Long before Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Devil's Tower had a connection with extraterrestrial life. An ancient connection.
April 1947, two months before the report of flying saucers by Kenneth Arnold, "The Shaver Mystery" was the sole focus of editor Ray Palmer's June 1947 issue of Amazing Stories. The Shaver Mystery was about how we humans are the offspring of god-like ancient aliens, the reality behind all our myths and legends. After abandoning Earth, some of those they left behind were transformed into nasty little degenerate "deros." We came to call their space ships UFOs, and from their cavernous secret underground bases, their dero offspring are responsible for abductions, mutilations and other of mankind's woes. Ray Palmer's editorial explained:
With the aid of such machines as the telaug (telepathic augmentor) and disintegrating rays, plus various instruments such as the "stim" which enhanced physical and emotional pleasures, these dero took to tormenting surface people and thereby being the basis for all of our legends of cavern wights, little people, demons, ghosts and — during the war — gremlins.They cause many unexplained accidents, such as those train wrecks, plane crashes, cerebral hemmorhages, etc. which are otherwise unexplainable.
Further, Mr. Shaver declared that the Titans, living far away in space, or other people like them, still visit earth in space ships, kidnap people, raid the caves for valuable equipment, and, in general, supply the basis for all the weird stories that are so numerous (see Charles Fort's books) of space ships, beings in the sky, etc.
So, before the first flying saucer sighting, Richard Shaver was saying extraterrestrials were abducting humans.
Shaver the Experiencer
Richard Shaver's article for the June issue, "Proofs," was a response to the critics of his writings. In his introduction to his essay, he talks about the problems of being an experiencer or witness and knowing and telling the truth:
My strength is dedicated to informing you of the key and the way to the kind of life that produced the beauty and wisdom of those immortal beings of the past, beings whose actual existence has been proved a thousand times to those who, like myself, have had actual experience in the caverns. For we have seen and touched and used those antique mechanisms and we know whereof we speak. But until today, those who knew have feared to broadcast their knowledge, for in olden times it would have meant being burnt at the stake, and today most certainly the insane asylum.
There were giants in the earth in those days
Shaver's Titans were giants, and had been mentioned in the the Bible, and myths around the world. But for those who needed even more evidence, he delivers in "Proofs."
YOU ask for proofs of the giganticism of the far past — and you can find Devil's Tower (Wyoming) in any Atlas. It is a national monument ! If it isn't a gigantic petrified stump larger than any redwood ever hoped to be, I will eat my hat! The stump alone is taller than the Empire State building! What size were men when trees grew that size?
THEY were the men who are spoken of as the Aesir, under Ygdrasil's branches, planning a battle against the Frost Giants! And they had telaug beams (Odin's Eye), and they had "magical" underground dwarfs, and icy underworld realms of magic — and we have only the Devil's Tower to prove it today. But it was a long time ago; when the sun itself was more beneficial and less aging. BUT, BROTHER, HOW CAN YOU ASK FOR PROOF WHEN YOU HAVE A DEVIL'S TOWER?
There you have it, Devil's Tower proves the Shaver Mystery, and therefore, all the extraterrestrial space travel and beings within.
On the need for Disclosure
Richard Shaver fought against skeptical unbelievers, railed against official denials, and can be said to be a founding father for Disclosure:
MANY things could be obtained of infinite value from these people in the caverns, if all of our civilization was aware and trying to salvage even a bit of the mighty wisdom the Elder race left behind them in their miracles of machine art. BUT it can't be done as long as "officialdumb" frowns upon all such efforts as "superstition," "black art," or "crackpots." It is a vital and unseen side of our life WHICH MUST BE OPENED TO THE PUBLIC GAZE! “The fact is that any honest investigation of super-normal manifestation always and invariably turns up mighty important data; which data is shelved by fearful, ignorant and bigoted people who are quite sure that the school books are right, and that they cannot go contrary to opinion or they will lose their ‘position.’ ...SOMEONE, SOMETIME, HAS TO CONQUER THAT BLIND DENIAL OF FACT AND COME OUT IN THE OPEN WITH THE TRUTH...”
There's much more to Shaver's argument in "Proofs." For those who dare to read it all:
The telaug of the dero could affect our minds, so who knows what misinformation they were making Shaver believe... or what they are making us believe now!
Robert Sheaffer picked up on my story of the severe problems with John Schuessler's Cash-Landrum narrative due to the release of the files of the Texas Health department:
Robert gives the matter some nice coverage, but unfortunately, he and many of the commenters posting there are losing focus. This information reflects on the integrity of the investigation, not the witnesses. The issue of whether the witnesses were genuine is important, but almost all we know about them comes from a single source, one that now seems questionable.
I keep struggling for an analogy- it's like a sketch artist at a murder trial coming back with pictures of unicorns. We weren't there, and his drawings aren't much help in sorting out the facts.
Factual?
Fabrication?
Accusations of Self-inflicted Injuries
Some folks are now ready to just dismiss the entire case as hoax and throw the witnesses under the bus. One poster was particularly nasty. Knowledgable, but full of condescending derision, kind of like a skeptical Jerome Clark. Here's one of his gems:
Crank
Each and every aspect of this fairy tale spells hoax. It's almost a grab bag of hackneyed "UFO" narrative tropes: a remote location at night; the "UFO" is blocking the road; it remotely kills the car ignition; it emits intense light and heat; the witness(es) suffer burns, suggested to be caused by radiation in this case; and promised by Vickie but not appearing is the benevolent Jesus—who would have communicated his scientific and humanitarian concerns much like the Pleiadians; the craft appears to be in trouble or pilot is making repairs; and (as with Maury Island Hoax) other associated aircraft are aiding the distressed.
