George Hunt Williamson & the Genesis of the Contactees

George Hunt Williamson & the Genesis of the Contactees
by Alec Hidel

[George Hunt Williamson -- 1950's era carnival barker for
Adamski's Venusian UFO Space Brothers was not only a seminal
UFOlogist but also an mysterious occultist and maverick
archaeologist, after who the legendary "Indiana Jones" was
eventually patterned.  -B:.B:.]

- - - - -

Excerpts:

"It would however, be a capital error to classify him solely
as a UFO researcher.  He was above all an occultist whose
activities helped to usher in a new magical aeon -- the aeon
of the Flying Saucer.

[...]

"There can be no doubt that, by accident or design, he
[Williamson] and his various collaborators played an enormous
part in shaping New Age thought in all its manifestations.
Together they constituted the single most important occult group
of the post-war era.  Their influence is made all the more
remarkable by the fact that it has seldom been acknowledged,
or even perceived, by other researchers in the field.

[...]

"Pelley and Adamski ...Hunrath and Laughead ...John Mc Coy and
the Stanford brothers...It was from the tangled lives of these
men that the contemporary UFO mythos first grew and took shape."

- - - - -

The 1950s threw up any number of space-age mystics and messiahs,
each more dotty than the one before.  Among the earliest and
most influential of these was American channeler Dr. George Hunt
Williamson, who died in 1986 at the relatively early age of 60.
Williamson was a prolific writer on the theme of contact with
extraterrestrials.  It would however, be a capital error to
classify him solely as a UFO researcher.  He was above all an
occultist whose activities helped to usher in a new magical aeon
-- the aeon of the Flying Saucer.  No attempt can be made to
understand him or his work unless this fact is first taken into
account.

Little is known of Williamson's life.  Jacques Vallee states in
Messengers Of Deception that his real name was Michael d'
Obrenovic.  This canard has been repeated in several articles on
the early days of UFO research.  I have on file a photocopied
bibliography of the contactee movement (source unknown) in which
it is stated that "Williamson [frequently] used his Yugoslavian
family name of Michael d'Obrenovic although most of his writing
was done under the Anglicized name."  In actual fact, Williamson
was born in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, the son of George
and Bernice (Hunt) Williamson.  Inquiries to the Yugoslav
government have revealed that although there was at one time a
family named d'Obrenovic, it ceased to exist as long ago as 1903,
when the head of the line was assassinated by revolutionaries.

Williamson's use of the title appears to have been entirely
spurious, dating from an occasion in 1961 when he attended a
wedding posing as H.R.H.  Prince Michael d'Obrenovic van Lazar,
Duke of Sumadya.  Like some latter-day Dr. Mabuse, he routinely
used disguises and aliases to further his own ends.

Williamson's academic qualifications were equally bogus.  In the
late 1950s he was listed in Who's Who in America and American
Men of Science as a leading anthropologist and authority on the
Hopi and Zuni Indians.  It later transpired that his various
degrees and qualifications were either self-conferred or, in one
notable case, acquired from an institution known as the Great
Western University of San Francisco, which researcher John J.
Robinson was moved to describe in Saucer News as "a massage
parlour."  Williamson's formal education actually came to an end
in February, 1951, when the University of Arizona disqualified
him for further study on the grounds of poor scholarship.
Disdaining to re-register, he instead moved temporarily to
Noblesville, Indiana, and there took up an editorial position
with Valor, the in-house journal of William Dudley Pelley's
Soulcraft organization.

Pelley was at the time enjoying a new lease on life, having
recently been released from prison after serving an eight-year
sentence for his wartime opposition to Roosevelt.  A former
fascist and leader of the Silver Shirts, he also had an abiding
interest in occult matters and compiled 32 volumes of automatic
writing on contact with higher intelligences.  In addition to
Williamson, his post-war circle is believed to have included
seminal contactee George Adamski and others of the same kidney.
Some authorities suggest that Pelley and Adamski first became
acquainted as a result of their mutual interest in Guy Ballard's
I AM cult.  There is also evidence to suggest that Pelley may
have introduced Williamson to Adamski.

Like many a UFO buff before and since, Williamson later
gravitated to the southwestern state of Arizona, settling in
Prescott and attempting to contact the space people by radio
telegraphy and direct-voice channeling.  According to
investigator Sean Devney, quoting from eyewitness accounts,
"When Williamson started to channel, it was something truly
inexplicable.  [He] would begin speaking in several different
voices, one right after the other."

On November 20, 1952, Williamson and his wife Betty were among
the witnesses to George Adamski's historic first meeting with
Orthon the Venusian in the desert near Mt. Palomar, California.
This event more than any other seems to have catalyzed his
activities.  From then on, he switched into high gear,
publishing The Saucers Speak in 1954 and following it up with
a series of the most remarkable UFO documents ever conceived.

Another little-known but influential saucer cultist was Dr.
Charles Laughead, [who was also alleged to have founded the
Lockheed aircraft company -- the name being the anglicized
version of Laughead] who with his wife Lillian published
Williamson's Book of Transcripts in 1957.  (Lillian Laughead
was among the dedicated to Williamson's Other Tongues, Other
Flesh "for her contribution to the Lemurian interpretation of
the tracks in the desert.")  Laughead is thought to have emerged
from the same pseudo-occult background as George Adamski, et al.
In 1949-1950 he gave up a position at Michigan State University
to help the famous Marion Dorothy Martin, aka "Mrs. Keech", who
had lately been told by spacemen that the end of the world was
imminent.  The full story of what happened next is told in When
Prophecy Fails (Festinger, Reicken and Schacter, University of
Minnesota, 1956).  Laughead's role in that affair was basically
that of agent provocateur.  Without him, it is doubtful whether
events would have turned out as they did.  He is referred to
throughout When Prophecy Fails as "Dr. Armstrong."  His efforts
on behalf of Mrs. Keech were rather akin to those of Thurber's
Get-Ready-Man, who "used to go about shouting at people through
a megaphone to prepare for the end of the world."  When the
appointed hour came and went, and the world continued much as
before, Laughead moved on to other things, and chanced to meet
Dr. Andrija Puharich in a hotel in Acambaro, Mexico.

