Earth (23 page)

Höglund obtained very little information from his contacts. If he asked something, he said, they would return the next day after consulting with the Overlords. Nonetheless, the Russian friend of Höglund's (mentioned earlier), who claimed contact with the same beings, said that Höglund seemed to know more about them than he did, after working for them for twenty years.

“They are totally without feelings and can witness the most brutal torture,” Höglund once revealed to a friend. “It means nothing to them.” He felt like an animal in their company. In some ways, he said, they seemed stupid, and not even telepathic. They claimed to come from another planet and were here to prevent a third world war. But Höglund speculated that their real objective was to take us over from the inside—by infiltration.

A Different Evolution

Rather than emissaries from another planet or planets, is it perhaps more likely that the group involved with Höglund following his initial encounters in Sweden was of terrestrial, rather than extraterrestrial, origin? Also, there are parallels with reports of the notorious “men in black”—MIBs. In his initial appraisal of the case, HÃ¥kan cites John Keel, the well-known author and leading investigator of the MIB phenomenon. “On a number of occasions,” wrote Keel, “I actually saw the phantom Cadillacs as advertised, complete with sinister-looking Oriental-like passengers in black suits. On Long Island, following the directions given me in an anonymous phone call, I pursued one of these cars down a dead-end road where it seemingly vanished into thin air….”
9
The black Cadillacs are not necessarily phantom, anyway, since Höglund had been lent one to drive in Nassau.

Howard Menger, an American who claimed to have acted as a liaison for the “space people” in the 1950s, and who is the subject of a chapter in my book
Alien Base
, was informed by his contacts:

“My friend, this Earth is the battlefield of Armageddon, and the battle is for men's minds and souls…. There is a very powerful group on this planet, which possesses tremendous knowledge of technology, psychology, and, most unfortunate of all, advanced brain therapy. They use people not
only from this planet [but also] other people of your own planet, who live unobserved and undiscovered as yet, to dupe your peoples into a distorted concept of a truth which enveloped your planet thousands of years ago [in order] to attain their own ends.”
10

It is difficult to know how much credence can be placed in all this, but it certainly resonates with Höglund's experiences, and indeed those of others, such as the Amicizia group (Chapter 13). I spent a lot of time with Howard Menger, and though I am certain that some of his later claims were fantasized, I do believe he had genuine contacts with beings who, whatever their origin, were highly advanced, mentally and technologically—and capable of space travel. He told me that he grew skeptical of their professed “Venusian” or “Martian” origin, speculating that they may have been from Earth, the remnants of a highly advanced civilization, such as the mythical Atlantis, said to have existed thousands of years ago.

“Most of this is myth, but suppose Atlantis was real?” Howard suggested. “The people might have gone under the ocean and have cities there. It's very possible. UFOs have been seen going into the ocean, and coming out. It's possible they don't want us to know that they live here on this planet, that they would throw us off the track by telling us [they come from] Venus or Mars.” He thought it likely, however, that they had bases on those planets.
11

Höglund claimed that Little Exuma Island in the Bahamas was “swarming” with CIA agents when the location of the alien base was leaked to the agency. Again, Menger has some pertinent points in this regard, relating to the MIB. “Around this great country of ours is a jungle, whether you know it or not,” he declared in 1967, “and there are specialized men who know how to deal on the same level with these people on the outside trying to get in and conquer us. That's the only way we will ever survive, so don't knock the CIA please.”
12

The Overlords—the four beings encountered by Höglund during his initial encounters in Sweden—seem a quite different, possibly truly alien, species, with their large slanted eyes, large pointed ears, and lack of hair. It is impossible to reconcile this description with the KGB hypothesis. Furthermore, there are a number of similarities in Höglund's account that match some little-known reports by others; for example, Håkan reminded
me that in the case of José Higgins, who encountered two strange, tall humanoids in Brazil in July 1947, the beings were covered in a kind of inflated, transparent suit, which enveloped them from head to foot.
13
Höglund's humanoids, likewise, were covered by transparent coveralls which looked like they were held out from the body by air pressure.

