Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Since the 1950s there has been no shortage of people claiming they’ve been taken up by UFOs. The associated story generally includes cold steel probes in unspeakable places, lost time, and sometimes a forced humping or two. What makes the ‘classic’ contactees a bit different is instead of horror stories they’ve allegedly come back with a vital message for the entire human race.

There’ve actually been quite a few people like this since the fifties. Here’s a short list of some of the stranger ones.

A few weeks ago we told you all about Gloria Lee, an alien contactee who starved herself to death in a hotel room while waiting for the US government to take notice of her space station blue prints, for lack of a better term.

Our lengthy and in depth investigation (read Google search) into her story showed us that as far as her seemingly looney telepathic messages were concerned, she was far from alone.

Take Buck Nelson, for instance. According to Wikipedia, this was his claim:

“…three “friendly spacemen”, similar to humans and accompanied by a gigantic dog, “Bo”, visited him and spent some time talking with him. Nelson further stated that two of the aliens were named Bucky and Bob, and their main message concerned the “Twelve Laws of God”, derived from the Ten Commandments. He claimed to have been taken on trips to the Moon, Mars and Venus. Upon their return to Earth, he was given the dog, Bo, as a gift.”

And then there’s Orfeo Angelucci. He was contacted in 1952 after seeing a saucer. Here’s an excerpt of his claimed experiences, also from Wikipedia:

“Eventually Angelucci was taken in an unmanned saucer to earth orbit, where he saw a giant “mother ship” drift past a porthole. He also described having experienced a “missing time” episode and eventually remembered living for a week in the body of “space brother” Neptune, in a more evolved society on “the largest asteroid,” the remains of a destroyed planet, while his usual body wandered around the aircraft plant in a daze.”

And let’s not forget Truman Bethurum. Of him Webspace.utexas.edu says:

“Truman Bethurum in 1954 published a book, Aboard a Flying Saucer, recounting how, in “late July” of 1952, he had met and talked with a human-appearing woman from the hitherto-unknown planet Clarion. Her name was Captain Aura Rhanes. He was allowed inside the space-woman’s saucer on his very first visit…and made 10 subsequent visits. Bethurum’s day-job was mechanic on a road-building crew, but he moonlighted as a fortune-teller, reader, advisor, and “metaphysical consultant.” Clarion is unknown to earth astronomers because it orbits the sun in just such a way as to stay always behind our own moon… Bethurum claimed to have been so smitten with the lovely Captain Rhanes that his wife divorced him out of jealousy!”

James Gilliland is a man that also claims a sort of inter-dimensional contact. He had a near death experience where he almost drowned while body surfing. He claims the incident “…shifted me up into what I call the inter-dimensional mind.” Wikipedia has more:

“In 1986, he moved to Mount Adams, Trout Lake, Washington, opening up his Sattva Sanctuary…Gilliland says his sanctuary is at an opening to a dimensional portal where extraterrestrial ships travel to and from Earth. His first close encounter occurred after eight years of living on his sanctuary; while meditating in his home, he says that he heard a voice in his head originating from a UFO, and after leaving his meditation his sister ran inside informing him that a UFO was hovering over his house.

“Since then, Gilliland says that he has experienced close encounters with Pleiadeans, Andromedans, extraterrestrials from the Orion constellation, and thousands of UFOs around his sanctuary. In one of his close encounters, Gilliland says that he was allowed to go on board one of the UFOs.”

We’ve listed a few of the contactees - but there are absolutely tons of them - some far more recent than the ones already mentioned above. Generally speaking they all claim to be galactically assigned as messengers with a strong desire to fend off the end of the world.

Well let’s hope they succeed at least long enough for Watchmen to hit theaters. Are we right? Are we right?