Message #19057

[Bianca]

I found myself with an overwhelming desire to relate my fantastic experiences to somebody who would listen to me without questioning my sanity. So I put the metal away in my strongbox and telephoned my closest friend, who was a member of the executive committee.

I asked him to come over right away to discuss something which had happened to me and which I could not talk about over the phone. He didn't seem to be impressed and wouldn't answer yes or no about coming over. He talked hesitantly as if he were building up to some point, then blurted out, "Say, Al, stop having those pipe dreams so you can get publicity for the IFSB! Do you think people are going to believe such nonsense? Give up the idea of making contact with creatures from another world. If they were going to contact somebody, it wouldn't be you. There are more intelligent people around they would want to meet!"

He hung up as I held on to the phone with a sinking feeling. My best friend had refused to listen to me. How would others react? What a predicament to be in-with nobody to confide in. What had I got myself into?

Suddenly I became conscious of and more afraid of another threat, a mundane terror which eclipsed the more unearthly fears I had gone through and survived. What might happen if my story did get out to the wrong people? I was reaching a kind of numb familiarity with the people from another world, and as I chuckled somewhat ironically to myself I realised that my final downfall might more likely come from a visit by a different kind of men-dressed in uniforms of white, freshly laundered at their home base, the booby-hatch!

I didn't know when I might be contacted again, but I hoped it would be soon! Now for the first time I found that what the aliens had shown me had given me an insatiable curiosity to learn more. It was as if the film had broken during an engrossing movie and I was sitting in the darkness hoping it would resume soon. This curiosity had grown into an incredible longing to see and hear more from them.

I had to make a decision about my further relationships with the IFSB. I decided that my best way of handling the committee would be to tell them only part of the truth. I could tell them I had a visit from certain individuals, whom I could not name, who had warned me against further investigation of UFOs. If I told them they had shown credentials, had revealed much to me as to the secret behind the saucers, and that the saucer mystery was approaching a solution, the committee might tend to be satisfied and even attach an Earthly explanation, in their own minds, to my actions.

I would simply tell them it would not be possible to publish anything, because such was not the proper method, nor was it the proper time for such an action. All information was being withheld by orders from what I would simply term "a higher source".

I decided the best possible thing to do would be to discontinue publishing Space Review in its present form, for I already knew the secret of the UFOs and no one would believe the story anyhow if it were published. Why go on conducting an investigation of something no longer a mystery?

Money for memberships was pouring into IFSB headquarters. I felt that accepting memberships under the present circumstances was not fair, for these were joining under the charter of the IFSB which stated we would one day find a solution to the mystery and inform all members about it. So this was the main part of the business conducted at the next meeting. As I had hoped, the committee agreed to everything I proposed after I had told them the altered version of the visitations. I asked them to reveal nothing I had said until Space Review came out in October. They pledged their silence, but I was to learn within a few days that the pledge was not kept.