Alien Special

Bronwyn Rideout - 23 December 2024

Maybe it’s the day drinking, uni students on summer break, or NZ tourism has gone intergalactic, but it seems that December is prime UFO time for New Zealand. So, for the next couple of issues of the newsletter, we’re going to focus on otherworldly things, starting with three December UFO events:

First is the Knox College UFO prank of 1952. On December 6th, local newspapers reported anonymous sightings of blue and green flying saucers across the country. These reports were seen as credible for decades, until 1978 when Brian Mackrell wrote a skeptical article for The Press, questioning whether it was a hoax and its possible link to sightings in the Gulf of Mexico. Soon after, Ken Nichols revealed the truth. There were no actual sightings; instead, several students developed a credible flight plan and sent in anonymous letters to the media when they returned home for Christmas break. Many of the original pranksters would go on to be respectable figures in their fields and, as the years wore on, there was some guilt that people believed the sightings were real. One of the students, Sir John Scott, wrote about the hoax for the 1994 Skeptics Journal, and spoke it at our 1994 conference.

Mackrell’s proposed flight plan for the 1952 sightings

Ken Nichols

On December 24, 1960, George King and members of his Aetherius Society traversed Mt Wakefield, in the foothills of Aoraki. The Aetherius Society is a syncretic spiritual group that borrows heavily from Theosophy and Alice Bailey’s Arcane School/Lucis Trust, with a heavy dose of UFO religions. In operation since the 1950s, the group believes in spiritual cooperation with alien entities to help earth. While on Mt Wakefield Master Jesus, channeled through King, charged the mountain with majestic spiritual power and declared it a holy mountain. Members of the Aetherius Society regularly make a pilgrimage to the mountain to pray and send their positive energies out to the rest of the world. However, this is no simple tramp, so followers have the choice of staying at the base of the mountain instead.

Mt. Wakefield charged site

George King at a charged spot

Aetherius Society pilgrimage to Mt. Wakefield, 2006

Sightings continued in Kaikoura for several days. To this day, the source of the lights remains unidentified, but the NZDF suspects that they were terrestrial, either from boats or cars.

In this week’s newsletter, we hear from Brad about a thought experiment involving playing a piano on Mars. Al Blenney looks at the history of the Men in Black, and wonders if there’s anything to the stories. In an article from the archives, Jim Ring talks about how he saw something in Nelson that looked like a UFO, but he had his wits about him enough to figure out what it really was. And, although not alien related, Mark Honeychurch walks us through the lead-up to the day he went for colonic irrigation (and dragged me along with him).