Greetings Earthlings: An Alien Miscellany // The Brooksville Robot

Where: Brooksville, Florida, USA
When: March 2, 1965
Witness: John Reeves

Introduction

While "contactees" such as George Adamski and George Van Tassel¹ achieved considerable fame and notoriety as a result of their alleged encounters (channelled or actual) with benevolent space brothers, there are numerous examples of contactee "cults" that never quite got started - withering (sadly) on the vine. John Reeves' 1965 encounter with a "robot" near Brooksville, Florida (and his subsequent recovery of "extraterrestrial" sheets of paper) is a case in point.

Before getting on to the details of the incident I'd like to thank Embarr for her colourful and creative interpretation of Reeves' visitor. She's currently knee-deep in nappies, bottles and the rest so hopefully this little project proved a refreshing change of pace.

Appearance

Like much about the encounter, descriptions of the creature's appearance are rather vague and lacking in specifics (although after a later meeting with similar beings Reeves suggested it/they were "beautiful, slim, tall, with smooth skin and features similar to Orientals"). Most sources seem to agree that Reeves claimed (at least initially) to have seen a smallish (5 feet tall or so) humanoid that wore "a transparent, spherical helmet" as well as a tight, silvery, one-piece suit - an item of clothing that was once de rigeur for alien visitors.² The eyes were apparently "slanted" and widely-set, while the chin was pointed.³

Event

This description has been cobbled together from a number⁴ of⁵sources.⁶ I've found it hard to locate anything like a "definitive" account.

The date was March 2nd, 1965, and John Reeves (a 65 or 66 year old "former steelworker") had gone for a walk behind his house. The time was either mid-afternoon or 2 O'Clock in the morning, while the countryside in which he strolled may have been wooded or (possibly) "sandy" and hilly. As should be apparent from this brief scene-setting, there's no ready consensus on the specifics.

Billy J. Rachels takes up the story:

Just as he topped a sand dune he saw an amazing sight. Approximately 100 yards away was a disc-shaped object sitting on the ground with four stilt-like legs. Mr. Reeves described the object as a disc with a dome on top, a dull, silvery-gray color. He estimated the diameter at 40 feet, 8 to 9 feet at its thickest point, and the distance from the edge of the disc to the ground was approximately 3 1/2 feet.

He goes on:

As he approached the strange craft he noticed a figure about 25 feet from the saucer. He said it appeared to have a tight, luminous skin covering the entire body. Later, he thought it may have been a robot. The being turned suddenly around and started moving toward John, pulling from its side a small square object, similar to a camera. The being held the device at chin-level, then pushed a button that caused an extremely bright flash. Mr. Reeves attempted to run away, but tripped over a bush and lost his glasses. Lying on the ground, he watched the being as it picked up the glasses and gave them to him. (!) By this time, John was quite upset. As the being made its way back to the ship, it dropped two pieces of paper onto the ground, then entered the object via a slat-like stairway on the underside….The Saucer began rotating counterclockwise, slowly at first, then faster as it rose gradually and finally left the area at a high rate of speed.

Aftermath

Though the incident may not (at first glance) appear all that different from a dozen other contemporary cases, it's what happened next that makes it as memorable as it is. Over we go to Patrick Gross of ufologie.net:

Later, footprints were found at the landing site, and Reeves also discovered two pieces of tissue-like paper at the scene of the encounter which bore strange symbols of handwritten appearance, which he gave to US Air Force investigators at McDill Air Force Base and the Pentagon, who then said the paper-like stuff is common material and that they have partly decoded the message.

Jack Robinson of "Tampa Bay Sceptics" claims that he was given (by a "courier for NICAP")⁷ what was alleged to be one of these very pages (a week or so after the encounter) - and here's the script he saw:

His attempts to crack the code appear to have uncovered the following:

Planet Mars
Ston _ _ _ _
Are you coming home
soon We miss you
very much Why did
you stay away too long
(?) _ _ _ _ _ g _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

While some commentators point to the above translation as evidence of a playful hoax, the inevitable dark rumours about military interference seem to circulate. For those of a conspiracist bent it's probably not too hard to believe that "They" kept the "original" pages only to return this absurd one into the public domain - thereby ridiculing this and similar encounters. It's an old story.

For a description of how Mr. Reeves went from 65/66-year-old ex steelworker to budding alien contactee, we return to Billy Rachels (who met Reeves) of Alternate Perceptions:

Mr. Reeves would have more sightings and contacts with the Space People. His most outstanding took place on August 6, 1968, almost a full year before Neal [sic] Armstrong landed on the Moon. Responding to an unexplainable urge to go to the same part of the woods where he had encountered the saucer, he saw the same type of ship, and met with the Space People for several hours. He asked them all types of questions. He said they spoke English, as well as other languages. They told him their ships were made of a super strong substance, much stronger than steel but lightweight like aluminum. He went on to describe the beings as beautiful, slim, tall, with smooth skin and features similar to Orientals, but only slightly. They wore tight-fitting, one piece jumpsuits, and appeared to be in their 30s, though they claimed to be much older. The Space People asked him if he would like to take a trip to the Moon. John quickly said yes, as he felt he could trust them.

