10 People Who Claimed To Visit Other Planets

Over the last couple of centuries, many individuals have claimed to visit other planets through astral projection or through secret, possibly alien, technology. Since the 1970s, most alien stories have been about small gray men abducting humans but usually staying on Earth, which seems a pity. Here are 10 examples of people who claimed to explore other worlds.

10 The Denton Family

Nineteenth-century Englishman William Denton claimed that the power of psychometry (divining facts about an object or its owner through physical contact) allowed members of his family to visit the various planets of the solar system. His first psychometric experiments involved the use of geological samples to view images of the Earth’s distant past. His wife, Elizabeth, reportedly saw a vision of a giant prehistoric insect after touching a piece of quartz. His sister, Anne Cridge, envisioned an eruption into the sea after touching a fragment of volcanic lava. The family would later turn their psychometric powers to the heavens. Denton’s son, Sherman, reportedly visited Venus and described giant trees shaped like mushrooms filled with sweet jelly and a creature resembling a cross between a fish and a muskrat.

He visited Mars, peopled by a race with four fingers, yellow hair, and wide, blue eyes who flitted around in aluminum flying machines. Mrs. Cridge and Mrs. Denton also visited Mars and described their art, culture, and religion in detail. Jupiter, meanwhile, was also peopled by blue-eyed blondes, but these people could float in the air, and their women wore braids down to their waists.

9 Emanuel Swedenborg

The Swedish philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg believed the universe was filled with other planets inhabited by humans (though spiritual beings). He claimed to have been guided by God and an angel through spiritual tours of Heaven, Hell, and the cosmos. Through the Lord, he was able to commune with spirits, not just of this world but also of others. Swedenborg’s voyage through the solar system was a spiritual journey, but he came back armed with knowledge of our neighbors. Men of the Moon were described as dwarfs about the size of a seven-year-old boy, though stouter in stature and with thunderous voices. Mercurians resembled Earthlings and wore tight clothing. They were also hungry for knowledge, able to read memories from approaching individuals, and counted Aristotle as one of their population. The inhabitants of Venus were divided into two groups, one peaceful and gentle, the other fierce thieves.

Martians resembled humans of various hues without facial hair, lived in perfect communes (wrong thinkers being exiled), wore clothes made from tree bark, and were apparently the best people in the universe. The inhabitants of Jupiter were upright, soft-spoken, happy, and family-oriented people with an obsession with washing their faces and a tendency to walk on their hands. Finally, Saturnians were restrained, humble people with low self-esteem. They had little interest in food and clothing. Rather than burying their dead, they would cover them with leaves. Swedenborg never got around to visiting the other planets of the solar system through the angels, perhaps because they hadn’t been discovered yet by other Earthlings.

8 Howard Menger

UFO contactee and alleged reincarnated Saturnian Howard Menger claimed to have been taken on joyrides through the solar system on a flying saucer. His interaction with aliens began at the age of 10 when a mysterious woman in the forest told him he was chosen and destined for great things. He had intermittent contact during his service in the Pacific War, but after leaving the army he spent a lot of time helping visitors from Venus and Mars blend in with Earth clothing—the women apparently had trouble with high heels and rejected bras entirely. Later he would remember he was actually the reincarnated spirit of a Saturnian man named Sol du Naro, who occupied the body of a dead one-year-old named Howard Menger at the end of a wonderful relationship with a Venusian woman. He claims the beings and civilizations on Venus and Saturn vibrate at a higher frequency than those on Earth, rendering their bodies more tenuous and often invisible to us.

He described beautiful suburbs with redwood trees on Venus, unfamiliar animals, and people walking around in pastel clothing. He would also take a trip to the Moon after receiving a lunar potato containing over 15 percent protein from a contact in Philadelphia. The lunar trip would require a week and a half of atomic processing in order to exist on the Moon’s “expression of reality.” On arrival, Menger reported beautiful pearl-shaped aerodromes, women in gowns offering refreshments, floating trains, and a number of Russian, German, and Japanese tour groups. He even reported a huge, crashed, bullet-shaped vehicle, said to be the remains of an exploratory vessel from another world.