And even though Betty claimed she had no interest in "UFOs," this PSH skeptic knows that very few are immune to prevailing cultural delusions. Betty and Vickie carried all the current "UFO" myth baggage as every other American bombarded by the images and themes of nuclear radiation, aerospace and black operations, and government conspiracies—if only through cultural osmosis. No one concocts a narrative so utterly saturated with "UFO" tropes without hearing more than just a few "UFO" stories. Betty's hoax is so obvious because its plot is contrary to the way that humans actually behave and in its details—idiotic lies—that expose it.
Betty was a good-ol' East Texas 50 year-old glorified night-shift waitress looking for attention and money, and stupid enough to make up a wild "UFO" story and paint herself with Clorox or pool acid and drink it as well in order to sell her hoax.
Compare with Maury Island; Hill Abduction; Falcon Lake; and dozens of others.
So full of errors and character assassination, it's beyond repair, but I'll comment on a few points.
True, the individual elements of the sighting are familiar as I've noted here before, you can almost pull and assemble them from scenes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The witnesses however never made any ET connection to their claims. They assumed it was connected to a military project.
Vickie's comments to Colby about Jesus coming out of the light was born out her belief that they were witnessing the second coming. It had nothing to do with an ET Savior, just the frightening light, flames and strangeness of the event. If you want to find something suspect in her behavior, in some accounts she says that she merely said that to Colby to reassure him.
A kinder, gentler skeptic?
I believe Dr. Gary Posner was the first to suggest the possibility that the witnesses injuries were self-inflicted, but he was a lot more civil doing so. I think the scenario is unlikely. Phil Klass had a more plausible explanation for the creation of a hoax: Betty Cash's problems were real, she was faced with massive medical bills that she could not afford and the hoax was crafted to somehow solve the financial crisis. Klass did not account for the alleged injures to Vickie and Colby, but those were less severe and largely undocumented. They may have been exaggerated to support Betty's story. If we are going to level accusations of self-inflicted injuries it is more plausible that the other two witnesses engaged in it to help sell the story. Still, making accusations like these without any evidence is unscientific and ungentlemanly.
Witness Credibility
As I told Robert Sheaffer,
This document can only prove that the investigator was unreliable. The credibility of the witnesses is a separate issue.
The Cash-Landrum witnesses
I can provide a fairly lengthy list of reasonable people who felt that the witnesses were credible. Also, their behavior afterwards is not consistent with UFO hoaxers. The phonies usually place themselves at the center stage of a story, not as bystanders. Most hoaxers continue to seek the spotlight and often have multiple adventures or at least recover new memories to embellish their grand adventure. While the witnesses did participate in several television programs discussing their case, they did not engage in the UFO conference circuit like- well almost everyone else.
Robert has always doubted the case and is ready to Klassify the whole incident as a hoax. As yet, I am unwilling to level that accusation at the witnesses. The inconsistencies in their statements are no greater than this found in conventional eyewitness cases. Later, some faulty associations and emotional hyperbole did creep in (such as the mystery road repaving) but on the whole their story holds up as consistent over the years without further embellishments. I hold out for the possibility there was some kind of genuine experience at the root of the story.
The investigation of the story is another matter, to me. Whether the investigation and the reporting of the events was accurate and honest is in a way the most important issue.
I'm willing to give the witnesses the benefit of a doubt. As always, comments are welcome.
When Robert Sheaffer covered the story about my publication of Texas Department of Health’s report on their Cash-Landrum investigation, it began a hit and run debate on his site that has continued to spill over to other discussions. The most objectionable comments were made by zoamchomsky who has made accusations (laced with insults) against Betty Cash of causing her own injuries. I wrote a piece on this, which contains a link to Sheaffer’s article and reprints one of zoam’s charges:
I’m eager to discuss the Cash-Landrum case here, and have presented new and reprinted articles discussing it from many perspectives, including skeptical analysies of it. I’d hoped to contact him to get a guest article, but received no response. Somehow the topic was stirred again in a discussion of Sheaffer’s article, The 2014 International UFO Congress, Part 5 (last):
zoamchomsky's online face
zoamchomskyMarch 8, 2014 at 3:45 PMThat's why it's called a myth and delusion, deano, you and others believe these stories are true when there's no good reason to think that they are. There's certainly no evidence.
Even the best "UFO" stories are mere anecdotes, and all of the "evidence" ever presented by Believers is really crummy.
So you see the problem? You believe in the existence of some extraordinary thing based only on highly fallible human perceptions and their subjective narrative creations. These stories consist of the teller's failure to identify an ambiguous visual stimulus, and the details are mostly confabulated afterwards according to a culturally supplied generic "UFO" script as it has grown, evolved and mutated over decades.
You know, like Betty Cash's attention-seeking simple-minded mashup of the Maury Island hoax and the Hills' flying-saucer "abduction" fairy tale. Both Bettys had read a lot trashy flying-saucer magazines and watched a lot of science-fiction movies and television. Or Terauchi's laughable "spaceship" scare over Alaska and the "UFO" myth and delusion-supplied and completely imaginary "scout ships" and the "giant mothership." Terauchi was so totally steeped in "UFO" mythology that he admitted to thinking of a famous "UFO" case even while his silly "UFO" scare was occurring!
Like you, they all had some level of difficulty distinguishing fiction and fantasy from our one scientific reality where "UFOs" of any kind do not exist and never have. No rational adult believes a bit of this nonsense, deano, the totality of real-world facts are incongruent with the existence of "UFOs." The idea that there could be unidentified objects of any kind haunting our atmosphere and nearspace and all the world not know it is absurd.
Even the best "UFO" stories are fundamentally unsound; the process of "UFO" reporting is questionable with ambiguity resident in every step; and the very idea of "UFO" reporting--that a failure to identify is worthy of consideration--is itself the very core of the absurd "UFO" delusion.
Please study this monograph and begin to help yourself out of your juvenile false belief about the world--your "UFO" delusion. http://debunker.com/texts/black_box_approach_to_ufo_perceptions.html
Peter Brooksmith asks him a few questions about his comments, but we are focusing on Cash-Landrum here, an excerpt:
The Duke of MendozaMarch 9, 2014 at 2:54 PM Zoam he say: “Both Bettys had read a lot trashy flying-saucer magazines and watched a lot of science-fiction movies and television."If that’s the case with Betty Cash, (a) I haven’t heard of it, which isn’t necessarily significant :-) and (b) where did you get this fact(oid)?
Just stories?
That’s where I came in,
Curt CollinsMarch 10, 2014 at 4:19 PMZoam, I too would like to know more about where you heard about: "... Betty Cash's attention-seeking simple-minded mashup of the Maury Island hoax and the Hills' flying-saucer "abduction" fairy tale. Both Bettys had read a lot trashy flying-saucer magazines and watched a lot of science-fiction movies and television."
I've looked for any evidence to support prior UFO interest and haven't found it. If events were fabricated, I feel it more likely they'd be working from "Close Encounters" or TV's "Project UFO" as source material. Also, I don't understand why you need to have Betty injure herself. Wouldn't it make as much sense to invent the story around the illness?
Lastly, Betty's narrative of the story was sketchy, so you should be considering Vickie Landrum as the architect of your hoax scenario. She had a more active role, and a developed narrative of the scenario from the beginning, and she was the one to contact police and NUFORC.
He had a brief reply that I considered a non-answer, and I challenged him to produce facts, or at least a hypothesis that matched the facts. I thought it was fading away, but he responded in greater detail.
zoamchomsky feels there were media precedents to the C-L case.
zoamchomskyMarch 14, 2014 at 3:41 PM
Since Curt has devoted himself to C-L and wants us all along on his misery trip:
"We thought it was the end of time." --Betty Cash
"If you see a man it's gonna be Jesus." --Vickie Landrum
Curt; If you don't see the unintentional hilarity--and self-exposing tell--in those unnecessary details added to this flying-saucer fairy tale for pure effect, then you might be just a bit too... credulous!
Exactly like the ridiculously stupid and impossible details of heat and radiation, which--if true--would have burnt them immediately and killed them in days! And the very same is true of every other bit of their fantastic celestial, and horribly noisy, event over northeastern Houston that somehow tens of thousands failed to observe, an event that--if real--would have made LIVE TV news but didn't!
"...over toward Crosby and Intercontinental Airport was the way they were."--BC
Yeah, right, Betty!
And let's hear that East-Texas drawl again: "We thought it was the end of time."
Curt; Most if not all of the skeptics here, Gary Posner and Phil Klass think C-L was a hoax, none or very little of their story is true or that it could not possibly have happened the way they tell it, and that their superficial injuries were self inflicted. Now, how is what I've said about this crude hoax substantially different?
And how can determining that it was a crude hoax and none of it ever happened be comparable to credulously believing that it all happened as they say and the flaming object the size of a water tower was a nuclear-powered black project? That doesn't make sense. It's Betty's simple fairy tale that has ZERO evidence.
As I said about flying-saucer fairy tales that offer photos as "evidence." Once the hoaxed photo is exposed it becomes real evidence that the saucer story is a lie. Without real-world corroborating evidence of any kind--no possibile helicopters--their injuries become real evidence of only one thing: Hoax for attention and with the hope of monetary gain--always the main motivators for dumb "UFO" hoaxes.
Repeating here, so you have an opportunity to address points unanswered:
And for a sketchy, hackneyed, scripted "UFO" fairy tale for which there is not a single bit of supporting evidence, and that real-world knowledge, experience and circumstances indicate not only the high implausibility of a real event but hoaxing by the purported "witnesses," what can be the only logical determination, Curt?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In logic, probability, and in real-world practical skepticism, the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. So evidenceless "UFO" stories aren't simply unproven, they're rightly dismissed as having never occurred. "Feelings" about some truth to the story are irrelevant.
You want science? The default position for any proposition/claim is the negation of that claim, the Null hypothesis. Show how any part of Betty and Vickie's highly implausible story--an utter and complete negative factually--could be true, okay?
Now insult me more, call me names on your blog for bothering to speak with you about your obsession over what was never anything more than a crude hoax for attention and money become inconsequential tabloid trash in 1981. Belief that it was more than that and obsessing over the details thirty years later is pointless.
- - -
Curt Collins, on the C-L case
I thank zoam for taking the time to outline his thoughts more clearly. Well, I have to admit it would be more fun to insult him and call zoam names, but I need to get back to work on the case. Buried between his barbs, he does make several interesting points. My focus has been on reexamining the facts in the case, and in doing so I’ve uncovered some apparent (trying to be diplomatic here) inaccuracies in the details reported in the investigation. While I am concerned about the veracity of the original claims, finding out how a botched investigation led to the international publicity and legal action against he U.S. government is even more fascinating to me. What I’m trying to say, is that the case is important from several standpoints whether it is based on a hoax or not.
I had hoped zoamchomsky had something solid to back up his allegations of hoax. There are some nagging inconsistincies beyond things the investigator may have inserted while trying to jazz up the case. The witnesses do make some inconsistent statements, and there are a few plot holes in their story, but I’ve found no evidence of a hoax. Still, it would be interesting to have all the “inconvenient facts” gathered in a presentation to see what mosaic picture forms. Working from memory, I don’t think it will line up to match zoam’s accusations, but we will see where this road goes…
Jessie Roestenburg’s Oct. 21, 1954 encounter with a UFO might have been forgotten had it not been chronicled by Gavin Gibbons in his 1956 book, The Coming of the Space Ships. I provided the basis for almost all the subsequent accounts throughout ufology. Charles Bowen based his entry in the Flying Saucer Review Special: The Humanoids, 1966, on it, and the short version below is all that most people know of the story.
Bowen compounded an error, calling the witness Jennie, instead of Jessie, and misspelled the location of Ranton. Gibbons had spelled the family name RoestenBERG, but it should have been BURG. Most UFO literature since has followed his version. Throughout, we’ve corrected quotes using “Roestenberg” to the proper Roestenburg.
It’s a famous sighting, one of the best-known early UK cases, but few know that her family experienced at least six UFO sightings, with Jessie being involved in all but one. Like her first, most of the additional sightings involved multiple witnesses.
L, drawing of the Ranton humanoid type.
R, art by Mike Rogers based on the abduction story by Travis Walton.
The Original Incident: Eye Contact
In 1954 Jessie Roestenburg, her husband Tony and three young children lived in a cottage at Vicarage Farm, Ranton, Staffordshire, England. It was an old house three and a half miles from Stafford, and without the modern conveniences like electricity or indoor plumbing. It was almost like they were quietly living in the past, but that all changed on October 21, 1954.
Vicarage Farm
Mrs. Roestenburg was inside with her two-year-old daughter, Karin, and her two sons, eight-year-old Anthony and six-year-old Ronald were just home from school and playing in the garden.
The time was 4:45 p.m.
The Wolverhampton Express and Star Oct. 22, 1954:
Midland Woman says flying saucer terrified herRanton, near Stafford, A woman today told the “Express and Star” that she and her two children had been terrified by a flying saucer, carrying “two long-haired human-like creatures in tight-fitting jerseys.”The machine landed in the garden, she stated.When she heard a noise like a crashing aircraft, yesterday, Mrs Jessie Roestenburg, of isolated Vicarage Farm, ran out into the garden. She found her two children lying prostrate and terrified. The next house to Vicarage Farm is about two miles away.Above the children was a huge, saucer-like object with a dome, the front part of which was transparent, stated Mrs. Roestenburg.Staring at the children from the machine were two “unsmiling, human-like creatures, with long faces and long hair.”
Mrs. Roestenburg told our reporter that she ran to the back of the house in fright. The object then moved over the house, hovered for about 15 seconds, and then shot off at high speed.
From another section of the story, she’s quoted as saying the object was "about 15 to 20 feet in diameter.”
Captions from the Wolverhampton Express and Star:
This is a sketch, made today by Mrs. Roestenburg, of the object that she states she saw in her garden, It appeared to be of “a dull silver metal,” and the outer rim seemed to be revolving.
Mrs. Roestenburg, with her two sons keeping close beside her, points to the place where, she says, she saw the flying saucer hovering above her home.
UK flying saucer researcher Gavin Gibbons wrote a report for Flying Saucer News, Winter 1954/55, "Full Report on the Ranton Affair," which included the above illustration.
The Coming of the Space Ships
Gavin Gibbons’ 1956 book, The Coming of the Space Ships, covers the flap of UFO sightings that began in June of 1954 in the Stafford area, and devotes two chapters to the story of the Roestenburgs, which he regarded as the “the most informative and, in some ways, astounding of all the sightings...” Although Gibbons provides the best documentation on the story, he was a linguist and scholar, not a journalist, and with his own UFO experience approached things as one of the awakened. As his title suggest, Gibbons regarded flying saucers as extraterrestrial space ships, and was persuaded by the reports from the Contactees. Wishing to retire the phrase “Flying Saucer,” Gibbons preferred the Atlantean/Sanskrit term “vimanas” (chariots of the sky) for disc-shaped scout craft. He invented other UFO terms to match, such as vunu for cigar-shaped spaceships.
