The Real 'Resident Aliens' - Part II
By Raymond A. Keller, PhD, a.k.a. “Cosmic Ray,” the author of the international awards-winning Venus Rising Series, published by Headline Books and available on Amazon.com, while supplies last.
Venus Rising: A Concise History of the Second Planet
Final Countdown: Rockets to Venus
Cosmic Ray's Excellent Venus Adventure
Lady Columba Venus Revelations
Reverend W. B. Gill’s drawing of flying Saucer and occupants as object hovered over mission school in Papua New Guinea on 26 June 1959.
When Aliens Visited a South Pacific Mission School
Rev. Norman Cruttwell, a canon in the Anglican Church, would certainly be considered, by most, to be a man whose sincerity was beyond doubt. He assured a reporter from the Australasian Post of Melbourne, Australia, in an article that appeared in the 18 March 1965 issue, that “Strange things seen in the sky above Papua New Guinea were indeed UFOs, or- if you insist- ‘flying saucers.’” He based his conviction on a mass of corroborated evidence that he had personally gathered and painstakingly assembled into an extraordinarily detailed report telling of people staring up in amazement at unexplained lights at night and by day, flying objects that gave every indication of being manned spacecraft. This was particularly evident in one case where the apparently human figures aboard a flying saucer waved at the observers.
In the week prior to the article’s publication in the Australasian Post, Cruttwell sat down with a reporter to go over some of the UFO evidence he had amassed over the years in his Box Hill residence, located in a suburb of Melbourne. The reporter was especially interested in the details of the Papuan case where the UFOnauts actually waved at multiple witnesses. Cruttwell expressed no doubt that the UFO cases he had assembled were authentic. He insisted that he would simply discard any UFO case that he could not personally corroborate. When Cruttwell was asked why he was so sure that the UFOs were physical craft manned by visitors from another planet, the reverend stated, “Where else could they come from? America and Russia would not be wasting time and such huge amounts of money trying to perfect rockets and other flying machines, knowing that they were already outdated by this other flying system, whatever its principle (of propulsion) might be. And if not America or Russia, what other country could it be?”
Of course, with Cruttwell being a theologian of high standing in the Anglican Church, the reporter wanted to know how a willingness to accept the existence of advanced civilizations on other planets affected this cleric’s religious outlook. The canon smiled and told the reporter that people were always asking him the same question and that, overall, the acceptance of the extraterrestrial UFO hypothesis was not at all incompatible with reverence for the Creator of the universe: “We know that God created everything. Nothing could change that. There are some references to Our Lord which perhaps we have not yet understood properly, such as ‘In my Father’s House there are many mansions….’” (John 14:2, KJV).
Cruttwell did admit that he did not always think this way about the UFO question. It wasn’t until he first heard about the report of the manned flying saucer seen by another Anglican priest, Father William Booth Gill on 26 June 1959 at a mission school in Papua New Guinea, that he started to take UFO reports seriously. Cruttwell had written in his personal diary that, “I could not believe the reports (of UFOs and aliens) were true and dismissed them as the sort of wild tales which often get around by ‘bush telegraph,’ and in which there is often little or no substance of truth.” But soon after he received and read the contents of a “fat envelope of typescript” from Father Gill in the mission field detailing a close encounter of the third kind, Cutwell began to change his mind on this matter.
The cover letter to Cruttwell in the mailed package from Father William B. Gill began: “Here is a lot of material, the kind you have been waiting for, no doubt; but I am in some ways sorry that it has to be me who supplies it. Attitudes at Dogura in respect to my sanity vary greatly; and like all mad men, I myself think my grey cells (brain cells) are OK….” It is clear that Father Gill had kept a good sense of humor about the whole incident. As to the material enclosed in the large envelope, Gill notes that, “This is the original data. Please make whatever copies or photographs you like, but please send it back to me by return ‘Maclaren King,’ if possible, as I regard it with a sense of value….” General reports of Father Gill’s encounter had been published before, but I felt privileged in tracking down the original material that was initially reported by Gill to his ecclesiastical superior, the Canon Cruttwell in Melbourne.
