A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

combination of results….We can state that there is, nonetheless, confirmation of a very
significant event which happened on this spot. 208
In an instance that further closed the gap between phenomenon and percipient, the case of
William Booth Gill combined the attributes of both CEI and CEIII, thus eliciting a broad range
of explanations from debunkers. In this case Menzel ran through a variety of misattribution,
misperception and psychosocial explanations to dismiss an event witnessed by thirty-eight
individuals and attested to in a signed affidavit by twenty-five of them. Father William Booth
Gill, an Australian Anglican missionary and his colleagues had been skeptical but intrigued by
the ongoing reports of UFO activity over Papua, New Guinea where they were stationed. At 6:45
p.m. June 21, 1959, Gill’s assistant, Stephen Gill Moi
spotted a bright white light in the northwestern sky. Thirty-eight persons gathered to
watch a large, four-legged, disc-shaped object hover overhead. (Gill would late estimate
its angular size to be comparable to that of five full moons lined up end to end.) On top of
the object four humanlike figures, their bodies surrounded by illumination, were busy at
some unknown task. At various times one or all of the figures would disappear below,
only to reappear soon after, at 7:30 the object was lost from view when it ascended into
the gathering clouds.
About an hour later other smaller objects arrived on the scene. Gill speculated
that these might be satellite craft from the original vehicle—the one he thought of as a
“mothership,” which again became visible at 8:50. The UFOs remained intermittently
visible until 10:50, when clouds covered the view.
The sighting had lasted over four hours. