Elizabeth Klarer

Elizabeth Klarer

Type	Person
Also known as	Klarer

Elizabeth Klarer (née Woollatt; 1 July 1910 – 9 February 1994) was a South African woman who claimed, publicly from 1956, to have been contacted by extraterrestrials many times between 1954 and 1963. She said her first sighting came when she was seven. She is credited as one of the first women to claim a sexual relationship with an extraterrestrial: a spaceman she called Akon, by whom she said she had a son on his home planet, Meton.^[1] The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology calls her the most prominent South African flying saucer contactee of the 1950s.^[2] Her book Beyond the Light Barrier (1980) presented a message of peace, love, understanding and care for the environment, which she credited to an advanced, utopian Venusian civilisation. She also promoted claims of an international cover-up of vital information.^[1]

Early life

Klarer was born at Mooi River in Natal. She was the youngest daughter of Samuel Bancroft ("SB") Woollatt, a pioneering veterinary surgeon, and Florence Woollatt. Her father later settled at Connington farm near Rosetta in the Natal midlands, where he became a successful shorthorn cattle farmer and a keen polo player.^[1] She attended St. Anne's Diocesan College in Pietermaritzburg and studied art and music in Florence. She then completed a four-year diploma in meteorology at Girton College, Cambridge.^[1] Her first husband taught her to fly a Tiger Moth. In 1932 she and her two sisters, with Maureen Taylor, formed the Connington polo team. Their drawn match against a Durban ladies' team is regarded as the first officially recorded ladies' polo match in South Africa.^[1] During the Second World War she held a responsible post in RAF intelligence. She believed in telepathy and tried to develop it from her youth.^[1]

Early sightings

She described several sightings before the contact claims:^[1][2]

• About 1917. At seven, while feeding Sealyham puppies outside the farmhouse, she and her older sister Barbara said they saw a silver disc "bathed in a pearly luster" swoop over them. At the same time they saw a huge orange-red, cratered planetoid trailing smoke, which the disc rushed to meet and guided northwards.^[1]
• Months later. She claimed another sighting with the farm's Zulu manager, who interpreted it through traditional Zulu beliefs. She sometimes also mentioned an even earlier sighting at age three, in 1913 or 1914.^[1]
• 1937. On a flight from Durban to Baragwanath in a Leopard Moth, she and her husband reportedly saw a saucer approach, fly alongside and leave.^[1][2]

Flying Saucer Hill

In 1954 her sister May, then living on the farm Whyteleafe in the Natal midlands, told her that local Zulu people were reporting the "lightning bird" in the sky. Klarer travelled there from Johannesburg with her children. On 27 December 1954 she climbed the hill she called Flying Saucer Hill. She said she saw a starship descend and hover about three metres (10 ft) above the ground, humming softly, its hull spinning while its central dome stayed still. A man she later knew as Akon was clearly visible through one of three portholes. She said a barrier of heat stopped her approaching, and the craft left.^[1] The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology places this sighting at the farm in Natal where she was born.^[2]

On 7 April 1956, after more "lightning bird" reports, she returned to the hilltop. The encyclopedia gives the date as 6 April.^[1][2] By her account:^[1][2]

• The scout ship. Akon took her aboard a scout ship about 60 feet (18 m) across. A second pilot, stockier and darker-skinned, was said to be a botanist and astrophysicist. She was shown a lens that looked out through the floor.
• The mothership. With only a hum and no sense of movement, they travelled to a huge cigar-shaped mothership with a garden-like interior. She met its people, was shown pictures of Meton, ate a vegetarian meal and was introduced to their culture. Then she was returned to the hill.
• Akon's revelations. Akon told her she was a reincarnated Venusian and his long-lost soulmate. His people sometimes took Earth women as partners to strengthen their race, and some Venusians were secretly living among humans.

The Wikipedia account notes how closely this mirrored George Adamski's claimed 1952 meeting with "Orthon".^[1] From 5:45 p.m. on 30 April 1956, several observers reported a steady red glow on a rocky part of the hill that lasted until 2 a.m. No trace of a fire was found afterwards.^[1]

The 1956 photographs

On 17 July 1956, after the family farm had been sold, Klarer revisited the area. She said she took seven photographs of Akon's scout ship with a simple Brownie box camera belonging to her sister or daughter. She described vivid flashes of light becoming a dull grey craft wrapped in a shimmering heat haze. It darted silently over a rise near the farmhouse for an hour before streaking away.^[1] The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology instead places the photograph about two months after the April contact. It calls the picture "weak evidence indeed" and says nothing else corroborated her story.^[2] Pretoria ufologist Edgar Sievers said her family saw her leave the house alone. He argued that the frail Klarer would have found it hard to throw a hubcap and photograph it at the same time, and that no known hubcap looked enough like the disc in the photos.^[1]

Akon and Ayling

From April 1958, Klarer said, a series of contacts set her story apart from standard 1950s contactee accounts. She described a day-long meeting with Akon on the high plateau of Cathkin Peak in the Drakensberg. There he gave her a silver ring to strengthen their telepathic bond, and she said a child was conceived.^[1] She said that after a pregnancy on Earth she was taken, with her MG car, to Meton in 1959. She placed Meton in orbit around Proxima Centauri in the Alpha Centauri system. There she gave birth to a son, Ayling, who stayed to be educated. She said Meton's planetary vibrations affected her heart, so she could not return; instead Akon and Ayling visited her.^[1][3] She said the whole trip took no more than four months, though differences in space-time gave her a nine-year stay on Meton.^[1] The encyclopedia says she claimed to have stayed four months on Meton and completed her pregnancy there.^[2] The earlier version of this article said her relationship with Akon became physical in 1958 and that she was taken to Meton; the Wikipedia account dates the journey to 1959.^[1]