There had been many reports coming from Papua New Guinea with respect to “flying things” and “strange lights in the sky,” even before the age of flying saucers ever began. Such strange lights are referred to by the natives as being “like a Tilley lamp,” which is the usual form of illumination used in the islands when electricity goes out or is not available in more remote areas. But it was on Friday, 26 June 1959 at 6:45 p.m., that Father Gill left his dinner table and walked out the front door of his mission home, overlooking a small patch of lawn fringed by a few trees including coconut palms. Fifty feet below that was the shingled beach. He glanced up at the clear night sky, looking for the familiar planet Venus, which he quickly identified. But there was also another “sparkling object” out there, one that completely mystified him. In his own words, the reverend explained that, “I saw Venus; but I also saw this sparkling object which to me was peculiar because it sparkled and because it was very, very bright. It was above Venus and so that caused me to watch it for a while. Then I saw it descend towards us.”
Two of the mission teachers also joined Father Gill in watching the UFO. The three observed the “Tilley lamp-like object,” noting that, “It appeared to wax and wane in brightness, as though it were approaching and receding.” One the UFO seemed to move in quite close, it paused and hovered at what was judged to be between 300 and 400 feet above the ground. It was definitely circular and had a wide base and a narrower, upper deck. Beneath it were what seemed to be a set of legs, or landing gear. At times, the UFO would produce a shaft of blue light that shone up into the sky at an angle of about 45 degrees. But strangest of all, four human figures appeared on top of the hovering object, beginning around 25 minutes into the sighting, at about 7:10 p.m. Father Gill described the scene thusly: “As we watched it, men came out from the object and appeared on top of it on what seemed to be a deck on top of the huge disc. There were four men in all: Occasionally two, then one, then three, then four. We noted the various times the men appeared. And then later on, all those witnesses who were quite sure that our records were right and that they agreed with them and saw the men at the same time as I did, were able to sign their names as witnesses of what we assume to be human activity or beings of some sort on the object itself.”
On the following day, Saturday, 27 June 1959, what was presumed to be the same object, but not necessarily, showed up again. This time it was around 6 p.m. and the Sun had just gone down behind the mountain, so there was still some light available. Father Gill had emphasized that it would have been really dark just 45 minutes later, as it was on the night of the first sighting. According to Cruttwell’s analysis, the time of the second night’s sighting “rules out any possibility of the object having been a planet, such as Venus.”
Father Gill’s commentary on the second sighting follows: “We stood in the open to watch. Although the Sun had set, it was quite light for the following 15 minutes. We watched figures appear on top, four of them. There is no doubt they were human. Two of the figures seemed to be doing something near the center of the deck. They were occasionally bending over and raising their arms as though adjusting or ‘setting up’ something (not visible). One figure seemed to be standing, looking down at us (a group of about a dozen).
“I stretched my arm above my head and waved. To our surprise, the figure did the same. Ananias (one of the mission teachers) waved both arms above his head, then the two outside figures did the same. Ananias and myself began waving our arms and all four seemed to wave back. There seemed to be no doubt that our movements were answered. All the mission boys made audible gasps (of joy or surprise, or perhaps both).
“As dark was beginning to close in, I sent Eric Kodawa for a torch (Australian term for flashlight) and directed a series of long dashes towards the UFO. After a minute or two of this, the UFO apparently acknowledged by making several wavering motions back and forth in a sideways direction, like a pendulum.” The canon wanted to know if the priest Gill had tried to communicate with the flying saucer occupants by voice. Gill said he and the rest of the observers shouted and made beckoning motions for the UFOnauts to descend from their vehicle; but there was no response other than the waving of the occupants and motion of the UFO. Interestingly, neither the men nor their strange machine made any sounds whatsoever.
