Chapter VII FLYING SAUCER CONVENTION IN HOLLYWOOD
During those last days I was at Lockheed I thought often of Neptune’s cryptic words: “The road will open, Orfeo; walk it as you will,” And later when he said: “I smile upon you, Orfeo, for your greatly enhanced numbers.”
Then his last prophetic words, “Strength and courage will be given to the millions who will rise and meet the great battles ahead with only a faint hope on their side for victory.”
It was true, I thought; the road was beginning to open. New understandings and an ever increasing awareness were coming to me as time passed. Also, as more and more people learned of my experiences many began to phone, write, or visit at our home, wishing to know more about the space visitors. We continued the regular meetings at the Los Felix Club House, but as the crowds increased, the Club House was know longer large enough to accommodate everyone. It was then that Max Miller, President of the Flying Saucers International, an organizational devoted to the study of flying saucer phenomena, and Jerome Criswell, the well-known columnist and television Man of Prophecy, suggested that we rent the music room in the famous old Hollywood Hotel for our weekly meetings. Thus we had been meeting their for several months every Sunday or afternoon. Opinions were exchanged and lectures on saucer phenomena were presented to enthusiastic audiences.
Paradoxically enough, as the general public’s interest in the saucers increased, the press, radio, television and other news media suddenly and inexplicably dropped flying saucers from the news. Even the second-rate science fiction writers banished the word from their lexicon of horrors. Thus the public was left to grope for itself. And surprisingly enough the way was thus cleared for those individuals who had experienced actual contacts with the extraterrestrials to work freely without obstruction of erroneous “slanting” by official reporting.
Gerald Heard, Frank Scully and Donald Keyhoe were familiar names among persons interested in the saucers. These men, along with fate magazine and Ray Palmer, had been making every effort to awaken the public to the awesome fact that our world might well be under observation by beings from another planet. But now several unknown men were speaking up and declaring that they had actually had contact with the saucers and space visitors. Among those were George Van Tassel, Truman Betherum, George Adamski, George Williamson and Alfred Bailey. Those few newspapers which ran stories on these men did so with the tongue-in-cheek slant.
Sunday afternoons I was speaking to groups at the Hollywood Hotel. I knew that my audience waited patiently for clear, concise, accounts of my experiences with extraterrestrials. But they were often disappointed. Frequently when I stepped upon the platform to speak a strange transition came over me. It was as though another personality overshadowed me; someone who knew all the answers. But the answers were not in my familiar English or Italian, but in an unfamiliar, half-remembered tongue. I would struggle to translate the ideas into English and end up by failing to be clear and direct. Thus with the understanding of the universe almost within my grasp, I was often helpless to reveal any part of it.
Nevertheless less, even with my many failures to be concise and direct, the meetings gained momentum with increasing numbers in the audience.
It was then that Max Miller conceived the idea of a Flying Saucer Convention. It sounded like a tremendous idea to me. With the help of several other persons we enthusiastically began to formulate plans. It was decide that we should hold the convention at the Hollywood Hotel where there was plenty of room in the lobby to accommodate a large audience.
Various exhibits of saucer photographs, space ship models, books, magazines and pamphlets on the saucers were set up around the lobby and many circulars were mailed out announcing the event. Also invitations to speak at the convention were mailed to all persons who had been most helpful in revealing and disseminating information about the saucers and extraterrestrials.
But response to the invitations was very poor. Less than a week before the convention was to open it appeared that none of the speakers that we had counted upon would be present. Max was greatly worried. “It looks like we’re sunk, Orfeo,” he exclaimed dejectedly. “This thing is going to be the prize flop of any and all conventions.”
But as I looked at him, the conviction was suddenly strongly in my mind that everything would come off well. I replied: “Don’t worry, Max. It’s going to come off much better than we ever dreamed it would.”
My prediction proved entirely correct. Everyone of the speakers whom we had invited showed up for the convention, and some others besides. Among the invited speakers were Frank scully, Arthur Luis Joquel II, George Van Tassel, George Adamski, Truman Betherum, John Otto from Chicago, Harding Walsh and a mysterious Dr. “X” who spoke long and eloquently on the saucers. He left immediately after speaking and no one ever knew who he really was or where he came from, although many inquired; for he had some startling things to say.
Almost to a man the speakers said they had received an irresistible urge to attend on Friday (two days before the opening of the convention). Could it be that the space visitors had been at work in their subtle way?
At any rate the convention was a tremendous success. For three days and nights the crowds overflowed the Hollywood Hotel out onto the lawns and adjacent Hollywood Boulevard. In fact the response was so tremendous that on the second morning I requested Max to stop all publicity on the convention. Some of the larger Los Angeles newspapers covered the convention. But all news stories were of the tongue-in-cheek type. A few of the smaller, more rabid papers tried to “expose” it as nothing but a promotional “money-making” scheme.