Back on Earth, later in life he recanted his story, blaming it all on a CIA mind experiment, only to re-recant back to his original story in the 1980s.

7 Captain Kaye

In 2014, an alleged whistleblower named Captain Kaye claimed he had spent 17 of his 20 years in the military on Mars, protecting five civilian colonies. He claims he was recruited into the Mars Defense Force (MDF) from a covert branch of the US Marine Corps called “Special Section,” although the MDF apparently recruits from a number of different military branches.

The main human colony on Mars is Aries Prime, built in the middle of a crater. Captain Kaye reports Mars has a breathable atmosphere and occasionally balmy climate. His mission was to defend the human colonies from the two indigenous races, a reptilian race and an insectoid race, aggressive in defense but not expansionist, usually content to leave the MDF and Mars Colony Corporation alone. Things took a turn toward the end of his service as all human military personnel were ordered to retrieve a sacred reptilian artifact from a cave. The ensuing battle killed almost 1,000 personnel and left only 27 survivors.

Captain Kaye said he hopes his testimony will bring to light the breakaway human civilization on Mars, and he has been backed up by Michael Relfe, who also claims his 20 years of service included covert operations on the red planet. Laura Magdalene Eisenhower, who claims to be the great granddaughter of the President, also claimed attempts were made to recruit her for the Mars colony.

In 2015, Captain Kaye’s real name was revealed to be Randy Cramer, who gave further details such as the Moon landing being a cover for extensive operations on the Moon in the 1950s and Mars in the 1960s, and the US Marines “Special Section” being set up by President Eisenhower as a counterweight to Majestic-12.

6 Sackville G. Leyson

In 1906, Utah’s Emery County Progress published an article about a recent trip to Mars by Sackville G. Leyson, president of Society for Psychical Research, via psychic projection. He described Mars as a big globe of molten fire surrounded by bloodred clouds mixed with others of greenish hue. He described two tribes of native Martians, both naked, covered in fur. The difference between them was that “one [was] so large I only came up to their knees and the other [was] so small that they only came up to my knees.” The larger species was described as possessing huge ears, a lion’s nose, a large eye in the middle of the forehead, and lungs that expanded crosswise rather than up and down. They lived in rock houses.

The smaller species was described as web-footed creatures able to slide across moss and scale walls, with eyes in their temples and two holes in their cheeks to make up for their lack of a nose. They lived in holes under the ground. He also reported rubber trees, a substance resembling snow that wasn’t cold and was soft to walk on, and “men working with some sort of machine which was guiding lights across transparent rocks. The rays seemed to be reflected clear to the atmosphere on earth.” Given the fact there isn’t much evidence Sackville G. Leyson actually existed, it’s most likely the entire account was fabricated by the Emery County Progress as a satire of astral projection and contemporary theories of life on other planets.

5 Ingo Swann And Harold Sherman

Remote viewers Ingo Swann and Harold Sherman allegedly undertook psychic journeys to Mercury and Jupiter, just ahead of the Pioneer 10 space probe. Mercury was allegedly filled with rainbows and had a thin atmosphere and a water-dwelling form of lichen-like lifeforms living on rocks. Jupiter was said to have a bitter cold atmosphere of swirling colors and tornados, as well as a 9,000-meter-high (30,000 ft) mountain range. Evaluations of the accuracy of the remote viewing were decidedly mixed. Doctors Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff thought Swann and Sherman’s reports compared favorably with data received from the Mariner 10 and Pioneer 10 research spacecraft.

Isaac Asimov, on the other hand, determined some 46 percent of the remote viewers’ observations were wrong, and only one out of every 65 observations made weren’t either immediately obvious or available in standard scientific textbooks. Swann would later theorize the astral viewing was simply so fast they actually ended up observing a gas giant in a different solar system altogether. Carl Sagan was even more damning, sarcastically calling the pair “two courageous American mystics” and their results “dreadful—sort of vague remembrances of sixth-grade general science.”

