George Adamski

George Adamski (17 April 1891 – 23 April 1965) was a Polish-American contactee, author, and lecturer best known for claiming contact beginning on 20 November 1952 with beings from Venus, Mars, and Saturn in the Mojave Desert near Desert Center, California. His reported contacts were Nordic-type — tall, fair, human-appearing beings — and Adamski was among the earliest sources for the "Space Brothers" paradigm of benevolent extraterrestrial mentors concerned with humanity's nuclear weapons development. The first and most famous of the 1950s contactees, he called himself a "philosopher, teacher, student and saucer researcher" and authored three widely translated books — Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953), Inside the Space Ships (1955), and Flying Saucers Farewell (1961) — whose first two titles had sold a combined 200,000 copies by 1960. Mainstream UFO investigators regarded him as a charlatan and a hoaxer, while his narrative profoundly shaped the 1950s–1970s contactee movement and Japanese postwar UFO culture.

Early life

Adamski was born on 17 April 1891 in Bromberg, in the Kingdom of Prussia portion of the German Empire, one of five children of ethnic Polish parents Józef Adamski (1867–1937) and Franciszka Adamska (1862–1946). The family emigrated to the United States when he was two years old and settled in New York City. From 1913 to 1916, beginning at age 22, Adamski served as a soldier in K Troop, 13th United States Cavalry Regiment, seeing action on the Mexican border during the Pancho Villa Expedition. In 1917 he married Mary Shimbersky — the marriage produced no children and ended with her death in 1954. He did maintenance work in Yellowstone National Park, worked at an Oregon flour mill and a California concrete factory, and in the 1920s became immersed in Theosophy and Neo-Theosophy, by 1930 teaching a personal syncretism he called "Universal Progressive Christianity" and "Universal Law".

In the early 1930s, living in Southern California, Adamski founded the Royal Order of Tibet in Laguna Beach, which met at the "Temple of Scientific Philosophy" where Adamski served as "philosopher" and teacher. The order held a government license to produce wine for "religious purposes" during Prohibition; Adamski later quipped, "I made enough wine for all of Southern California... I was making a fortune!" — and, he privately told friends, the end of Prohibition in December 1933 was when he "had to get into this [flying] saucer crap." In 1940 Adamski, his wife, and close associates moved to a ranch near Palomar Mountain, and in 1944, with funding from his student Alice K. Wells, they purchased 20 acres (8.1 ha) along highway S6, building a home, the campground Palomar Gardens, and a small diner called Palomar Gardens Cafe. He kept a six-inch reflecting telescope in a wooden observatory on the grounds, often giving evening lectures on Eastern philosophy to students and tourists, and allowed visitors to assume — without correction unless "pressed to do so" — that he was an astronomer connected with the famed Palomar Observatory atop the mountain. Admirers called him "Professor" Adamski, though he held no accredited degree and had only a third-grade education.

Early UFO sightings and photographs (1946–1950)

On 9 October 1946, during a meteor shower, Adamski and friends at Palomar Gardens reportedly witnessed a large cigar-shaped "mother ship." In early 1947 Adamski took a photograph of what he said was that same craft crossing in front of the Moon over Palomar Gardens, and in the summer of 1947, following the first widely publicized American UFO sightings, he claimed to have observed 184 UFOs passing over Palomar Gardens in a single evening. He began giving paid UFO lectures to civic groups in 1949, in which he claimed government and science had secretly established the existence of UFOs via radar tracking of "700-foot-long spacecraft on the other side of the Moon," that "all planets [in the Solar System] are inhabited," and that Mount Palomar photographs had "proven the canals on Mars are man-made." On 29 May 1950 he photographed what he alleged to be six unidentified objects flying in formation — an image later reproduced on an August 1978 commemorative stamp by Grenada marking the "Year of UFOs." An earlier witness report from 1942 by one John Bleasdale described a bell-shaped craft over Morecambe Golf Course that "closely resembled the ‘Venusian Scout Ship’ that was to be brought to wide public attention, years later by George Adamski," suggesting the Adamski design had a lineage of sightings preceding his 1952 photographs.

