UFOs

Maurice Masse.

On July 1, 1965, at approximately 6 AM, Maurice Masse was getting ready for work on his farm in Valensole, France when he heard a strange noise coming from his lavender field. Masse assumed it was one of the military helicopters that would sometimes land on his property. Worried that the helicopter might be crushing his lavender, he made his way over to the field and intended to tell the pilot to park someplace else. Rather than a helicopter, however, Masse stumbled upon an egg-shaped vehicle about the size of a car. It stood on six thin legs, sitting about 200 feet away from him. He noticed two small boys, about four feet tall, standing near the craft, apparently observing the lavender.

Picture by Michael Buhler of the Maurice Masse UFO encounter.

As Masse began to walk closer to confront them, he realized that the two figures weren’t boys. They weren’t even human. Dressed in green one-piece suits, the creatures had abnormally large and bald heads, no lips, pointed chins, pale skin, and small hands. One of the creatures suddenly turned around and pointed a small tube at Masse, blasting him with a light that paralyzed him. They stared at Masse for about a minute, communicating with one another by low, guttural grunts. A door then slid open across the craft, and the two mysterious beings disappeared into it. After the door closed, the craft took off into the sky, out of Masse’s sight.

Masse was paralyzed for 15 minutes before he could move again. After checking to inspect the marks the craft’s legs had made on his lavender, he rushed to town and told a cafe owner what had happened. It wasn’t long before the story hit the media and authorities, and Masse’s farm soon became infested with tourists. UFO investigators took samples of the lavender and soil allegedly touched by the craft, and Masse freely talked to them about his experience.

Picture of where the craft is said to have landed.

He said that he wasn’t afraid at all during the encounter and paralysis, and believed that the creatures had no desire to hurt him. Masse did, however, refuse to elaborate on the psychological and physical effects he felt afterward. He did admit to feeling extremely sleepy during the first few weeks, sometimes sleeping up to 12 hours a day. In particular, there was one big detail of the encounter that he refused to discuss with anybody.“Nobody will make me tell it,” he is reported as saying. His wife later said in an interview that he constantly thought about the creatures, and “considered his encounter with them a spiritual experience”. Whatever else he saw, Masse took it to the grave with him, dying on May 14^th, 2004.

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Sources:

https://books.google.com/books?id=w5giAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA133&dq=maurice+masse+ufo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEgQ6AEwB2oVChMIosP4q5qbxwIVQ1c-Ch3yHQ9a#v=onepage&q=maurice%20masse%20ufo&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=c9zABAAAQBAJ&pg=PT61&dq=maurice+masse+ufo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBmoVChMIosP4q5qbxwIVQ1c-Ch3yHQ9a#v=onepage&q=maurice%20masse%20ufo&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=OBAFLYcVQ_gC&pg=PT68&dq=maurice+masse+ufo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAGoVChMIosP4q5qbxwIVQ1c-Ch3yHQ9a#v=onepage&q=maurice%20masse%20ufo&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=BnQU2Q65lWsC&pg=PA39#v=onepage&q&f=false

Wilbur Wilkinson

On November 11, 1953, electrical engineers Karl Hunrath and Wilbur J. Wilkinson paid an hour of rent time for a small plane from Gardena Airport in Los Angeles, California. They submitted no flight plan. Hunrath, despite being only an amateur pilot and having little familiarity with the area, flew the plane. The day before, he called up some acquaintances and told them he was going on a trip. He believed a UFO had landed near-by, and he and his friend Wilkinson were determined to find it. They thought it would take them to another planet, possibly Venus or the home world of the Maserians, an extraterrestrial race Hunrath allegedly communicated with by radio. Whether or not they were taken to Maser is unknown, for the two UFO enthusiasts were never seen again.

The fact that their plane and bodies never showed up anywhere inspired the UFO community in Los Angeles to proclaim that, yes, they really did make it off the earth. A tabloid paper called the Los Angeles Mirror ran an article giving credence to the abduction theory a week after their disappearance. Reporters interviewed Wilkinson’s wife, who explained that her husband and Hunrath believed the end of the world was at hand. The Maserians, Wilkinson had told her, were plotting an invasion of earth. Wilkinson was obsessed with UFOs, and had his den covered in UFO pictures and strange pictographs that were supposedly written in an interplanetary language. He had only moved to California back in June, lured to the state by his old friend Hunrath. Hunrath claimed that he could show Wilkinson a flying saucer, so Wilkinson promptly left his job in Racine, Wisconsin and moved his family 2000 miles away to Los Angeles.

Some of the pictographs found in Wilkison's home.

Some of the pictographs found in Wilkinson’s home.

According to George Hunt Williamson, a UFO researcher active in the 1950s contactee scene, Hunrath was a mysterious man who would frequently spread false rumors about other researchers. He had developed an interest in UFOs after meeting what he believed was a “spaceman”, and moved to Los Angeles after having a fall-out with cult leader George Adamski in Palomar Gardens. Williamson, who insisted that the Maserians were actually a benevolent people from the Moon, suggested that UFOs had nothing to do with Hunrath’s and Wilkinson’s disappearance. He thought, whether alive or dead, they were somewhere on earth.

And this, coming from a man who believed he could contact UFOs by ouija boards, is probably the more rational explanation. There were rumors that the two men had flown to Mexico, but this would have been impossible, since they only had a three hour supply of fuel. Rather than land somewhere, they easily could have crashed and died. Hunrath hadn’t flown a plane in a long time, and he was an inexperienced pilot to begin with. As Williamson noted, “the down-draft and illusive qualities” of the near-by Big Bear mountain range “could have doomed the small plane.”

Sources:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/ufo/otof/otof16.htm

http://ufobc.ca/kinross/planeMishaps/hunrathAndWilkinson.html

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