Based on his interviews with the family, Gibbons gave a more detailed account of the Roestenburg story and what was seen:
...they looked very like Earthly men, with white skins and long hair down to their shoulders. Their foreheads seemed immensely high, with the features almost entirely in the bottom half of their faces. Their heads were enclosed in what appeared to be some sort of transparent helmet and they were dressed in clothes of turquoise blue that resembled ski suits that Mrs. Roestenburg had seen.
The saucer’s exit:
It was hovering over the house! Very low and completely silent, a queer round thing was standing in the air immediately over the little cottage... Their heads were in a whirl... As Jessie Roestenburg watched, appalled, the vimana began to move, flashing a purply blue light from the front of it as it did so. At an angle of 45° it started to ascend, making no sound as it moved, but continuing the flashing the whole time. With a gasp of relief Jessie ran into the house, intent on finding pencil and paper to sketch what she and the children had seen. As she looked for the stub of a pencil, the boys called out again from the garden. With fear returning once more to her heart she ran outside to see the Saucer coming back again, this time from north to south. It circled the house in an anti-clockwise direction one and a half times and then streaked skywards. It had gone at last.
The section of Gibbons book describing the sighting was excerpted as an article in Model Aircraft magazine, March 1957, “Space Ships ‘a Coming.” It’s archived, found on page 39 of the PDF, at
However, like most accounts, it only covers Oct. 21, not the subsequent events or the other UFO encounters of the Roestenburg family.
The Rest of the Story
Gavin Gibbons was not a detached journalist or scientific observer - he became part of the story. Gibbons spoke Mr. Roestenburg’s native language, Dutch, and it drew them closer, and he became friends with the Roestenburgs, making frequent visits to their home, educating and advising them on the topic of UFOs. In the narrative, he introduces Mr. Roestenburg first and regards it as Tony’s story, not Jessie’s.
2nd Sighting: Tony’s Cigar
The second sighting was around 2:30 on the next Sunday, Oct. 24, 1954. The Roestenburg’s had a friend visiting, man whose name was not given. According to Gibbons, Tony thought there was a slight possibility that the saucer had dropped something on their roof. “He had a queer hunch, too, that it was his turn to see something.” From an upstairs he made his way to the roof, but found nothing, but remained to scan the skies.
“Suddenly he caught his breath and stared hard at the sky towards the south-west. His premonition was right after all. There, flying slowly along in a great semi-circle, was an enormous, cylindrical, sausage-shaped object.”
Tony called for Jessie and she and their guest ran out to see “the huge machine looming in the sky, not more than a mile away, and watched with him as it carried on its curved course, eventually disappearing into a bank of cloud to the north.”
Mr. Roestenburg came down and asked Jessie if it was what she’d seen, but she said, no, that this was colossal, the saucer-shaped machine she’s seen was much smaller. the three discussed the sighting, but at first the friend said that he had thought that he had seen dark patches where wings might have been, but after careful thought he withdrew this idea. Gibbon reports that Tony “became intensely interested in the subject of U.F.O.’s and kept a careful watch from then on, scanning the sky at every possible moment he could spare and hoping with all his heart to see another visitant.”
Gibbons was of the opinion that Jessie had seen a disc-shaped scout ship and aliens just as George Adamski had described, while Tony had seen the massive cigar-shaped mother ship.
3rd Sighting: Tony’s Fireball
Another hunch. On or about December 15, 1954, Tony’s skywatching paid off. He saw a ball of fire slowly, silently moving at an angle of about 45° above the horizon. It was about two or three inches across when measured at his arm’s length, but when he went around to the other side of the house to follow its path, “It was now about eighteen inches at arm’s length!” It seemed to be moving lower and slower until it was almost stationary. As he watched, he heard the sound of an airplane coming from the east, and as the plane got closer,” the fireball suddenly moved, shooting northward at incredible speed and disappearing from sight within a few seconds... He had seen another Flying Saucer!”
The Family’s Transformation
The aftermath of the sightings on the family is discussed in chapter 8, Gibbons’ book. Jessie told him that afterward, her daughter Karin seemed to cry constantly and the two boys had become unruly and disrespectful. “I can see a tremendous change in them. Whether it’s a reaction after their fright or what, I don’t know, but they are much naughtier now than they ever were before it happened.”
Jessie herself was stressed, and had a blotchy rash on her skin, “It’s on my face and arms and I don’t know what it is.”
Her condition had developed sometime after the sighting, and Gibbons asked if she knew the cause.
“Just nerves. The same as my edginess and bad temper.”
Gibbons noted, “nervous strain will do peculiar things to the human body. I hoped that these bad after-effects would soon wear off, for, as I explained to Mrs. Roestenburg, I was sure that the men in the saucer had no intention of frightening her and the children.”
Jessie made no mention of having any other symptoms or of receiving any medical treatment.
When Gibbons visited the Roestenburgs in their new home southern edge of Stafford in March and May of 1955, he found them all changed for the better. He asked Mr. Roestenburg what had made the difference, and Tony almost sounded like they were fleeing a haunted house.
“That old cottage,” he answered without hesitation. “Ever since that U.F.O. hovered over it, something snapped there and almost made us snap, too... The move has made a different family of us and that’s a fact!”
Asked if he’d seen any more UFOs, Tony replied, “Not since that last one, but I’m still looking.”
