The lure of the edge

This slow-paced but fascinating documentary (almost 2 hours long) features several of the classical UFO contactees: George Adamski, Daniel Fry and Howard Menger. We also meet Desmond Leslie, who co-wrote "The flying saucers have landed" with Adamski, Howard Menger's wife Connie Menger and several people who were friends or followers of Adamski or Menger. Briefly, "UFO Secret" also shows Zecheriah Sitchin and Richard Thompson. No sceptics are included on the show, not even token ones. This is for true believers, romantics and people with a nostalgic longing for the simpler times of benign space brothers, long before the alien abductions and wild conspiracy theories.

I learned a few things from this documentary. In a previous review, I suggested that Steven Greer is a new look contactee. However, judging by "UFO Secret", the new look is pretty similar to the old look.

Adamski claimed to have met Pope John XXIII and the UN Secretary-General U Thant. He further claimed to have briefed scientists on the UFO question, and talked to representatives from both the Pentagon and NASA. He really *did* meet Queen Juliana of Holland. Adamski's followers talked about free energy and how vested interests in society wanted to stop this knowledge from coming out. There was also some confusion over whether Adamski's aliens were physical or spiritual beings, with Adamski insisting on the former, while preaching a message of a Theosophical nature. This sounds eerily similar to Steven Greer, down to the details!

Howard Menger also made incredible claims. Apparently, he retro-engineered an alien craft together with government scientists. The project was top secret, and as a patriotic citizen, Menger agreed not to disclose anything and even to drop out of the UFO subculture. Unfortunately, the documentary doesn't say when the interview with Menger was made - if it was recently, I suppose it's possible that the old contactee decided to don the mantle of Bob Lazar. He retro-engineered himself, so to speak.

Another interesting aspect is the constant contradiction (already mentioned) between seeing the aliens as physical, and seeing them as spirit-beings. This seems to have been something of a sensitive issue with Adamski. At one point, Leslie suggested that perhaps Adamski's colourful journeys to other planets were really a form of astral travel, but Adamski would have none of it. It would only "confuse the issue", he said. Clearly, Adamski wanted to be seen as a kind of nuts-and-bolts UFO researcher, perhaps as a cover for his Theosophical message.

Menger is even more contradictory, but perhaps (in a sense, at least) more honest. At one point, he calls the aliens "angels". He admits that there was something strange about his own trip to the Moon in a flying saucer: it seems to have taken ten days, but Menger was just as clean-shaven when he came back as when he left. Menger proposes that perhaps he never left the Earth at all, and that the "travel" was somehow done with the aid of incomprehensible alien technology. Holograms? Or astral travel...? A friend of Menger reveals that the alien he and Menger encountered in a wood in New Jersey looked like an apparition, rather than an actual physical being. On the other hand, Menger's aliens are extremely human-like (one of them looks like his wife!) and he did claim to have retro-engineered a physical UFO.

This curious contradiction could, in the best of cases, be explained by Menger having a genuine spiritual experience at some point in his childhood or early youth. This experience was then embellished with "physical" traits as time went by. Leslie is quite perceptive (or wily, if you are a sceptic) when pointing to Paul's statement about a journey to the third heaven in the New Testament. Paul didn't know whether he was in his body (physical) or out of his body (spiritual). Of course, the credibility of the contactees would be somewhat strengthened if they would claim to have had spiritual experiences - instead, they constantly "confuse the issue" with their talk about alien craft, free energy, retro-engineering, contacts with the government, etc.

Ironically, "UFO Secret" is beset with the same contradiction. It certainly sounds as if the narrator considers UFOs to be physical, alien space ships from other planets (perhaps even planets within our own solar system). However, several of the people interviewed at the beginning of the program are religious. Thompson is a member of the Hare Krishna movement, and his book "Alien Identities" looks at the UFO phenomenon from a Hindu perspective. Sitchin claimed to be an independent researcher, but at bottom his group seems to have been just another New Age sect, with Enki as God as Sitchin himself as prophet. Leslie at one point actually mentions the Theosophists!

"UFO Secret" might not be the most exciting UFO documentary around, if want you want is action, excitement or infotainment. Another reviewer called it "boring" (a Star Wars fan, presumably). However, if you have an unnatural obsession with the more "fringey" strands of the UFO subculture, this might be precisely what you are looking for.