Desert Center meeting (20 November 1952)

Main article:

Desert Center contact

Adamski drove with six companions to a remote spot in the California Desert near Desert Center, California on the morning of 20 November 1952, reportedly on an intuition that contact was imminent. The group observed a large submarine- or cigar-shaped mothership passing overhead, after which Adamski, believing the ship was "looking for him," walked alone roughly half a mile away from the road. A smaller bell-shaped scout craft, reportedly made of a translucent metal, descended into a cove between two low ridges, and Adamski encountered a young, fair-haired humanoid who communicated via hand gestures, telepathy, and mental imagery. The being, later known as Orthon, purportedly indicated that he came from Venus and warned of the dangers of nuclear warfare and the radiation atmospheric testing was releasing into space, with Adamski later writing that "the presence of this inhabitant of Venus was like the warm embrace of great love and understanding wisdom." Adamski described Orthon as being of medium height, long-blond-haired and tanned, wearing reddish-brown shoes and trousers unlike his own. The six companions — who remained at a distance — signed an affidavit attesting to the craft and the encounter, though only Adamski directly met the occupant. Orthon is said to have refused to be photographed and to have asked instead for a blank photographic plate, which Adamski claimed he gave him; fellow contactee George Hunt Williamson said he took plaster casts of shoe imprints Orthon left, imprinted with mysterious symbols. Orthon reportedly returned the plate on 13 December 1952, and when developed it was found to contain strange new symbols.

Later skeptical investigators, notably ufologist James W. Moseley, interviewed members of the original party and reported sharply contradictory accounts. Al Bailey denied seeing a UFO or an alien in the desert; Jerrold Baker, a Palomar Gardens worker, told Moseley he had overheard "a tape-recorded account of what was to transpire on the desert, who was to go, etc." days before the encounter and characterized it as "a planned operation," adding that Adamski had urged him not to expose it by pointing to the lecture income that UFO fame could generate. Moseley also found that George Hunt Williamson had not actually witnessed a UFO or the Orthon meeting despite public statements to the contrary; when Irma Baker accused him of lying, Williamson answered cryptically that "sometimes to gain admittance, one has to go around the back door." Author Raymond E. Fowler — noting Adamski had tape-recorded fellow contactee Truman Bethurum's story and shown great interest in his claims — observed that Adamski had "simply reexpressed his previous philosophical beliefs within the content of the new phenomenon," with "these space people adher[ing] to the same metaphysical beliefs that Adamski had been teaching for twenty-five years prior to their visit."

Saucer photographs

Main article:

Adamski saucer

In the weeks and months following the Desert Center meeting, Adamski reportedly photographed the bell-shaped scout craft through his telescope at Palomar Gardens; the now-iconic 13 December 1952 photograph is said to have been taken during Orthon's return visit. The design — a domed disc with three spherical landing spheres underneath — has since been compared by Michael Salla and others to the German Haunebu disc developed during World War II. Vladimir Terziski argued that the occupants were not Venusians at all but Germans operating out of Antarctica as part of a post-war continuation of the German saucer program. Author Joseph P. Farrell likewise notes "Nazi connections of the famous 1950s 'contactee' George Adamski," situating the scout-ship design within a broader suspected Nazi saucer-development program. Former Navy intelligence briefer Dan Willis argued that Adamski's photographs and encounters were part of a coordinated CIA psychological warfare operation, pointing to a CIA memo by Walter Bedell Smith authorizing use of the flying saucer phenomenon for psychological warfare shortly before Adamski's contacts began.

Skeptics identified the bell-shaped "scout ship" photograph as suspiciously resembling the top of a chicken brooder or a streetlight. Adamski claimed that Cecil B. DeMille's top trick photographer J. Peverell Marley had examined the photos and found a "spaceman" in them, and 14 experts at the British J. Arthur Rank company concluded the object was either real or a full-scale model. However, Moseley's 1955 investigation found that Marley denied ever enlarging or finding a "spaceman" in the photos, while German rocket scientist Walther Johannes Riedel told Moseley the "landing struts" were in fact 100-watt General Electric light bulbs bearing the round "GE" logo, and that the photos were fakes. In 2012, UFO researcher Joel Carpenter identified the reflector-shade of a widely available 1930s pressurized-gas lantern as an identical visual match to the main body of Adamski's saucer.

Orbital trips and mothership encounters

In Inside the Space Ships (1955), Adamski reportedly described a series of meetings beginning in February 1953 in which he was picked up from Los Angeles hotels by Venusian and Martian emissaries walking among humans, driven to rendezvous points in the desert, and taken aboard scout craft that flew up to vast motherships in orbit. Aboard the motherships, Adamski allegedly met additional humanoid crew, including a Venusian named Firkon who acted as an initial contact, a Martian named Ramu, a Venusian woman named Kalna, and another Venusian woman named Ilmuth. Author John Keel noted that "Fir Kon" appeared to derive from ancient Gaelic, "a language completely unknown to Mr. Adamski," as one of several ufonaut names that favor "minor variations on ancient languages." Adamski described being shown views of Earth, the Moon (including its purported habitable far side), and other planets through observation ports, and reported conversing with a 1,000-year-old "elder philosopher of the space people," known as "the Master," about cosmic law, religion, and "Earth's place in the universe". Orthon purportedly told him that his late wife Mary had been reincarnated on Venus, that he had been chosen by the Nordic aliens to carry their message of peace to Earth — as Jesus Christ and other historical messengers had — and that aliens were living peacefully among humans, meeting him at bars and restaurants in Southern California.

