by Ruth Montgomery

“The Guides say that although space beings have visited earth for millennia, they are now “rushing in as seldom before to awaken earthlings and help them to realize that their destruction is imminent” unless better ways are developed to settle disputes between peoples. “They are aghast at the direction that planet earth and its people have taken in the last few decades,” the Guides continued, “including nuclear weapons threats against other nations and curtailment of human freedom.”

My Guides have repeatedly stressed that spaceships are non-essential for the conveyance of spacelings to earth. These highly developed entities, they insist, are able to reassemble the atoms of their bodies within our atmosphere so that they become visible, physical beings, and can as easily disassemble the atoms when they wish to disappear. If true, it may be the only logical explanation for the case that I will now relate.

Because the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) is principally concerned with physical evidence of UFO sightings and landings, Dr. J. Allen Hynek and John P. Timmerman referred to me a letter received in January 1982 from a man named Robert Hurlburt, who was then residing in Starke, Florida. They thought that the Hurlburt case might be more in my line than theirs, since no UFO was involved and I had recently published two books about walk-ins.

Unfortunately, a number of years had elapsed since the alleged encounter, a frustrating circumstance in so many of the reports received at CUFOS headquarters, either because the participants had originally feared ridicule, or were unaware that a legitimate clearing house existed to investigate their claims. Hurlburt’s letter proved so engrossing, however, that I began a correspondence with him and eventually made a number of long-distance calls to his relatives and friends.

Now in his mid-thirties, Hurlburt identifies himself as a commercial artist with a master’s degree in art. But in July 1971 he was still residing with his parents in Claremont, New Hampshire, when he and his German Shepherd dog, Misty, set forth on an extensive hiking trip into the Green Mountains of Vermont. His intriguing first letter, somewhat shortened in the interest of space, describes what happened next.

“On our fourth day out, we came across a young man sitting beside a stream. It seemed to me unusual to find him in such a desolate area, as I noted that he had no backpack or provisions. He appeared to be in his mid-twenties, with straight, collar-length brown hair, rather slender, and slightly over six feet tall. He looked up as we approached and said ‘good day’ in what sounded like a British accent. Misty ran over to him readily, her tail wagging in greeting, which was unusual behavior for her, as she tended to be wary of strangers; but her enthusiasm led me to think this person was okay.

“I sat down beside him and asked if he had a campsite nearby, to which he replied that he didn’t. I became suspicious at this remark, as we were thirty miles from the nearest town. I asked how long he had been in the area, to which he replied three days. I asked myself, ‘What the hell has he been eating in the past three days, pine cones?’ My next reaction was that he might be an escapee from the Waterbury Asylum thirty miles away. He noticed the .44 magnum revolver at my hip and inquired why I was carrying a gun. I told him that since being attacked by bears in Alaska two years prior, I now carried a gun when hiking in deep woods. This explanation seemed to relax him, but not me. Thinking that I was in the middle of nowhere with some nut from the funny farm, I gathered my gear and headed back toward the trail. As I was walking away he called after me and asked if he might walk with me for a ways. Reluctantly, I agreed.

“That day we walked sixteen miles, mostly uphill. I was sweating and out of breath, and decided to make camp for the night. I noted that my companion wasn’t even affected by our long, arduous hike, which led me to believe that he was in better physical condition than he appeared to be. As dusk was approaching, I pitched my tent and gathered some wood for a fire. My companion merely squatted nearby on the ground, gently scratching Misty behind the ear. He had told me earlier that his name was John. I cooked us up a meal from my provisions, and afterward brought out a bottle of wine, pouring us each a paper cup full, and then several more. I became rather giddy and rambled on about myself, but he didn’t seem in the least affected by the wine. Except for admitting that he had lived in England for a time, he seemed reluctant to talk about himself, so we fell into silence after awhile.

“He noticed me gazing up at the stars and moon and asked if I thought there were other beings on some of those planets. I stated that I believed there were many civilizations on other planets, and that I thought those people had been visiting earth for centuries. He said, “Would you believe me if I told you that I was from one of those planets?” That remark definitely blew it as far as I was concerned. My suspicions about him returned. I thought, ‘This guy really is some nut that’s escaped from the asylum. Maybe he’s going to kill me.’

