George Adamski
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 👤 Person
Contents 5
| Type | Person |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Adamski |
George Adamski (17 April 1891 – 23 April 1965) was a Polish-born American writer who became the most famous of the 1950s UFO "contactees". He claimed to have met a man from Venus in the California desert, published photographs of what he said were spacecraft, and wrote of trips aboard alien ships. Most UFO researchers regarded him as a fraud.[1][2]
Early life
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Adamski was born in Bromberg, then in Prussia, and brought to the United States as a small child. He served in the US cavalry on the Mexican border from 1913 to 1916.[1] In the 1920s and 1930s he became a minor figure in California's occult scene, teaching a blend of Christianity and Eastern religion and founding a group called the Royal Order of Tibet. He later settled near Palomar Mountain, where he ran a café and campground and gave talks. Visitors sometimes assumed he worked at the famous Palomar Observatory, an impression he seldom corrected; he had no college degree.[1]
Flying saucers
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Adamski said he saw a cigar-shaped "mother ship" in 1946 and began lecturing about flying saucers in 1949, claiming among other things that all the planets were inhabited.[1] He said that on 20 November 1952, near Desert Center, California, he met Orthon, a long-haired, tanned man from Venus who spoke by telepathy and hand signals and warned of the dangers of nuclear war. Some of his companions said they saw him meet someone from a distance.[1][2] He also published photographs of a bell-shaped "scout ship", which critics compared to the top of a chicken brooder or a streetlight.[1]
His books Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953, with Desmond Leslie), Inside the Space Ships (1955) and Flying Saucers Farewell (1961) were very popular; the first two had sold a combined 200,000 copies by 1960.[1] In Inside the Space Ships he described flights around the Moon and meetings with wise space people from Venus, Mars and Saturn.[1][2] His success inspired other contactees, including George Van Tassel, Daniel Fry, Truman Bethurum and Howard Menger.[1]
Criticism
Investigators found many problems with Adamski's claims.[1]
- His photographs. Writer James Moseley reported in 1955 that a Hollywood photographer Adamski cited as backing his pictures denied doing so, and that rocket engineer Walther Riedel believed the craft's "landing gear" were light bulbs.
- His books. Critics noted that Inside the Space Ships closely resembled Pioneers of Space, a science-fiction novel published under Adamski's name in 1949.
- His planets. Venus and the other planets he said he visited cannot support human life.
- Official endorsement. The FBI twice warned him to stop claiming government endorsement. A 1957 letter from a supposed State Department official, which Adamski displayed as support, was later revealed by Moseley as a prank by Moseley and Gray Barker.
Later life
In 1959 Adamski was received by Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, causing a minor scandal there. He later claimed to have met Pope John XXIII. He died of a heart attack in Maryland in April 1965 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.[1]
References
This page was last edited on 31 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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