Next month will complete the first ‘volume’ of audio readings of my essay series on the history of the belief in extraterrestrials. Each essay is linked below with the audio reading on YouTube. Audio of the Heaven’s Gate essay linked at the bottom of this post will be published on the channel in December.
I was not attempting to debate Roswell or Area 51 in these essays. Instead, I started out trying to understand where and how the belief in aliens arose, tracing its roots back through history. I found an American religious tradition that has believed in extraterrestrial beings, and even communed with aliens through spiritual means, from the earliest days of the Republic. Almost all of these new religious movements contain some admixture of Christianity.
This information is never addressed by any book on UFOs. No single volume has ever been published that puts all of these pieces together. Flying saucers are a spiritual phenomenon that always lack some measure of verifiable or replicable evidence, a problem that splits the ufology community to the present day. The problem has only gotten worse in the age of advanced optical systems whose operators seldom understand them, or else abuse them.
Ignore the controversial ‘evidence’, look to the literary historical evidence instead, and the real story is hidden in plain sight. I have published further essays this year that I intend to read for publication in 2026. Please bookmark this page and give these a listen. The evidence has always been out there.
Riding A Comet Through Heaven's Gate
During the afternoon of 26 March 1997, San Diego sheriff’s deputies responding to a 911 call discovered 39 bodies decomposing at a residence in the suburb of Rancho Santa Fe, California. The dead wore black uniforms: Nike Decades sneakers, sweat pants, and shirts with patches reading “Heaven’s Gate Away Team.” Purple shrouds covered their faces. Everyone had $5.75, a five dollar bill and three quarters, in their shirt pocket.