Regarding the beings who liaised with Höglund and others, I feel that HÃ¥kan Blomqvist's original hypothesis remains valid. “My personal speculation,” he wrote in 1984, “is that these entities somehow belong to this Earth but are of a different evolution. In Theosophical literature there are frequent mentions of two other physical evolutions sharing this planet with us. They are possibly neither good nor evil but can be ‘used' by those who know….”
14

Reluctant Guinea Pigs

I
t was the summer of 1968 in London's West End. Leonard Mantle, a
gardener for the City of Westminster, was busy spraying the roses in Soho Square when a stranger bade him “good morning.” In a busy public square, especially in summer, it was not unusual for tourists to stop by for a brief chat.

“I looked up and saw a man there, very immaculate, with a dark gray suit and an about-town shirt,” Leonard told me, in one of two interviews at his home in 1978. “I thought I'd better just carry on. The next thing he says is, ‘Obviously you're enjoying your work?' To which I replied, ‘Well, yes, of course.' And when you're seeing people rushing to work, you just carry on doing what you're doing.”

“You're not aware of time,” the stranger commented. “You seem to be more acutely aware of that than most people.”

“Well, time is important,” replied Leonard, somewhat bemused.

“That's a very true statement,” replied the man. “But people's concept of time is entirely different.”

The stranger introduced himself as Iso Khan. Leonard inquired if he was on holiday. “Oh, no,” came the reply. “I'm just on a visit—sort of.” Asked if he traveled a great deal, Khan confirmed that indeed he did, adding that he had met people from all walks of life.

“It would appear there hadn't been any part of the world he hadn't been
to,” said Leonard. “At this point I excused myself, as it was my tea break, but suggested that he come back after I'd had my break. So I had my tea and came out of the hut, which is in a picturesque place in the middle of Soho Square.

“And, naturally, I never thought he would be there. I'd watered the rose beds, so I thought I'd get the mower out and start mowing the grass. I went up and down a few times, then got back to the seat. And there he was, sitting on the same seat. ‘They're quite nice straight lines you've made with that cutter,' he said. I replied that I liked to see them straight as it makes the grass look good.”

At one point in the conversation, Khan implied that he came from another world.

“His knowledge of things was so overwhelming,” Leonard emphasized. “It seemed as though he knew
everything
pertaining to our world: its formation, the psychology, the arts, literature, culture—not only our cultures but cultures I'd never heard of. He seemed to be familiar with every aspect of our world. ‘How could you possibly know what happened a hundred years ago unless you were there?' I asked him.”

“Well, it is a question of time,” he responded. “Your whole concept of time is a man-made thing. Time, according to you, is being born, living, and dying; getting up, working, and going to bed. That is your concept of time.”

Leonard pointed out that, from his personal experience, he however had always been aware that there is “another time—a time where you sort of step out of yourself.”

“Yes, then you are going into time,” came Khan's cryptic response, alluding briefly to a “sixth dimension,” which meant nothing to Leonard at the time.

Another meeting took place the following day in Park Lane. “I had to go onto the central reservation, watering all the way down and picking up the Coca-Cola cans and various things that visitors had thrown all around Marble Arch by the fountains,” Leonard explained. Khan seemed determined to accompany him. Leonard's superintendent, who was checking progress at the time, just glanced at Khan, assuming him to be a member of the public. “So, it wasn't as though it was a hallucination and that he was
invisible to anyone but myself,” Leonard impressed upon me.

Khan alluded to our exponential developments in technology. “The tragedy of things here is that your technology has advanced too fast,” he pointed out. “You will not be able to contain it.”

“Well, I know we've got the atom bomb and the hydrogen bomb,” responded Leonard.

“It's not only that,” said Khan. “Your world is being destroyed without those things. You don't need to have a worldwide war between two major powers to eliminate this world. That is entirely unnecessary…. The men who count
know
—they know they cannot contain what they have made,” adding that, at any given time, “a chain reaction could take place.”