4 Dana Howard

Contactee Dana Howard wrote a number of books describing her experiences on Venus, including My Flight to Venus (1954), Diane: She Came From Venus (1956), Over the Threshold (1957), and Vesta, the Earthborn Venusian (1959). She allegedly made first contact with a 250-centimeter-tall (8′) Venusian woman named Diane in 1936.

“Her head was radiant with a crown of fire, strands of golden hair cascading gently over her beautiful, slightly olive-tinted shoulders. The strange mystic light flooding her dark, prophetic eyes, added a wistful something to all her other charms . . . ‘Have no fears, Child of Earth,’ she intoned. ‘Let the doors of your mind be opened and we of the faraway planets will speak to you in poetry and song.’ “

Howard then entered a space ship made of translucent materials with gold trimming and gem studs. Then the mysterious woman disappeared, and Dana Howard was swept off on a trip to Venus.

She would later encounter the Venusian Diane again when she materialized at a seance in Los Angeles in 1955, telling Howard she would help her write about her experiences on Venus then dancing a kind of undulating waltz. In her works, written with Diane as muse no doubt, Howard detailed Venusian medicine as the manipulation of life essence, which resembled a spider’s web in white with a slight blue tint. She also wrote of their technology, teleportation achieved through vibration of matter through thought. Later, she would describe having married and raised children on the Second Planet.

3 George Adamski

In 1952, Polish immigrant George Adamski and some friends went into the Mojave Desert to look for UFOs. There they saw a gigantic, cigar-shaped craft and chased after it. The cigar craft rocketed into space, and Adamski was left alone when another, smaller craft appeared and a man appeared about 40 meters (130 ft) away, beckoning Adamski. He was a beautiful 160-centimeter-tall (5’3”) man with long, blonde hair and tanned skin, wearing a brown one-piece suit with a broad belt and red shoes. After shaking hands with Adamski, he opened telepathic contact and said his name was Orthon, he was from Venus, and he came to warn the Earth about the dangers of nuclear energy.

This was only Adamski’s first encounter. He would later claim to visit the Moon (where he reported “billions and billions of fireflies . . . flickering everywhere,” as well as cities, forests and snow-capped mountains) and Mars and Venus, where he enjoyed banquets with local inhabitants. He went there aboard bell-shaped flying saucers piloted by Nordic space brothers and took a number of photographs of the craft. His claims made him famous as the first well-known contactee, but some say his successful books about journeys through the solar system were merely a re-hash of Pioneers of Space, a science fiction book Adamski wrote through a ghost writer, and that much of his other evidence was faked.

2 Orfeo Angelucci

Believing mold to be a negative form of life leeching off living matter through a subtle process of mutation, Lockheed Corporation aviation employee Orfeo Angelucci decided to attempt an experiment in 1952, sending 18 samples of Aspergillus clavatus mold into the upper atmosphere to test structural changes in their growth. As fate would have it, the balloons broke away prematurely and the mold samples were lost, but by happy coincidence his mishap was noticed by a passing Neptunian spacecraft. His father-in-law first noticed the circular craft, which followed the balloons as they floated away.

Angelucci had a second encounter six weeks later when an oval object glowing red appeared in front of his car as he returned from work. It issued two balls of green fire which told him they were friends and to get out of his car. When he did, a man and woman of “ultimate perfection” appeared and told him he was of very special interest to the aliens surveying Earth. He would later encounter a dashing flying saucer pilot named Neptune who told him secrets of the universe and warned him of the dangers of Communism, and another handsome humanoid named Adam, who over steak dinner turned Angelucci’s glass of water into delicious space nectar by means of an effervescent white pellet.