I asked the physicist Martin Gottschall of UFO Research Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, about this particular aspect of the case when I was working with a lighting crew at the World Expo there in 1988. Gottschall remarked that the late contactee, George Adamski, when visiting Australia on his world tour in 1959, had informed him that the electromagnetic drive unit of the flying saucers was completely silent, and that most extraterrestrials, from planets in our solar system, at least, usually do not speak out loud in their first contacts with Earthlings, insofar as they (the extraterrestrials) possessed mental telepathic abilities and could, therefore, successfully impart their peaceful intentions to all concerned in any given area where their ships or bodily presence are being observed. “As far as the Gill case goes,” said Gottschall, “I imagine that is probably the way it went down.”
There was a total of 38 witnesses to both of the UFO appearances at the mission, and 25 of these signed Father Gill’s report of the incident, attesting to the document’s veracity. Among those that signed were five Papuan teachers and three medical assistants, so the encounter is certainly one of the most credible in the history of ufology. Cruttwell emphasizes that the Gill case was certainly not a fluke in the islands, however, as he cataloged hundreds of UFO sightings from that once Australian trust territory. In July 1959, with reports of UFO activity coming in from all over the islands, Cruttwell instituted a nightly sky watch, from sundown to 9 p.m. at his own mission house in Menapi. However, when a UFO did zoom in at Menapi, it came in not at night but in the morning. The Anglican canon made a notation of this event: “This was the first daylight sighting; and by incredible bad luck, I missed it by seconds.
“It was 9 a.m. on Tuesday, 21 July 1959. I had been delayed by various duties and had not come up to the school line, as I usually do, but was still indoors. The school children were just marching into church for their morning service. About half of them and several of the teachers had passed into the building, but perhaps 100 children, two male teachers and six girl pupil teachers were still outside.
“Suddenly, some of the children caught sight of a bright point of light moving in the clear blue sky. It had appeared from behind the wooded hill to the west of the station and was drawing nearer and increasing in size. Soon all the children and teachers were staring, fascinated.
“As it drew nearer, it appeared elongated and became larger until it was clearly seen as a shining, metallic disc with a dark ring around it. Teacher Augustine reckons it was a ‘little smaller than the Sun.’
“It passed to the north of the station at an elevation of perhaps 30 degrees, travelling ‘faster than an aeroplane’ and making no sound whatever. There was no vapor trail at all…. Its transit must have been fairly rapid, probably no more than a minute, perhaps less. Unfortunately, they were too fascinated to shout, and much time was wasted before Augustine took it into his head to look for me.
“He (Augustine) wasted more time by going into every room looing for me instead of calling. When at last he had found my mother and she had shouted out, ‘Norman, quick, there’s something in the sky!’ I rushed out, snatched up telescope and camera and ran beneath the mango trees to the playing field.
“But I was just too late. Everyone was staring at the point where it had disappeared. Though we kept a watch all day, it never came back.
“This sighting cannot be doubted. The object was seen by over 100 people all known to me. They all agreed to the appearance of the object- ‘like a silver plate.’ I told Augustine and Abel, the two senior teachers, straightaway to take pencil and paper and draw what they had seen. I made them sit at opposite ends of the classroom, unable to see each other’s papers, and I myself watched to see that there was no collaboration. I drew up a report then and there, and the teachers signed it.”
Despite Canon Cruttwell having obtained from Father Gill the audio recordings of a majority of the credible witnesses in the case of the encounter with UFO occupants, critics in the Australian scientific community have not taken the UFO reports as serious as they should. The Down Under scientists have opined that as objective skeptics they can rightly judge that sincerity on the part of the UFO observers is simply not enough. This is because witnesses, though sincere, may be mistaken.
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Editor’s Note: Keep reading this series for Part III of the Cosmic Ray’s Real “Resident Aliens,” where the presence of extraterrestrial spies is uncovered during the historic Gemini 9 rocket launch at Cape Canaveral back on 3 June 1966. - Lon