The convention was a hectic one. I was busy night and day and carried on practically without sleep. When I wasn’t speaking, people were surrounding me and bombarding me with endless questions. Many were speaking at the weekly meetings and the three nerve-wracking days of the convention, I never once lost my temper. A power beyond my own consciousness or control carried me through. In trying moments of heckling or confusion an upsurgence of peace and calm would pick me up and give me strength equal to the occasion.
However, on the last night of the convention, the power that was sustaining me suddenly failed and I lost my temper for the first time. A lone women who had been especially persistent in seeking me out and cornering me to revile me and hurl quotes of scripture at me was responsible for the outburst. She knew I was wrong and she was right. And she had books, diagrams and bible verses to prove it. When at last I literally blew my top she joyfully picked up her data and departed shouting that my temper proved I was an agent of the devil. Within an hour I lost my temper several times again.
The most trying experience of the convention occurred when a large group of materialists were literally “giving me the works” in a stubborn, derisive effort to “get to the bottom of my story” and ferret out obvious flaws from a “from a common-sense viewpoint.
Sincere, open-minded, honest persons who are willing to investigate the event of space visitors never resort to such sneering interrogations. They ask honest, sincere questions on points they fully do not understand. But they have an honest desire to know, not to discredit, to sneer and to disparage.
This particular group had their minds set upon “exposing” me. Their methods, although entirely on a mental plane, would make the medieval inquisitions seem innocuous. Like little demons they parroted elementary physics and could see practical, intelligent action only behind the Iron Curtain. They knew that I was a cheap publicity seeker who did not hesitate to lie about space visitors or anything else to further my own ends. No words of explanation could possibly prove anything to them they did not wish to believe.
I had undergone just as bitter and insinuating criticism before, but I was exceptionally tired that last night. I felt almost though I were melting away before venomous onslaught, collapsing at the seams, as it were, and suddenly I felt very, very human and down to earth. I was on the verge of exploding in anger again when a kind of veil was drawn over my conscious mind. The gesticulating figures before me faded to babbling, inconsequential shadows.
As they continued their violent attacks, my thoughts drifted calmly back to a scene of a few weeks before. I was attending a convention of science fiction writers at the Hotel Commodore on Los Angeles. Since my experiences with the extraterrestrials, I have become interested in the field of science-fiction, for I have found that many scientific truths are adumbrated, or delineated, in science-fiction before ever they become realties of our own world.
Many well known writers in the science-fiction field were present. When I came in they were holding open discussions of trends in the science-fiction, the various new markets, etc.
One of the audience asked: “Why have all science fiction writers suddenly stopped writing or even mentioning flying saucers?”
A speaker replied authoritatively that the subject had become taboo with them.
Another member of the audience demanded to know why this was so since the saucers had actually given such an impetus to the science-fiction field.
The speaker had no adequate answer for that one, but lamely explained that the saucers were “old stuff” now.
I was becoming impatient with the proceedings and was on the point of leaving when the guest speaker of the evening was announced. He was Mr. Gerald Heard, the well-known science-fiction writer and author of IS ANOTHER WORLD WATCHING?
Mr. heard spoke with great eloquence and a deep, penetrating philosophy. He berated the writers for turning out material of an inferior grade and warned that the public would not continue to “stomach it”, much less to buy it. Many of them squirmed uncomfortably in their seats.
As he neared the end of his stimulating and thought-provoking talk, his eyes met mine where I was seated near the back with two companions. I noticed that he seemed tired and shaken.
As our eyes met and held a kind of mutual understanding passed between us in ever widening circles. Dimly, I could hear him terminating his speech with these words: There is one in this room tonight–I do not know he is, but he’s going to upset the whole apple cart.” He paused, then his voice reverberated as he added: “He is the Awakener–he has not yet appeared, but he well may be here in this room tonight. Thank you.”
And the mystic wheels between us set in motion by the controlled magnetic vortices slowly receded and vanished.
I looked about the room at the audience, but they were no longer listening to him. Some were whispering and laughing among themselves.
As I looked about that busy room I thought that it was small wonder that the concoctors of science-fiction horror diets had declared the saucers “taboo”. Far too much beautiful reality was on the side of the saucers. Harmony and beauty are much too tame for the horror boys. They have joined forces with the materialists, subversives and egotists to fight the “flying saucer sensationalists” down at every turn.
But the joke is on them, for reality slipped quietly past them and established new frontiers of its own. The science-fictioneers were induced by subtle forces to ignore flying saucers as were many other materialistic sources of information. During the welcome lull the actual flying saucer phenomena and the extra-terrestrials were left to the inexperienced but honest handling of rank amateurs. At first these men were inept and inarticulate, but they are finding their voices and their numbers rapidly increasing. The space visitors had actually only cleared the atmosphere for them. Had the professional spinners of horror-fiction stuck to the theme of flying saucers, the true contacts could never have been able to perform their missions.