After being brought to an alien world via flying saucer, Angelucci remembered having lived there before in a previous life on the world and that his original name was also Neptune. The world was apparently a remnant of the shattered planet Lucifer, once the most radiant planets in the universe, which had turned against the etheric beings of the “Father” or “Source.” He would also meet Jesus Christ, whom he revealed to be an infinite entity from the Sun, and witnessed the end of the world, which would happen in 1986 if humanity didn’t mend its ways. Good thing we got on that.

1 Rael

In 1973, French racing car journalist Claude Vorilhon reported a dramatic encounter with a humanoid alien named Yahweh at the Puy de Lassolas volcano park, who told him the secrets of the Elohim, the alien creators of the human race. Yahweh told him he was his real father, and bestowed him with the name Rael. In 1975, Rael claimed to have been taken to the planet of the Elohim (and the nearby planet of the Eternals, where humans live for 700 years before being cloned from a single cell taken prior to death) via flying saucer, stopping along the way for a massage and aromatherapy treatment at the outskirts of our solar system. Suitably refreshed, he arrived on the planet and met his half-brothers Jesus, Muhammad, and Buddha. While there, he was tempted by an Eloah named Satan, who told him Yahweh’s plan for enlightening the human race was doomed to failure and made a counter-offer of billions of dollars in a Swiss bank account if Rael would help carry out a plan of final cataclysm through worldwide racial war.

Rael demurred, saying that saving humanity was more important than riches and power, which was smart because it turned out the whole thing was a test by Yahweh to see if Rael was truly worthy. Rael was then shown the facilities making immortal biological robots, where they made a copy of Rael’s mother and a host of attractive young females before returning to Rael’s apartment for a party. Before returning him to Earth, Yahweh used a helmet-like machine to maximize Rael’s intellectual faculties—which probably had nothing to do with the fact he brought a clone robot of his mother to a sex party.

+ Truman Bethurum

Truman Bethurum almost doesn’t fit this list because he never did get to visit another planet, but he really could’ve been a contender. In 1952, the night shift maintenance mechanic finished work at 3:30 AM and drove out to a hillside called Mormon Mesa to look for seashells from the ancient sea that once covered the area. After a search, he fell asleep in his truck only to be awoken by “a mumbling, low talking in an unintelligible tongue.” His truck was surrounded by 8 to 10 short men, all olive-skinned, clean-shaven with black hair, appearing to be of Latin extraction. They were wearing leather jackets and what appeared to be Greyhound bus drivers’ uniforms.

Bethurum got out of his truck to greet them and immediately noticed the flying saucer hovering nearby. After shaking hands with the saucer crew and realizing they spoke English, Bethurum was taken aboard and introduced to their captain, the bewitching Aura Rhanes, who had a complexion of “a beautiful olive and roses,” wore a black beret over her short hair, and spoke to Bethurum in rhyming couplets. When he returned to his hotel, Bethurum wrote a note: “If I am found dead in my bed, it will be because my heart has stopped from the terrible excitement induced by seeing and going aboard a flying saucer!”

As it happened, Bethurum would be taken aboard the flying saucer another 11 times. He discovered that the visiters hailed from the planet Clarion, hidden on the far side of the Moon, and their saucer was made from the finest Martian steel. On their planet, there was no disease, divorce, war, or social unrest, and everyone lived to the age of 1,000. There was also no liquor or tobacco. He was told that mankind would never get into space until they ended strife and war.

Back on Earth, Bethurum would become popular on the UFO enthusiast circuit with speaking engagements and television interviews like NBC’s Betty White Show, eventually forming a religious group known as the Sanctuary of Thought. His wife divorced him out of jealousy of Aura Rhanes, although Bethurum was never able to take it further with her, nor did he ever get to planet Clarion. His last signals to the flying saucer went unanswered, and the last time he saw Aura Rhanes was in a restaurant in Los Angeles, were she was drinking a glass of orange juice and ignoring him. He never saw his space friends again. Maybe the fame had gone to his head, and they abandoned him. We may never know.

David Tormsen likes Earth, but he’s only visiting. Email him at [email protected].