Greetings Earthlings: An Alien Miscellany // Old Saybrook

Where: Old Saybrook, Connecticut, USA.
When: December 16, 1957.
Witness: Mary M. Starr.

Introduction

For those ufologists who exhibit a desperate need for their field of inquiry to be taken seriously by (what one might call) "square" society, nothing gladdens the heart like a sober, educated (preferably titled) witness.

Take Mrs. Mary M. Starr (of Old Saybrook, Connecticut) for example - a holder of not one, but "two degrees from Yale University" as Coral Lorenzen (in "UFO Occupants in the United States") is only too happy to tell us.¹

Though Mrs. Starr appears to lack that magic (and fetishised) combination of letters - PhD - the mention of Yale is obviously supposed to be sufficiently dazzling and impressive. Someone, somewhere, has, I’m sure, created a graph that purports to show that how "increasing" education leads to decreasing fabulation (and, perhaps, vice versa).

Ho hum. The only people this sort of thing seems to impress are those who like books that a) list the author's credentials after his/her name (the longer the better), and, b) are illustrated with a studio photograph of the author in suit & tie (or equivalent).

All very earnest. All very "square". All deeply tedious and uninspiring.

Event

Mrs. Starr describes the encounter's early moments as follows:

"I went to bed early," she said, "about 10:00 o'clock. Some time between two and three in the morning, I was awakened by a bright light in my room. I looked out the window and there was what I first thought was a crippled airplane in my back garden. But when I got my eyes really open, I saw that it was a cigar-shaped object, brightly lit and with square portholes, hovering just above my clothesline. I could see men inside. . ."²

The story continues:

Through the 'windows' Mrs Starr saw two forms which passed one another, going in opposite directions. What appeared to be their right arms were upraised. Reminding her of stewards carrying trays, but no hands were visible. They wore a kind of jacket, their 'heads' were square or rectangular, of a reddish-orange colour, with what appeared to be a red bulb located at the middle of the 'head'. The feet were not visible. A third form entered from the left and Mrs Starr leaned forward in an attempt to see his face better, and at that point the portholes faded and the entire shell began to glow.³

It concludes:

From the top end closest to the witness there arose a kind of six-inch "antenna" that oscillated and sparkled. After five minutes of glowing steadily, the antenna was retracted and the craft began to move. It retraced its original path, gliding smoothly in the direction from which it had apparently arrived. It then made a very sharp right-angle turn, appearing oval in shape. The hull had turned a dull grayish-blue and small, circular lights now outlined the entire rim. The UFO dipped and undulated, following the contours of a small depression to the north of the witness' house, then tilted sharply and shot up into the sky at terrific speed, in total silence.⁴

Thoughts

While many aliens appear (to those witnessing) to behave in a vaguely "robot-like" manner, the beings Mrs. Starr saw hovering near her washing line seem explicitly robotic.

The suggestion is of automatons dashing hither and yon, busying themselves in obscure acts. Like many such sightings the "visitors" seem dynamic and industrious…but with all this energy being expended to no clear end.

Aimé Michel, in his speculative, free-wheeling piece "The Problems of Non-Contact",⁵ casually offers a possible explanation for such activity:

…the beings who are really responsible for the UFO phenomenon are never there, and nobody has seen them, ever. All that we see are robots (either biological or not…)⁶

Though these beings, Michel speculates, may simply be designed for specific tasks, the purpose of these tasks remains unknown (possibly even unknowable) to us.

Before I finish today's entry, a brief question should be asked about a common (though curious) aspect of UFO design. I speak of the humble "porthole" - a feature that (to me at least) has always seemed oddly quaint (and "Jules Verne-esque") given the supposed technological sophistication of the crafts. Do these portholes function to allow "us" to be observed and surveilled (by inscrutable and uncanny alien eyes), or are they there (instead) to permit us to see them?

Who's watching who?

Images

Lorenzen, Coral "UFO Occupants in the United States" in The Humanoids, ed. Charles Bowen (London: Futura, 1974), p. 157. [back]
NICAP - "Are There UFO Occupants?" [back]
Lorenzen, p. 158. [back]
NICAP - "Are There UFO Occupants?" [back]
Michel, Aimé "The Problems of Non-Contact" in The Humanoids, ed. Charles Bowen (London: Futura, 1974) [back]
Ibid., p. 250. [back]

Greetings Earthlings

Old Saybrook

Introduction

Event

Thoughts

Images

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