“I figured that it was best to try humoring him, so I asked which one he was from. He said you can’t see it from here because it’s so far away from earth. At my ‘Oh, yeah’ reply he said, ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ I said I didn’t, and he replied, ‘What if I showed you some proof that I am?’ I asked to see proof, and he dug into his pocket and produced a whitish-colored stone about two and a half inches in length, somewhat oval in shape. It looked like a piece of quartz to me, so I asked, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘It’s a communication disc that I use to keep in contact with my people.’ I tell you, I was getting paranoid listening to that crazy kind of talk. I asked him how it worked and he said, ‘It draws power from the life source of your body and directs it in a beam back to my planet.’ I asked what in the hell he meant by life source, and he said, ‘This disc absorbs the energy emitted from your body and then transmits this energy into a beam similar to radio waves.’

“I was getting more scared of this character by the minute. I asked if I could see the stone and he handed it to me. It seemed warm to the touch and I got a tingling sensation that ran up my arm into my head, like a chill, except warm. I held it up to the firelight but could not see through it, nor did it have any identifiable markings. It was just smooth and warm. John went on to tell me about this planet that he claimed to be from: that it was a warm, temperate planet with abundant flora and fauna; the atmosphere had a thick cloud cover and consisted of a high quantity of nitrogen, with oxygen and traces of other gases, some of them familiar to earth, some not. He stated that this planet had two moons and traveled in an elliptical orbit around its sun; and he told me its name, but I can neither pronounce nor write it. He said it was slightly larger than earth, had two polar caps, and a total population of around 500,000,000; that population control was strictly adhered to, meaning reproduction was not a haphazard occurrence; that there were seventy major centers of population; that there was no pollution or disease; [the inhabitants had] a life expectancy of 160 years; that a central committee of seventy representatives controlled the government and each member was elected by one of the seventy major cities by electoral vote of the populace; that there was no crime or famine, and everyone worked in unity to assist one another. The primary concerns of the people were scientific achievement, research and study of alien cultures, and bringing peace to all cultures. They had begun space exploration over twenty centuries ago. Their space vehicles varied in size and shape and were capable of speeds exceeding the speed of light, and were powered by drawing energy directly from the sun. He stated that his culture had been sent to earth to study us and someday to share its technology with us, but as yet we were not prepared to handle such power. He referred to us as infantile.

“I sat listening to all this in a semi-hypnotic state. I was overwhelmed by all that he’d said and was even beginning to believe him. He continued talking, all the while holding the disc between his thumb and index finger, and stated that he was only permitted to tell me certain things; that when he had told me enough the disc would warn him by blinking on and off three times. And sure enough, that disc distinctly blinked on and off three times. It surprised the hell out of me. I asked if he’d been in contact with any other people on earth, and he said he’d met a young lady in my hometown and had told her about himself.

“I slept soundly that night and awakened at the break of dawn. My companion was gone! There was no sign of him anywhere, almost as if he’d never really been there. I cut my hiking trip short and returned home.”

Hurlburt said that by means of a telephone directory he was able to locate and talk face-to-face with the young woman whom John had mentioned, and that she readily admitted knowing the space man, but added that she was not permitted to say much about it, and had not been in communication with him for more than a year. When he saw her again two years later, he said that she did not even broach the subject of John, but she had changed. “Before she was joyful and happy,” he mused. “When I last saw her she was quiet and solemn, as though she was keeping some inner secret to herself.”

Hurlburt also reports changes within himself since the strange encounter. He says that he has been affected “psychologically, spiritually, psychically and physiologically,” but that the latter is the most evident.

“I maintain an average body temperature of only 96 degrees,” he reports, “and I no longer catch colds or flu; my hearing and eyesight have become more acute, and I can perceive a broader spectrum of visual responses. But perhaps the most remarkable physiological change is that I have not aged at all since the experience, which leads me to believe that my metabolic rate has slowed down.

“Prior to my experience, my theological beliefs bordered on agnosticism, but since then I have come to accept a deeper understanding of what we call the creative force, and can now recognize that there are various manifestations of that ‘force’ existent on both a material and a subliminal level. The psychic aspects occurring as a result of my experience have been more subtle and intermittent than the other changes. Nevertheless I feel that I have obtained heightened psychic capabilities, although I cannot seem fully to master them. Sometimes I can see into other persons’ heads and know what they are thinking or are going to say, and at other times I can ‘touch’ certain persons’ minds and make them say certain things and act certain ways. Precognitive thoughts sometimes manifest themselves, but these too are uncontrollable.

“Thus, I can only say that I have indeed been ‘touched’ by a higher life form and know within myself that I have been given a message to deliver and a task to perform. What this message is, and this task, I do not know, as the full implications have not been made known to me as yet.”

Excerpt from Aliens Among Us

See Part II here.