“He never alluded to pollution of rivers or seas, or oil or anything like that,” Leonard explained, “just that the rate of pollution in the environment was now so rapid that it was highly improbable we would last for more than five hundred years—even without any wars.”

Psychological Problems

Leonard became so concerned by these encounters that he decided to inform Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, responsible for law enforcement within Greater London (excluding the City district).

“I was fed up with the whole thing,” he told me. “So one evening I went on my bicycle to Scotland Yard, and there was a sergeant sitting there. ‘Look, Sergeant,' I said, ‘do me a favor, could you possibly let me see someone high-up I could talk to?' So he just looked at me and said, ‘Do
yourself
a favor—just go home.' ‘All right,' I said, ‘I'm going.' So I walked toward my bike, and I thought, no—so I went back. ‘Piss off!' he said.

“I must be sincerely honest about this. Iso Khan, wherever he comes from, whoever he may be, certainly hasn't done me any favors—because I went to Epsom.” (The name of this town in the county of Surrey was often used as a euphemism at that time, owing to the notorious prevalence of its psychiatric hospitals.) Leonard's general practioner, Dr. Rydall, had recommended psychiatric evaluation.

“I was there three days and they said I could go home for the weekend. They said I was emotionally upset and just needed rest.” He spent a total of six weeks in Epsom, returning home each weekend. “They didn't keep
me there, fortunately, but once you get that label stuck on you…. So what have I got to thank him for? I'm quite philosophical by nature and of a logical mind, but there are times when I thought, My God, this fellow has done me irreparable harm, in a way. I thought maybe it's this obsession of mine about the time thing, or that it could all be illusory—hallucinations.”

Len related to me one of several instances when he claims to have experienced a “time shift.”

“A neighbor from my block of flats in Clapham was just coming out of Hannell's grocery store, and I was standing outside. As he was walking, and before he got to the door, I was suddenly there and opening the door for him! And he started scratching his head, looked at me again and again. The same thing happened again in the afternoon when he was coming down in the lift. And he looked at me again in disbelief. If you're behind someone and all of a sudden you're in front of them, how can you explain it?”

Further Meetings

The first of several further encounters with Iso Khan took place in the summer of the following year (1969), in Marble Arch, London. As usual, Khan was immaculately dressed, with what Leonard thought looked like a suit tailor-made in Savile Row, and handmade shoes.

“You're a fine one, you are,” began Leonard. “I had a breakdown last year. Will you tell me something: Why, of all people, did you pick on me?”

“Oh, no,” replied Khan, smiling. “I haven't only picked on you. There are three other people.” The other three apparently had been selected from another country or countries.

“But why in this country then am I the only person? I'm cutting the grass, watering the roses, digging the flowerbeds—you know full well no one is going to believe me.”

Kahn laughed. “It's the obvious thing you do: pick the lowest common denominator. The lower down you are, the lower intellectually people
think
you are, and the less likely they are to believe you.”

“That's not very complimentary to me.”

“It's logical to follow. Who's going to believe you? The only important point is that
you
are aware of time. And we know this.”

“Come off it. How could you possibly know?”

“We have an inbuilt register. If we walk near people, we can calculate the intelligence level of that person. You're very intelligent, and you have six senses. We have nine….”

“But why pick on me? Look what I'm doing—old trousers, great big boots, and messing around with mud—of all people, why me?”

Kahn replied that he'd talked to other people and had met with a negative response.

At one point during the several days of meetings that year, Leonard invited Khan to his home in Dolman Street, Clapham North, southwest London. “He was reluctant at first. And I said ‘Why don't you? There's nothing to stop you.' And so he agreed.”

Khan declined Mantle's offer of food and drink. He behaved impeccably, and liked his host's three cats, which he petted. But his telepathic ability was disturbing. “He knew what you were going to say before you opened your mouth,” Leonard explained to me. “It's like being dissected brain-wise.”

One of the many topics discussed was our space program. “A very primitive way of getting off the ground,” commented Khan. “There are far better ways of getting around.”

“Give me an instance.”