Gibbons could see no motive for a hoax, and he was convinced of their sincerity.“I have gained some new friends. I often visit them in their new home and we talk over the happenings of the day when the Saucer came. The children, and it is best so, have forgotten the incident, but for Jessie and Tony Roestenburg... it is a good memory. Now that the fear has gone and they are....almost beginning to wish that the vimana would pay them a second visit. Almost, I think they said, almost....”
Caption from Gibbons' book:
Mr. and Mrs. Roestenburg and their children,
May 21, 1955, seven months after they had seen the vimana.
1956 - 1957: More Flying Saucers
Gavin Gibbons briefly returned to the Roestenburg case in his follow-up book, They Rode in Space Ships (1957), but continues the story, describing the lesser-known aftermath and further sightings by the family.
“Tony Roestenburg could hardly be said to court notoriety - he got more and more weary of references to his experiences... He certainly did not seek money-he and his family have gained nothing from an experience now largely forgotten by the children.”
After summarizing both the original sighting, Tony’s rooftop sighting of the cigar-shaped UFO, Gibbons states, “He was to see another Space Ship later on, probably a vimana, but this has no direct bearing on the argument.” An asterisk leads to a footnote about three further sightings by the Roestenburgs, even after they moved from Ranton to Stafford. In the first one, the Roestenburg’s daughter instead of the boys, takes on the role of sounding the summoning cry:
“Sightings in the Stafford area are still taking place. On 5 December, 1956. Mrs. Roestenburg was called into the garden of their Stafford home by Karin. A bright orange disc, probably a vimana or scout ship was overhead! Seen by neighbours, it disappeared in the direction of Seighford. On to January, 1957, an orange glowing cigar-shaped vunu was seen by many people flying northwards over Stafford towards Stoke-on-Trent. Witnesses included Tony, Jessie, and Karin Roestenburg and Mrs. Daniels, wife of Wilfrid Daniels, the Stafford U.F.O. expert. On 13 May, 1957, a silvery vunu was seen over the west of Stafford by Mrs. Roestenburg, a near neighbour, Mrs. Violet Wilding, and several other witnesses in the area.”
See appendix, the chronology: Roestenburg Family Sightings
Spiritualism, Psychic Powers and ESP
Gibbon’s second UFO book contrasts the Roestenburgs with someone he did not find credible, George King of the channeler of the cosmic being Aetherius. Gibbons disapproved of mixing spiritualism with UFOs, saying, “But the greatest danger is that spiritualism so easily leads to involuntary fraud or to misrepresentation by people who are themselves quite honest. Although a lot of people, including several well-known public figures, believe in spiritualism, there are many others who turn from it in disgust. As many of these latter believe in Flying Saucers, George King is doing a disservice to the Space Ship movement by associating spiritualism with Flying Saucers.”
Gibbons makes no mention of Mrs. Roestenburg’s psychic powers and experiences in his books. There’s just the tingling in her nose prior to the first sighting, and her husband’s hunch or premonition prior to the second one. Reading between the lines, there’s some suggestion the Roestenburg’s felt there was something almost haunted at Vicarage Farm, and they were happy to be away from it.
Wilfrid Daniels
At the same time Gibbons was working the case, so was another. Wilfrid Daniels was a UFO researcher living in Stafford. He reported on the local sightings and interviewed Mrs. Roestenburg and was the first to disclose her psychic or ESP claims in Flying Saucer Review Vol. 1, No. 3, July-Aug. 1955 (page 16), “Flying Saucers and the Psychic” by Wilfred Daniels. Here’s a summary of it by UFO historian Loren Gross from The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs: A History 1954 October (1991):
According to UFO researcher Wilfred Daniels, Mrs. Roestenburg had for years felt she was a “psychic,” and that for a number of hours prior to the “space ship appearance,” she had a “queer feeling” something was about to happen, at least that was her peculiar claim. Years before during a seance a medium directed a comment to Mrs. Roestenburg, pronouncing her a psychic of considerable ability, a compliment she never forgot. While denying she was a full-blown spiritualist, Mrs. Roestenburg said she did experience on one occasion a “spirit manifestation of the spectral sort.” Her aunt, she admitted, was a practising “psychic healer.” In Gibbon's mind, and to any UFO buff worth his salt, the possible flaw in the “strange affair at Ranton” was that it had a George Adamski smell, the American who at that time was the darling of England's occult society.
Gross took Mrs. Roestenburg's claims of having psychic powers and supernatural before her sighting as a negative, but in the FSR article he quoted, Wilfrid Daniels thought it might be just the opposite. He speculated that these were exactly the kind of earthlings the spacemen wanted to visit:
But could it not be that just because of their peculiar powers of mental perception, spiritualists, and those with “psychic” sensibilities, maybe the very people better equipped than anybody else to be sought out, or inspected at close quarters, but alien visitors in flying saucers?
Gibbons worked closely with Daniels on the Stafford sightings and must have known about Mrs. Roestenburg's psychic stories. Due to his distaste of missing spiritualism with saucers, it appears he chose to censor it from his account of the Roestenburg case.
Jessie’s story became part of UFO literature, especially in the volumes devoted to Contactees and close encounters. Jessie had made contact with aliens - only eye contact, but still historic. However, for many years, her tale just circulated by repeated versions of Bowen’s 1966 short summary of the encounter.