The entire trip (there and back) took a little over six hours. They landed on the dark side of the Moon, where he found their base enclosed in a large, transparent dome, under which he was able to walk comfortably in his short-sleeved shirt.

[…]

Needless to say, being the first Earthman on the Moon, Mr. Reeves' eyes almost popped out of his head. Realizing he would need proof of his trip, he reached down and scooped up some dark gray lunar dust into a medicine bottle, and picked up an approximately softball-size crystal. Later, when he talked to scientists about his trip, he told them that the Earth was more egg-shaped than round, and that you could see light clouds on the Moon. He did not show them the dust or rock because he feared they would take his samples and never return them.

Rachels adds:

I saw the dust. It was much finer than coal dust. I also looked in a book on all types of rocks and could not find anything that matched the crystal that John had let me hold, though he would not give me a sample. He kept the dust and the crystal under heavy lock and key. He would show them to almost no one, and I had to beg to see them. He also showed me a duplicate of a flag he had from their world, saying he had the real one in a safe deposit box (I never found out if that was true). The Space People told John that their home planet was called Moniheya. It was 32,000 miles around, with 30 countries, total population 15 billion.

Thoughts

Contactee narratives (and the publicity surrounding them) have always been considered something of a nuisance by earnest ufologists. In a field that has long struggled to be taken seriously, contactees (so the story goes) have done irreparable damage to ufology's fragile respectability with the "outrageous" nature of their claims. Personally, I don't have much time for that view…but then I'm not an earnest ufologist.⁸

One of the fascinating things about "contacteeism" is how "amateurish" and occasionally comical its associated trappings (see Van Tassel's "Integratron") and pieces of evidence (Adamski's films etc) are. Given their "homespun" charm, it's hard not to read them as the work of "folk artists" (and approaching them as such probably gets us closer to "the truth" than po-faced denunciation).

By all accounts, John Reeves too had more than a touch of folk artistry about him - having built both a "a full size wood model of the saucer in his back yard"⁹ and a monument (to the "Space People") under which he planned to be buried.¹⁰ Unlike more successful contactees whose works remain behind them, Reeves' saucer and monument appear to have been fallen foul of developers and the construction of a "mobile home park". A sad end for intriguing objects. If anyone has any images of these lost treasures please send them on to me.

A closing thought on hoaxing, and the question of why a man of pensionable age would suddenly decide to concoct such an improbable and ludicrous tale (if indeed he did concoct it).

It's often assumed by UFO/Alien researchers that when no attempt is made to profit financially from an alleged encounter, there's a greater chance that it's "authentic" (i.e. the event either happened or the witness genuinely believes that it did). This, it seems to me, is only partially true. While blatant attention-seeking and profiteering do point to probable con-artistry, the motivations behind a hoax are often (I would suggest) quite complex and unclear (even, perhaps, to the the hoaxer him/herself).

I'll leave it to John Rimmer to sum it up nicely (and bring this entry to a close):

It's an irony of ufology that one of the ways in which investigators dismiss the charge of hoax is by saying that the alleged perpetrator 'had nothing to gain by it', as though all hoaxes were only carried out after sober and careful analysis. This is far from the case. Most hoaxes seem to be carried out for strange, hidden motives, perhaps as a form of expression - artistic expression, even - of half-understood, half-concealed feelings and urges.¹¹

Images

Van Tassel, for example, had an "airport" at Giant Rock, California where he hosted the popular "Giant Rock Spacecraft Conventions" during the 50s and 60s. [back]
http://ufologie.net/htm/w.htm#weeki [back]
Randle, Kevin, & Russ Estes Faces of the Visitors: An Illustrated Reference to Alien Contact (New York: Fireside, 1997), p. 100. [back]
http://ufoexperiences.blogspot.com/ [back]
http://ufologie.net/htm/w.htm#weeki [back]
Randle & Estes, pgs. 100-101. [back]
National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. [back]
With a carefully-placed "PhD" tacked on to the end of my name. [back]
http://ufoexperiences.blogspot.com/ [back]
Randle & Estes, p. 102. [back]
Rimmer, John, "Levels of Mystification" in UFOs 1947-1987: The 40 Year Search for an Explanation, eds. Hilary Evans & John Spencer (London: Fortean Tomes, 1987), p. 345. [back]

Greetings Earthlings

The Brooksville Robot