She described Meton as a world with no cities or skyscrapers, homes scattered in parkland, unlimited energy drawn from the atmosphere, no shortages and no money.^[1] The Citizen summarised her account as a peaceful, advanced world without pollution or disease. It said Akon was a scientist who wanted fresh genetic material for Meton.^[3] She did not make the Akon love story public for many years. She worked on her book's manuscript from about 1960 to 1966, saying she could not "hide the truth in these matters".^[1] It appeared first in German as Jenseits der Lichtmauer (1977), then in English as Beyond the Light Barrier (1980), published in Cape Town by Howard Timmins.^[1][2]

Later life

After her sister and brother-in-law died, she moved back to Johannesburg and worked for a time in a CNA bookshop. From the 1950s the press took an interest in her and sometimes ridiculed her, but she welcomed any coverage that spread Akon's message.^[1] Her other contacts and activities included:^[1]

• Edith Nicolaisen. After Klarer's account appeared in Flying Saucer Review (November–December 1956), Nicolaisen corresponded with her, exchanging 23 letters between 1956 and 1976. Nicolaisen published her story in the Swedish booklet I rymdskepp över Drakensberg (1959; second edition 1967).
• Cynthia Hind. In 1968 Klarer agreed to be interviewed by the ufologist Cynthia Hind, whose write-up appeared in the August issue of Fate.
• George Adamski. Adamski visited her during his world lecture tour in the late 1950s.
• Rival contactees. She publicly challenged another South African contactee, Ann Grevler, to defend her claims. She denounced Philipp Human's supposed contact through a trance medium, which caused a rift between them.
• Wiesbaden, 1975. At Hermann Oberth's invitation she addressed the 11th International Congress of UFO Research Groups in Wiesbaden on 2 November 1975 and received a standing ovation.
• Pietermaritzburg, 1992. In May 1992 ufologist Kitty Smith arranged a talk for her at the Unidentified Flying Object Club in Pietermaritzburg, which drew more people than the venue could hold.

She marked each 7 April anniversary by returning to Flying Saucer Hill. When riding there became too difficult, South African Air Force helicopter pilots she had befriended helped her visit.^[1] Her third husband, Aubrey Fielding, died in 1981 and his ashes were scattered on the hill. She died of breast cancer aged 83, leaving a second book, The Gravity File, unfinished. It was meant to cover the military and political side of UFO research and Akon's "electro-gravity propulsion".^[1] Before she died she told acquaintances that Ayling was now an astrophysicist travelling the universe with his father, his partner Clea and their son.^[1]

Assessment

• Thomas Streicher. He found her claims generally poorly substantiated, though some were corroborated by witnesses: her sister and first husband attested to two sightings. No witness confirms the pregnancy. He suggested she may have been fantasy-prone.^[1]
• Her son David. David recalls no event, absence or pregnancy in 1959 that would fit her story.^[1] The Citizen notes that he has never met his claimed extraterrestrial half-brother.^[3]
• Cynthia Hind. Hind never suspected Klarer of lying, noting her absolute conviction. She thought imagination or a dream-like euphoria might explain the inconsistencies. But she also cited reported sightings of Akon by members of the public, and argued that cases which sound like hoaxes but are not obviously so should not be brushed aside.^[1]
• Edgar Sievers. Sievers interviewed her family and was satisfied that her experiences, at least up to the photographs, were physical rather than psychic.^[1]
• Philipp Human. At first a supporter, Human later said he did not believe her contacts. He called it "a standing joke" that she had been helped to photograph a car hubcap.^[1] Nicolaisen replied that she believed Klarer "has had some sort of contact".^[1]
• Other responses. The Johannesburg Mensa chapter dismissed her claims, and she was heckled during a talk. North American and European researchers did not accept her story, though it was warmly received in South Africa.^[1][2] No evidence has been found for her claims to have addressed the House of Lords in 1983 or to have had a paper read that year at a UFO congress at the United Nations.^[1]

The evidence she offered included the 1956 photographs, Akon's ring, a space rock or crystal and a fern from Meton. Her third husband was said to be untroubled by her love for Akon, as long as Akon stayed "in space where he belongs".^[1]

In popular culture

Klarer is the subject of the 2023 documentary Beyond the Light Barrier, directed by Uga Carlini.^[1] The Citizen reviewed it in January 2024 as an 88-minute film streaming on Amazon Prime. It combines old interviews with Klarer, her friends, neighbours and family, and includes the traditional healer Credo Mutwa on Zulu legends of alien contact.^[3] The reviewer found the film poorly made and disjointed but the subject fascinating, and judged from the interviews that Klarer and her friends believed what she said.^[3] She is also mentioned in Jim Neversink's song "Even Elizabeth Klarer" (2008) and was the subject of an episode of The Last Podcast on the Left.^[1] The earlier version of this article described the director as South African; that is not covered in the sources read here.

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Elizabeth Klarer”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.