The 1970s UFO Revival
The public’s interest in UFOs after the Pascagoula Abduction story caused a revival of media coverage, and that included reviewing old cases.
The comic book, UFO Flying Saucers No. 7, August 1975 published by Gold Key (Western Publishing Company, Inc.) featured a brief adaptation of the first Jessie Roestenburg sighting,“The Unsmiling Men,” a four page story illustrated by John Celardo.It’s chief departure from the original account is in the depiction of the saucer occupants, drawn here as weird aliens, not the beautiful angelic astronauts Jessie described. One interesting thing the story does well is to demonstrate is the peculiar angle the saucer would have to tip forward in order for the occupants and witnesses to be able to see each other.
TV Coverage
In 1976, Hugh Burnett was preparing a UFO documentary for the BBC, and he approached Charles Bowen and Gordon Creighton of Flying Saucer Review. They gave him the contact information for Jessie Roestenburg. The documentary was titled Out of this World, and it was first broadcast May 10, 1977 on BBC 1. It’s largely responsible for reviving interest in the case, and today, most people are probably familiar with Jessie Roestenburg’s story via the YouTube clip of her from the program. It’s often shared with comments noting how genuine, sincere and credible she appears.
She describes the saucer as looking like a Mexican hat, and says occupants, says were beautiful people with long golden hair, wearing coverings over their heads like a “transparent fishbowl.”
“They just looked, and I was absolutely paralytic with fear. I couldn’t move, although my mind was taking over. And they seemed so sympathetic that I was mesmerized, seemed to be - oh, ages, but it could have only been seconds. After checking on her boys, “I looked up and it was gone.”
Asked about the size of the object, she says it was “massive,” that it was larger than the roof of the house. She said they saw the object again in the distance, that it circled them three times then it shot off.
A spaceman in a fishbowl helmet, as seen in The Man from Planet X, 1951
More fishbowls from The Net, 1953
Mrs. Roestenburg appeared in another UFO program a few years later, and told her story again on the episode, “U.F.O.s” of Arthur C. Clarke'sMysterious World, which was broadcast Nov. 4, 1980. It’s interesting to contrast it with her previous clip from the 1977, Out of this World. Her description of the events are very similar, sometimes word for word. In both she's quite animated, but here she’s far less emotional, and perhaps convincing.
She describes discovering the flying saucer:
“To my amazement there, suspended on the top of the roof of this old farm, was this object that I can only describe as a huge Mexican hat. It was that shape, without the bobbles. It must have been fifteen to twenty yards from where I stood. It covered the roof, so in circumference it must have been about sixty feet, it was enormous. The people in the space-craft were just looking out, I could see them from the waist to the top of their heads. They were very beautiful people. They had long golden hair... (but no mention of the fishbowl helmets). and they just looked at us. Their eyes - the expression in their eyes - were full of compassion.”“And then all of a sudden, I felt the tension leaving me and I felt movement, and I turned around to touch my children and when I looked again it was gone.” Moments later, her younger son pointed it out then, “it circled round the farm three times, then it just shot straight up and away.”
The account from the two shows differ from the original version documented by Gavin Gibbons on several details, and none of the other subsequent events or sightings were discussed. The part about Jessie seeing the saucer ascend, then running inside to look for a pencil was dropped, and instead she remains outside for the entire sighting. Also, when seen again, the saucer makes not 1 /1/2 circles, but 3 around the farm on its exit, but perhaps that’s an unimportant difference.
The biggest difference seems to be the size of the UFO. The figure Jessie gave for the saucer’s size in the first account was, "about 15 to 20 feet in diameter,” which matches the drawing she made for the newspaper. In her sketch, it depicts the saucer as room-sized, not house-sized. In the Jul-Aug 1955 FSR, investigator Wilfrid Daniels gave the size as “a 25-ft. saucer.” In her later television interviews the spaceship was described to be enormous, large enough to cover the entire roof of the cottage.
Thirty Years Later, New Details Emerge
Excepts from Jenny Randles’ Abduction (aka Alien Abductions), 1988, pages 68-70, Chapter 5, “Alien Abductions - The British Catalogue,” Type II: Contact Cases
21 October 1954 - Ranton, Staffordshire This case is legendary in UFO circles, having featured in several books during the 1950s, but no one seemed to have looked at it recently, so on 6 August 1987 I interviewed the chief witness, Mrs Jessie Roestenburg. She was in her late twenties in 1954 and had two children, Anthony (aged eight) and Ronald (six). They do remember the events, but only vaguely. Jessie had felt 'tingles' all day, prior to 4:45 p.m., when the incident occurred. (Recap of sighting.)“It felt like hours passed, but it must have been seconds. Time was suspended. I was also paralysed. It was like I was in a vice. But my mind was working overtime.”
“...nothing Jessie said indicated to me that she was familiar with UFO cases...”Since then she has often thought about it: 'This was something absolutely marvellous. The saddest part to me is that I have never been able to fully understand the greatness of this thing.'However, she says that she has since had a 'great, almost extreme, development of ESP. I know things about people. I understand situations. All this probably sounds crazy, but it is true.' Some of the things that have happened include seeing the aliens again in her house '. . . out of the corner of my eye .... But I think it could be a "thought thing". It could be my imagination'.