Adamski purportedly described the Space Brothers' civilization as one in which government, religion, and science form a unified whole rather than separate institutions. Critics, notably SkepticReport's Marc Hallet, argued that Inside the Space Ships was essentially a "remake" of Adamski's 1949 science fiction novel Pioneers of Space — ghostwritten for him by Lucy McGinnis — whose fictional tour of the solar system was said to resemble the later alleged travels closely.

Books and lecture career

Following the Desert Center encounter, Adamski co-authored Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953, with Desmond Leslie), and wrote Inside the Space Ships (1955) and Flying Saucers Farewell (1961), the first two of which became international bestsellers and were translated into most major world languages except Russian. The books propelled him onto an international lecture circuit through North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, and Flying Saucers Have Landed eventually became "a key text of the New Age movement." Adamski was closely associated with fellow 1950s contactees George Van Tassel, Howard Menger, Truman Bethurum, Daniel Fry, and George Hunt Williamson, and participated in the Giant Rock conventions in the Mojave Desert near Landers, California. His claims of orbital travel inspired an elaborate parallel hoax perpetrated by British astronomer Patrick Moore and his friend Peter Davies using the false identity Cedric Allingham.

In 1953, Adamski told a meeting of the Corona, California Lions Club that his "material has all been cleared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Air Force Intelligence"; when the FBI sent three agents to confront him, he denied the claim and signed a letter acknowledging the FBI "did not endorse [the claims] of individuals." Months later he was again publicly citing the letter as an "FBI clearance"; after a Better Business Bureau complaint, FBI agents recovered the letter and warned him of possible legal action. During the early 1950s, Project Blue Book chief Captain Edward J. Ruppelt attended one of Adamski's Palomar Gardens lectures in civilian attire and concluded Adamski was a talented con artist in the tradition of P. T. Barnum, though he noted his persuasive stage presence — "you could actually have heard the proverbial pin drop" — and the contactee movement's Utopian pitch: "Step right up folks and put a donation in the pot. I'm just on the verge of learning the spaceman's secrets."

Straith Letter hoax

In 1957, Adamski received a letter signed "R.E. Straith" of a "Cultural Exchange Committee" at the U.S. State Department, claiming the government knew of his 1952 extraterrestrial contacts and that high-placed officials planned public corroboration. Adamski exhibited the letter as proof of his veracity. In 1985 ufologist James W. Moseley revealed that he and Gray Barker had forged the letter as a prank using obtained State Department letterhead; the FBI had investigated and described the hoax but filed no charges. Moseley reported the FBI asked Adamski to stop using the letter as evidence, but he continued to display it in lectures.

Meeting with Queen Juliana

In May 1959, at the invitation of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands — conveyed through the head of the Dutch Unidentified Flying Objects Society — Adamski received a private audience at the palace despite court and cabinet requests that she cancel. "A hostess cannot slam the door in the face of her guests," the queen reportedly said. Dutch Aeronautical Association president Cornelis Kolff said afterwards that "The Queen showed an extraordinary interest in the whole subject," while Royal Netherlands Air Force Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Haye Schaper remarked, "The man's a pathological case." Time and United Press International and Reuters wire reports circulated the meeting worldwide.

Kennedy connection

Michael Salla relayed an account by fellow contactee Rob Potter alleging that Adamski arranged a meeting between President John F. Kennedy and Venusian representatives, and that the Venusians were providing behind-the-scenes assistance to Kennedy's administration prior to his assassination.

Later life and Vatican audience (1962–1963)

In 1962 Adamski announced he would attend an interplanetary conference held on the planet Saturn. In 1963 he claimed a secret audience with Pope John XXIII at the Vatican, during which — acting at the request of his extraterrestrial contacts — he reportedly sought a "final agreement" from the pope regarding the pope's alleged decision not to communicate directly with extraterrestrials, and offered him a liquid substance to treat the gastric enteritis that would later become acute peritonitis. Adamski said he received a "Golden Medal of Honor" from the pope in commemoration of the audience; skeptics later noted that the medal was a common Rome tourist souvenir produced by a Milan company and that Adamski displayed it in the same cheap plastic box in which such souvenirs were sold.

