It is no longer just the western American desert that the aliens appear to enjoy visiting, as they did at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s. He had himself experienced his first UFO sighting, in the skies above Phoenix, Arizona, just last November, and sounded almost childishly excited about it. You don't have to be Tom Cruise to find irresistible appeal in a sci-fi religion based on mythical tales of space creatures, intergalactic warfare, flashing lights and ordinary individuals blessed with the power to communicate with a higher intelligence in the great blue yonder.Jerry Pippin, a radio host who broadcasts his programme The UFO Files from Oklahoma, said there had been no let-up in the number of sightings reported "We never lack for material," he said. It was perhaps no coincidence that LRon Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, came in for frequent mentions at the convention. "You get nothing out of that."The whole UFO phenomenon is a strange, uniquely American hybrid of religious inspiration, technological wonder and pop culture, frequently blended with personal stories of grief, loss and trauma. "I'm not here to poo-poo them or be a debunker," he told the audience at his own lecture, where he compared UFO devotees to the once-reviled prophets and mystics of ancient religions living off thorns in the desert. "Definitely an interdimensional portal."Once your brain takes a trip down this road, there is really no end to the fun it can have.
That was certainly the attitude taken by Greg Bishop, a bona fide researcher and editor of a magazine specialising in weird Americana entitled The Excluded Middle. "The Bermuda Triangle - what is it really?" Peterman threw out at one point. A mousy woman near the back suggested, a little uncertainly, that it was an interdimensional portal "Yes!" Peterman responded enthusiastically. "They coexist with us," he said, "but only at specific frequencies. Now you see 'em, now you don't." Occasionally, Peterman offered personal anecdotes to back up his theories - he said he'd been to the Antarctic and knew where the secret entrance to the underworld was - and other times he simply asserted he was speaking "the truth, ladies and gentlemen, the truth ...
no ifs or buts about it".His audience, including a man in dark glasses who had covered his bald head in silver paint, lapped up every word. "I was snorting drugs and having a great time, not a care in the world, until they showed up," he said, sounding almost wistful.Even more zealous was Hans Peterman, author of a book called Gravity, Matter and Space Travel, who delivered a bewildering two-hour lecture about hidden underground cities on both Earth and Mars, an ancient interplanetary war that led to a Martian colonisation of our world, and the links between ancient pyramids built by the inhabitants of Atlantis and the modern-day military bunker within the bowels of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado.In his world view, the aliens live among us but are mostly invisible because they inhabit entirely different dimensions of space-time. "I am one of many who have chosen to visit Earth at this juncture to help rise the light energies of those souls who have found their inner light and to help prepare them for the Ascension of the Earth."In person, Michael was rather less nebulous, explaining how he was scarred by his war experiences in Vietnam, got heavily into alcohol and drugs, and hung out with an outlaw biker gang in the high desert for nine years before suffering a near-fatal heart attack and becoming convinced he had been touched by an other-worldly light that revealed to him the full complexities of the universe. Tattooed soldiers and their girlfriends from the nearby military base at Twenty-Nine Palms mingled with dreamy New Age fanatics and the sort of ordinary whitebread couples who wouldn't look out of place at a suburban mall.Their pay-off was people such as Michael the Universal Kabbalist, also known as Orion Starseed, a meek-looking man in his late fifties who showed up in silver and purple robes and a shaggy white wig and explained to anyone who cared to listen that the space people had inducted him to a higher level of consciousness that he now felt compelled, like a religious missionary, to share with the rest of his fellow humans."I have strong intuitive knowledge of my many life journeys in the Orion System," he explained in a pamphlet-length biography he passed out to anyone interested.