These contacts have implanted feelings into her mind about the aliens: 'I think they'll be here when I need them .... They are surveying us. They're afraid that we might panic. But some of them are living amongst us.’
Jessie Roestenburg impressed me because she had not become a 'UFO nut' and had seemingly read no books on the subject since 1954. She had seen the Spielberg film Close Encounters of the Third Kind but in typical fashion said about it, ‘I remember thinking whoever did this film has a good understanding of the subject. But when those little funny aliens came on I almost stood up and shouted, "They're not like that!" I don't believe in little green men. Not after what I've seen."
Excerpts from the interview were carried in an article in The Star, Feb. 29, 1988,
Timothy Good’s Alien Base, 1998, contains an interview with Jessie Roestenburg that offers details I’d not found documented elsewhere, health problems following her first sighting.
Jessie‘s health began to deteriorate. ‘I went to see my doctor, who had read about what happened,’ she said, ‘but he thought I was round the twist. I insisted on seeing a psychiatrist and he said: “There’s nothing wrong with your mind but you do you need to go to hospital.” He took me himself and they did a blood count. [It] was so low they couldn’t understand how I was still alive. They said they wouldn’t be surprised if I was suffering from radiation sickness. For a while, I was in a terrified mess but gradually got better.
Good quotes Jessie from the news story by reporter Neil Thomas in the Staffordshire Newsletter, August 30, 1996, which gives her name as “Jessica Roestenburg.” She said, “To this day I don’t know what they were, I don’t believe they wanted to do us any harm. They are far more intelligent than we are.”
2011 (probably from 2006)
Sadly, Jessie Roestenburg passed away on May 12, 2017. Luckily John Hanson was able to interview her a few times in her later years for Haunted Skies.
From John Hanson 2006, Haunted Skies-Vol. 1. Photo by David Sankey
Excerpts from the Haunted Skies blog by John Hanson and Dawn Holloway
“I seemed to be in some way drawn, or compelled, to the top of the garden - almost as if I was being manipulated by an outside influence, of which I had no control. I glanced around and saw the amazing sight of this flying saucer shaped object hovering 40-50 feet above the roof of the house. Inside the ‘saucer’ I could clearly see what looked like two humans, wearing long golden hair down to their shoulders. I felt a mixture of emotions - amazement and fear run through my body, followed by the thought, ‘God will wipe away all tears’. Immediately, all the tension left me, (something I have never disclosed to anyone before because of its religious significance). I turned to my sons and asked them if they had seen the ‘flying saucer’. They replied, ‘yes’.”
Expanded Account of the Medical Treatment
After the sighting, she felt revitalized, for a short time, until discovering a strange rash covering her face and front part of the body, accompanied by a considerable loss of weight over a relatively short period, which gave rise for concern. Jessie sought the advice of her Doctor, who was well aware of the UFO incident and intimated there was something wrong with her mental health.Offended by this suggestion, Jessie contacted a Psychiatrist - Dr. Wilson, who confirmed, after a medical examination, there was nothing wrong with her mental state of health. “He asked me if I had been given a chest x-ray and blood tests. When I told him this had not been done, he personally escorted me to hospital, where a chest X-ray was taken but found to be clear. Unfortunately, blood tests showed the blood count was very low. The haematologist said to me, ‘If it didn’t sound so ludicrous, l would say you have been exposed to a massive dose of radiation’. I was given injections of iron, twice a week, which caused all sorts of problems before the correct dosage was established.”
A short clip of Jessie Roestenberg when aged 90; recorded in 2015 by John Hanson and Dawn Holloway of Haunted Skies.
Although the Roestenburg children were involved in several of the UFO sightings, they were treated as bystanders in the news coverage and UFO literature. Gavin Gibbons played with the children in his visits with the family and talked to them about the events. At the time, Karin was two and inside, but Anthony Jr. , eight, and Ronald, six, were outside and as close to the spacemen in the UFO as Jessie. A year or so later, somewhat incredibly,Gibbons noted it was “an experience now largely forgotten by the children.” If they’ve commented on the family’s UFO sightings as adults, I’ve been unable to locate a credible source. Beyond Gibbons book, there seems to be nothing recording Tony Roestenburg’s sightings. Only Jessie’s story really lives to carry on.
. . .
For readers who'd like more information on the Roestenburg story, check out the sources below and the BBL page of additional material, including:
There was an excellent discussion of the case by Kandinsky from Dec. 2011, on the site Above Top Secret (ATS) that provides a good background on the Roestenburg events.
Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 38, No. 1, 1993 carried an article recounting the case, “The Roestenburg Story (1954)” by Gordon Creighton. (pages 6 -9)
Out Of This World - UFO Interview - My Body Language Analysis. Staffordshire 1954 CJB
Craig James Baxter, the author of Unmasked: A Revealing Look At The Fascinating World Of Body Language made a video examining the clip of Mrs. Roestenburg from Out of this World.
His analysis is interesting, and he seems to believe she was sincere. However, his conclusion that there’s a tear shed at the close of the video seems to be in error. Compare the scene with a clip from the original program. No tear is evident. (https://youtu.be/58R7JAQm_yQ?t=37s)
Stafford and Mid-Staffs Newsletter, 5/2/5?, “Staffordian’s Opinon on Flying Saucers,” a profile on Wilfrid Daniels, who discusses investigating the Roestenburg sighting.
