Early Alien Encounter February 5, 2017
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
This is a particularly precious account from the Athenian Mercury, a late seventeenth-century publication. As Beach is always interested in encounters with supernatural entities he thought that he would print it in full: this might stand as an early alien encounter. He likes the way the narrative unwinds. He didn’t see the climax coming.
Not long since, walking in a grove adjacent to my house, I found a minister walking alone, very solemnly reading a little treatise, entitled, ‘A Display of the Happiness of the Blessed.’ I only saw the title on the top of the two pages wherein he was reading, for he shut the book and put it into his pocket. After some little interrogatories (usually among strangers accidentally meeting, when either had a mind to discourse the other) we fell into several miscellaneous discourses; among the rest concerning the state of human nature and of this globe we inhabit. I found he was a very good philosopher, and understood our more abstruse astronomy very well; he told me he had a glass of a foot long, through which he could more exactly discern the faces of Jupiter’s satellites, and of the Stellulae Circumsaturniales (whereof he affirmed there were thirteen) than we can that of the moon in our longest telescopes. He told me some very surprising observations he had made on that partly lucid and partly opaque star we see revolve continually in collo ceti. He asked me my name, and told me, when he came that way next (which would not be very long), he would communicate to me a perfect theory of the moon’s motion, which he had confirmed by observations, having before found it out a priori from a new and (from any of ours) very different hypothesis of nature, whereof he hinted to me several very surprising particulars, one of the results whereof was, that our globe did very near approach its final dissolution, and that by a chain of natural causes.
So far the stranger sounds like a total weirdo, but now the narrative ramps up very quickly and we hear the beating of angel’s wings.
He told me he heard I was about to act such a certain thing, which, if I did, it would prove very unsuccessful: this surprised me more than anything he had yet spoken, being conscious to myself I had never communicated it to any person living. I immediately heard something like a great stone that seemed to fall out of a tree hard by, whereat turning my head to see, my parson, to my very great amazement, was wholly vanished. Sirs, This is a matter of fact and true, but its seeming so incredible in itself has hindered me some time from imparting it to any but one of my intimate friends, who has at length prevailed on me to send it to you: pray, your speedy thoughts thereon.
The offstage distraction awaking the dreamer is paralleled in many supernatural accounts. As to the stranger what did the writer or his subconscious believe about it? Not sure. ‘A Display of the Happiness of the Blessed’ makes this sound like an agent of God from on high: as of course does his parson’s dress. The expertise on celestial things, though, brings us towards modern UFO encounters, making this something more like an early alien encounter.
As an aside Beach finds the account compelling. He doesn’t believe that it happened, but he suspects that the author is absolutely sincere: there is a dream-like quality to the whole. A fantasist would have given more concrete details and a more logical narrative progression.
Any thoughts: drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com
Several of you wrote in with the suggestion that this was a time traveller! However, Invisible actually has evidence to back up this proposition!!
Invisible writes, 12 Feb 2017: My question is, does A Display of the Happiness of the Blessed actually exist as a book? If so, it might lend more credence to the story, although, if this was all a dream, it might have been a book the narrator had seen and forgotten. There is The future state, or, A discourse attempting some display of the souls happiness, in regard to that eternally progressive knowledge, or eternal increase of knowledge, and the consequences of it, which is amongst the blessed in heaven by a country gentleman, a worshipper of God in the way of the Church of England. by Edward Whitaker, c. 1683. Or perhaps The glory and happiness of the saints in heaven:, or, A discourse concerning the blessed state of the righteous after death by Matthew Ranew, 1694 But let us go all in with the prophetic vision of the ministerial visitor and say that he was reading The Happiness of the Blessed considered as to the Particulars of their State; their Recognition of Each Other in that State; and its Difference of Degrees. To which are added, Musings on the Church and her Services. By Richard Mant. Bishop of Down and Connor c.1837. He was obviously embarrassed to be seen reading something before its actual publication, hence his hasty closing of the volume.
And FM, 12 Feb 2017, is thinking of a film:
I was interpreting this as an encounter with a time traveler from the future. The fact that he had a shorter telescope that was nevertheless more powerful than any the narrator had ever seen, and that he possessed a new and revolutionary theory of nature that would explain the moon’s motion, gave me the impression that the traveler must have come from the future. I’m not sure how to explain the stranger knowing what the narrator planned to do, as he had not spoken his plans aloud, unless it was the classic case of the time traveler coming back to alter the past based on knowledge out of a book (whether it be racing scores, Bugs Bunny predicting the eclipse in that take on “Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” or in this case, the time traveler knowing about the narrator’s plans from having read about his epic failure in a future history textbook. The fact that he mentions the imminent doom of the planet, sounds like a set up for coming back to the past to set some scientists onto the right track to avert the certain doom. There’s a movie in there, somewhere.
Bruce T. with a greater story, 12 Feb 2017:
just before I was born, circa 1956-57, two of my Aunt by marriage brother’s, then in their mid-teens, were walking home up the narrow hollow road they lived up about dusk. As there were only six families that lived up there, they knew everyone by sight. About 150 yards up the hollow they encountered a guy they described as “dressed old fashioned”. He asked them if they had a light, they gave him one and they exchanged some small talk. they said he seemed a a bit odd, there was something off about him but they couldn’t put their finger on it. They had just said their goodbyes, when one brother says to the other, “Ask him if he knows what time it is.” When they turned around he was gone. He couldn’t have made it more than five strides running, yet he was gone. One the right hand side of the road there was a steep embankment dropping fifteen feet through heavy brush on to a rocky creek bed, on the other, was a sandstone and shale bank going up at steeper incline than the creek bank and three times as high. The road didn’t widen out for a good fifty yards the way the fellow was heading. There was nowhere for him to go without being seen or heard and yet he was gone. These weren’t the type of guys who believed in the paranormal, one became a police officer, the other a life-long Navy man, and both risked ridicule when they told their hard as nails Father, he went easy on them as they seemed shaken. Both went to their graves wondering where the Hell the man in the “old fashioned clothes” went? I’ve looked at that spot for over half a century, walked by it, robe bikes by it, driven numerous vehicles by it. There’s no way a man crashing through the brush down to the creek wouldn’t have been heard and I know for damned sure they only way to get to the top of that bank is a hard all fours climb. The “Man in The Old Fashion Clothes” still rates as an unknown for me.
Andrew Z writes, 30 Mar 2017: Your piece on an “Early Alien Encounter” from February 5th reminded me of “An Account of a Meeting with Denizens of Another World”, a book which purports to describe an encounter with alien visitors to rural England in the year 1871. It’s an admitted hoax by science-fiction writer David Langford. But the interesting question is why it still gets recounted as a real event by some of the less careful (or less scrupulous) writers on the paranormal despite the fact that it is definitely known to be complete fiction. Perhaps some stories are just too good to check, or some writers are too lazy and/or cynical to care.
