoked a cosmic joker …turning myth into reality.” Perhaps a similar process was at work in Point Pleasant. As Sacheverell Sitwell remarked: “In the end it is the mystery that lasts, & not the explanation.”
Keel once gave me a signed copy of The Mothman Prophecies. The inscription says: “Watch out behind you – John Keel.” Good advice for us all to keep in mind. Scott Peters
England