Puharich records his impressions of Laughead and his wife in
Uri, referring to them as "charming but naive people."  Laughead,
for his part, was delighted at meeting a fellow M.D. in such
unlikely surroundings and immediately launched into an account
of his work with George Hunt Williamson:

 "Through the assistance of a young man who is a very fine voice
  channel or medium, we have been in frequent communication for
  over a year with one of the ancient Mystery Schools in South
  America.  These sessions covered a wide range of subjects, from
  ancient history and life origins on this planet, to science and
  religion.  This Brotherhood also serves as a communication
  center for contacts with intelligences on other planets and star
  systems, and on spacecraft.  Some of these intelligences are
  obviously not human.  Their knowledge and wisdom far exceed our
  comprehension.  For simplicity we referred to them as Space
  Beings or Space Brothers..."

Puharich was initially dismissive of all this, no doubt viewing
it as a flight of fantasy.  Later, on returning to continue his
research at the Round Table Foundation in Maine, he received a
letter from Laughead containing two space messages, "each from a
different channel."  These, together with a paranormal experience
involving a self-renewing piece of carbon paper, went some way
toward changing his mind, laying the groundwork for the Spectra/
Hoova affair described in the latter half of Uri.

Puharich's pursuit of Spectra (a hawk-headed entity said to
communicate through Uri Geller) effectively placed him beyond
the pale of orthodox science.  Few people during the 1970s were
prepared to substantiate his more extravagant claims.  One who
did was Ray Stanford, himself a contactee of many years'
standing.  In the autumn of 1973, Stanford was allegedly
teleported a distance of some 30 miles, car and all, while en
route to a meeting with Geller.  This happened on two separate
occasions and was reported to Saul-Paul Sirag with all due
sobriety.  For more on the Geller-Stanford connection, see
Cosmic Trigger by Robert Anton Wilson.

Perhaps significantly, Stanford was a product the same milieu as
Laughead and Williamson.  Throughout the early '50s he and his
twin brother Rex were involved in a long-running UFO case
involving telepathic communication and channeling.  One of their
fellow contactees at the time was John McCoy, who in 1958 co-
authored UFO's Confidential with Williamson.

McCoy wove many strange new skeins into the tapestry of UFO
research, notably the theory that a cartel of "International
Bankers" lay behind many 1950s sightings.  ("International
Bankers" is of course a favorite synonym among far rightists
for people of the Hebrew persuasion.)  For better or worse he
and Williamson continue to influence the sensibilities of UFO
researchers worldwide.

The Stanford brothers subsequently went their separate ways,
each distinguishing himself in his chosen field.  Rex worked
extensively as a parapsychologist, first at St. Johns University
in New York, and later for the Texas based Center for
Parapsychological Research, while Ray formed the Association
for the Understanding of Man (AUM), a fairly typical Great
White Brotherhood setup.

Others of the original Adamski / Williamson circle weren't
so lucky.  Channelers Wilbur Wilkinson and Karl Hunrath, who
collaborated with Williamson during the latter half of 1953,
disappeared in November of that year after setting off from the
Gardena Airport in Los Angeles county to make contact with a
grounded UFO.  No trace of their rented plane was ever found.
D.J. Detweiler of Carlsbad, California, the man responsible for
processing Adamski's earliest flying saucer photographs, died
shortly afterwards.  Hal Nelson, an associate of Hunrath and
Williamson, was drowned, and Lyman Streeter, the ham radio
operator whose contactee experienences are described in The
Saucers Speak, [not to mention the delightfully kooky 1954
Williamson treatise entitled "A Message From Our Space Brothers
Via Shortwave Radio" which pioneered such concepts as "density"
levels, "photon belts" and so forth] ...succumbed to a 'heart seizure'.  (?)

Williamson later ventured the opinion that Hunrath "was working
as an agent for the Blacks of six solar systems of the Orion
Nebula."  His own researches continued in an unbroken trajectory,
encompassing hermetics, ancient tribal lore, and Theosophical
literature.  There can be no doubt that, by accident or design,
he and his various collaborators played an enormous part in
shaping New Age thought in all its manifestations.  Together
they constituted the single most important occult group of the
post-war era.  Their influence is made all the more remarkable
by the fact that it has seldom been acknowledged, or even
perceived, by other researchers in the field.

As the 50s drew to a close, Williamson ceased to play an active
role in UFO research, and instead founded a monastery in the
Andes mountains.  This occupied his time for several years.
Later he returned to Santa Barbara, California, and was ordained
into the Nestorian Church.  Always an enigmatic figure, he died
in 1986, having retained his secrets to the end.  Many details
of his involvement with the Soulcraft group and its offshoots
are now lost to us.  Others of the circle are either dead or
widely dispersed.  Pelley and Adamski ...Hunrath and Laughead ...
John Mc Coy and the Stanford brothers...It was from the tangled
lives of these men that the contemporary UFO mythos first grew
and took shape.

>From The Excluded Middle #3
P.O. Box 1077, Los Angeles, CA 90048

via CloudRider@aol.com