Timothy Good 1998
For two days, on October 27-28, 1978 Timothy Good together with Lou Zinsstag interviewed Howard Menger and his wife Connie at their home in Vero Beach, Florida. Some extracts from this interview was printed in Timothy Good´s book Alien Base (1998). Many years ago Tim sent me a copy of the complete transcript of the interview, 26 pages. Much of the information in this interview has never been published and I don´t think Tim would mind if I share some of these unique data.
In 1991 Howard and Connie Menger published The High Bridge Incident. The Story Behind the Story. The introduction was written by Dr. Berthold E. Schwarz, MD, a close friend of the Menger family and one of the few professionals to have investigated the UFO contact experiences of Howard Menger. In a letter to me May 29, 1986 Dr. Schwarz gave his opinion that ”the contact claims of Howard Menger is far from being an open and shut or black and white matter.” He reiterates this view in the introduction: ”The time is operripe for reopening the Howard Menger file and beginning anew.”
Howard and Connie Menger in the 1950s
In several blog entries I have advanced the theory that Howard Menger was a genuine contactee involved in a psychological and sociological experiment implemented by a group of benevolent visitors from somewhere. But like many other true contactees he didn´t understand all that happened to him and also became involved with various intelligence agencies, which further complicated the situation. This becomes very evident in the interview by Tim and Lou.
At the time of the interview in 1978 Howard speculated or wondered whether the visitors he met really came from Venus?
HM: Well, I asked them where they came from, and they told the truth, but I believe it´s a possibility that I might have distorted that answer. You see, when they say they have just come from a planet we call Venus, that doesn´t mean they are Venusians, but I interpreted it as that…. But I think that I might have been wrong. According to what they told me, they led me to believe that there´s no life on any of the planets in this solar system – I mean such as we people.”
Photograph taken by Howard Menger 1956
Here it looks like Howard don´t recollect what he was told of life in our solar system and explained in his book From Outer Space to You, that organic life exists only on our planet but the space people in our solar system live in another part of the multiverse, normally not visible to us: ” "For instance, on Venus and Saturn the rate of vibration is much higher, and renders corporeal structures more tenous; and if an Earth man in physical body could go there he probably would not see some to the life forms which vibrates more rapidly than his own - no more than he can see the spiritual life forms in and around his own planet." (p. 126-127)
HM: ”I would say that it is very possible that there are civilizations that are right on this planet… that are living right here on this planet – underground. They don´t want anything to do with us, because of the radiation.
TG: So, you think that the people you met were from this planet? I´ll re-phrase that, were from a superior technology, a superior civilization on this planet?
HM: They are definitely superior spiritually, and their technology was superior, and their bodies were superior.
TG: And they had what could be construed as space vehicles?
HM: They are extra-terrestrial vehicles: they could go into outer space, yes.
TG: Yeah, but you still don´t think that that necessarily means that they came from space… Do you think they were borrowing them, or do you think they have space travel capability?
HM: There are so many theories. You see, I wish I knew one answer and one only. Wouldn´t that solve a lot of problems. But you see… this whole thing is so complex”
This discussion is interesting as Menger in From Outer Space to You was told that there are secret earth-based groups using flying saucers: "There are also space craft, though of inferior design, which are built by people of this planet. These people are in communication and in service with people from other planets. They are people who possess a high spiritual understanding and have reached an awareness of natural law..." (p. 159)
In the 1978 interview there is much discussion about the reason for the test made by the visitors in the 1950s and whether it was successful.
HM:” They said I did a good job; that the mission that they had set up and had now recorded was successful in the sense that they now know that Earth people were not ready… in other words that they couldn´t get involved with the majority of people on this planet… oh, there were all kinds of blocks: religious blocks, scientific blocks – and they did use the word ”blocks” – spiritual blocks… We´ve found now that the people are not ready for 80% of what we have to… It was a gauge to find out how people would react.”
TG: ”When were your last contacts, Howard? Have they tapered off spasmodically?
HM: Yeah, I´ve had a few phone calls though, so they haven´t forgotten me…They said that they contact me in two years. They did – phone call. That was all, very short… personal. And they said they´d call again in two years. Every two years I get a call… It seems like the same guy… And that´s what keeps me sort of on the road – that it happened, you know, And they haven´t deserted me… that it´s not a total loss. And they said they are still working, that they´ve got other plans, other places…”
From several different sources I have received information that many more individuals than is generally known were involved in the 1950s experiment by this benevolent groups of visitors and given different missions to carry out. Some couldn´t handle the situation. The test put a tremendous psychological strain on the contactees who sometimes acted irrationally and didn´t understand what was happening to them. Some lost their head in the glamour of publicity and embellished their stories with faked encounters and photographs. According to my contactee source this became the fate of the most famous of them all, George Adamski: ”… all the glory and attention of being recognized by the general public went to his head, and eventually the contacts he was getting stopped, bu the kept trying to ride the dead horse, because the fame of all of it went to his head.” (Email October 22, 2012)
My contactee source gave some further comments on this problem: ”They said to me that out of the 100´s of contacts, that every contactee agreed emphatically to carry out the specific mission given to them, but that only less than 1% of these contacts carried out that promise to them, as most of them just went about glorifying their ego´s by making books and movies or being a famous contactee.” (Email February 19, 2015).
In the interview Howard mention some interesting information he received from the visitors: ”We´re not really the body. We´re just light, is what they said. In fact, they have pictures of the soul rising from a person who is dead. There´s something in us that goes back to the All – the All-intelligence. There´s something in us that does not die. And it can go back into a new body.” As I related in my former blog entry, this is often mentioned in esotericism as a very challenging scientific discovery to be made in the near future.
Howard Menger
Howard and Connie Menger had many hard and exhausting problems because of their involvement with the visitors. If was often more a curse than a blessing. At one time they visited a Catholic priest as they thought it would do some good.
”I don´t think it did a bit of good… but the priest was dyed-in-the-wool, which I interpreted as distortions of the truth…I just couldn´t get through to him. In fact, one time he came to our house, and he brought two nuns with him, and it was really a circus, in the sense that he said that I needed help; that I´d been contacted by the devil! I laughed in his face… I was so strong after the contact in not only beautiful spiritual knowledge that they had given me… and I think that if anybody needed help, the priest and his nuns did… that´s when my wife and everybody left the church.”
During the interview Howard gave this view of the visitors: ”It´s my opinion that they don´t really want anything to do with us, because if they did have anything to do with us it wouldn´t amount to anything but more problems, because greed is inborn in us.” Howard also mention the idea of planets as penal colonies, implying that earth is a sort of interplanetary Alcatraz: ”… our scientists are already thinking what I thought a long time ago, we´ll have penal colonies… instead of having gaols, we´ll take all the people who are mentally… murders, rapists, robbers, and just take them and put them on another planet to work out their own problems…” Unfortunately our planet earth, has been chosen as an interplanetary penal colony, so it´s only natural that benevolent visitors are very careful in their contacts with earth people.
The well meaning and naive man or woman on the street naturally ask: if this group actually exist why don´t they show themselves in the open? I think the best answer was given by the "Venusian" Bill to journalist and esotericist Paul M. Vest: "Upon your earth the mere colour of one´s skin - a slight difference of religious belief - merely belonging to a different race or country - in fact the most trivial deviations precipitate animalistic belligerencies, hideous brutalities and the bloody slaughter of millions of your fellow creatures. Can you then truly be surprised when I tell you the the beings of certain other worlds view earth as earthlings might look upon a den of deadly serpents stinging each other to death."