Death

Adamski died of a heart attack on 23 April 1965, aged 74, at a friend's home in Silver Spring, Maryland, shortly after giving a UFO lecture in Washington, D.C. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Influence on the contactee movement

Adamski's Desert Center account was foundational for the 1950s–1970s Space Brothers paradigm of benevolent extraterrestrial mentors concerned with humanity's nuclear weapons development, and it was taken up by fellow contactees Daniel Fry, Billy Meier, Howard Menger, George Van Tassel, Reinhold Schmidt, Truman Bethurum, and Frank Stranges. Jerome Clark noted that contactee testimony consistently presented other solar-system planets as "inhabited by physically handsome, spiritually evolved beings who have moved beyond the problems of Earth people," and that the reader of Inside the Space Ships "enters a perfect world, the kind we can create here on Earth if we behave ourselves." Jason Jorjani regarded what the Nordic-appearing beings told Adamski as deliberate misinformation, characterizing the contacts as liars who "lied about where they were from." Adamski's international reach was particularly pronounced in Japan, where his work inspired many postwar depictions of aliens and UFOs in Japanese culture and media.

Literary works

Books

• Adamski, George. The Invisible Ocean. Los Angeles: Geo. Adamski, 1932.
• Royal Order of Tibet (compiled by Professor G. Adamski). Questions and Answers. Wisdom of the Masters of the Far East, Vol. 1. Laguna Beach, CA: G. Adamski, 1936.
• Adamski, George. Pioneers of Space: A Trip to the Moon, Mars and Venus. Los Angeles: Leonard-Freefield, 1949.
• Leslie, Desmond; Adamski, George. Flying Saucers Have Landed. New York: British Book Centre, 1953. ISBN 0-854351-80-9.
• Adamski, George. Inside the Space Ships. New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1955.
• Adamski, George. Flying Saucers Farewell. New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1961.
• Adamski, George. Cosmic Philosophy. Freeman, SD: Pine Hill Press, 1972.

Other publications

• Adamski, George. Petals of Life: Poems. Laguna Beach, CA: Royal Order of Tibet, 1937.
• Adamski, George. The Possibility of Life on Other Planets. 1946.
• Adamski, George. Many Mansions (press conference with Detroit ministers, September 1955). Willowdale, Ontario: SS & S Publications, 1955.
• Adamski, George. Telepathy: The Cosmic or Universal Language. 1958.
• Adamski, George. Man tells of trip to moon (newsreel). Hearst Corporation, 28 March 1960.
• Adamski, George. Science of Life Study Course. Self-published, 1964.
• Adamski, George. Letters to Emma Martinelli (1950–1952). Ed. Gerard Aartsen. Amsterdam: BGA Publications, 2022.

See also

• Intelligent beings on Venus
• Space Brothers
• Giant Rock Space Convention
• Adamski saucer
• Orthon
• Royal Order of Tibet
• Nordic aliens
• Palomar Gardens
• Cedric Allingham

Notes

Source ratings:

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[4 Speculative/Hearsay]

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[5 Ungrounded]

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References

• Aartsen, Gerard. George Adamski: A Herald for the Space Brothers. 2nd ed. Amsterdam: BGA Publications, 2012. ISBN 978-9081549523.
• Bennett, Colin. Looking For Orthon: The Story of George Adamski, The First Flying Saucer Contactee, and How He Changed The World. New York: Cosimo Books, 2008. ISBN 978-1-60520-067-5.
• Clark, Jerome. The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning. Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1998.
• Laycock, Donald; Vernon, David; Groves, Colin; Brown, Simon (eds.). Skeptical: A Handbook on Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. Civic Square, A.C.T.: Canberra Skeptics, 1989. ISBN 0-7316-5794-2.
• Moseley, James W.; Pflock, Karl T. Shockingly Close to the Truth!: Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002. ISBN 1-57392-991-3.
• Peebles, Curtis. Watch the Skies: A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth. New York: Berkley Books, 1995.
• Solomon, Professor. How to Make the Most of a Flying Saucer Experience. Baltimore, MD: Top Hat Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0-912509-07-5.
• Wilhelmsen, Jim. Beyond Science Fiction. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2008. ISBN 978-1-4401-0471-8.
• Zinsstag, Lou; Good, Timothy. George Adamski: The Untold Story. Beckenham, Kent: CETI Publications, 1983. ISBN 0-9508414-0-4.
• Zirger, Michel; Martinelli, Maurizio. The Incredible Life of George Hunt Williamson: Mystical Journey. Verdechiaro Edizioni, 2016. ISBN 978-88-6623-262-9.

External links

• Adamski Foundation – Exobiology
• The George Adamski Case — The Facts in Context (Adamski materials, research, and primary sources)