“Well, our spacecraft are relatively simple. Our technology is completely different from yours. We work with an electro-magnetic field. The craft can either be [disc-shaped] or cylindrical. The principle, in effect, is that you have two magnets: one on the bottom and one on the top. Do you understand magnetism?”

Len replied that he knew very little.

“Well, if you have two magnets and you push them together, they repel each other,” Khan explained.

“I know that well,” rejoined Len, “for the simple reason that I had a Black & White whiskey promotion toy involving two small magnetized dogs which pushed one from the other.”

“Well, the principle is the same. There's a magnet on the bottom and one on the top. And we have a cylindrical column which is a mercury barometer. A long thing comes down like that, and up, and it's used when we enter barometric pressure.” (I presume on entering a planetary atmosphere.) Khan
added that a “dimensional field” was also involved.

In our last interview, Leonard expanded a little on the propulsion aspect, struggling to comprehend what he had been told. He referred to a “hydro-electric magnetic field,” and thought that “the top half of the cylinder-type central column was identical to the bottom half.” Takeoff was at a “terrific rate,” which occurred “when the top half hit the bottom half.”

It should be borne in mind that Leonard had no scientific education and thus conceded that, although blessed with a good memory, he might easily have been mistaken regarding some of these explanations. It is equally worth pointing out that he was not a “ufologist,” thus unfamiliar with any of the numerous books on the subject: he hadn't even bothered to see
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
, he assured me.

Queried about his extraterrestrial origin, Khan said he came from a world very much like own, though lacking in pollution. His race was about 5,000 years ahead of ours. He claimed to be around 150 years old.

“You know,” he added, “your people are under an illusion. You seem to think that people from other worlds have got all sorts of funny faces.”

I asked Leonard for a detailed description of Khan.

“He was debonair, slim, and about five feet eight. He had straight brown hair, immaculately well cut, and a sort of pointed, aquiline nose, high cheekbones, and a very determined chin. His eyes were greenish: it wasn't so much the color but their expression. They never darted about and were static—very calm. He didn't seem to blink. His teeth were absolutely perfect—nothing irregular at all. If you saw him, you'd say: there's a very smart, well-groomed business man—you wouldn't say handsome. He had the look of a man who knows where he's going.”

Khan invited Len to examine one of his hands. “The pigmentation—it's the same,” Len declared.

“Not quite. Our pores are a little bit larger.”

Khan was conversant with many of our languages. “In the acquisition of a language, it doesn't matter whether it's Chinese, Russian, or any other,” he explained: “to us, any forms of language or speech are relatively simple.”

He spoke English “in an educated way,” said Leonard. “Only once did he ever make a mistake. Instead of saying ‘I don't understand you,' he said ‘I have not the meaning of your words.' That was the only time
ever
that he said something that was not compatible with the ordinary way of speaking English.

“He had a very reassuring type of smile—and a sense of humor. He also seemed compassionate about us, almost as if he felt sorry for us in a way.

“Since he had been responsible for my breakdown, I told him that the least he could do was to prove to me that he was who he said he was.

“I had a Dynatron record player,” Leonard continued. “I've always been passionately fond of music. I had an album of Nat King Cole numbers, and ‘Let There Be Love' was playing.”

”That's quite nice,” Khan commented. “I'd like to hear that again.”

“Yes, well, hang on….”

“There's no need for that,” rejoined Khan, making a slight gesture with his hand.

“The pick-up arm lifted itself up and it moved back, which is impossible because the record should have finished first—it had one more track to go. So I said, ‘Well, do it again!' Sure enough, it came back and started again. So then I took off all the other records, left this one on, and told him that he could stop any track he didn't like. And sure enough he did—and he never touched the thing. And what's more, it happened for several days after he'd left, witnessed by my wife.

“It was absolutely incredible—you just don't know what to think; you're so nonplussed that you begin to doubt your senses. ‘There are probably people in a laboratory who would have the answer to this,' I told him, ‘who could probably do it with an electronic beam. But if you say you really are from somewhere else, just do something that nobody on this Earth can do; say, fly up to the top of the house.'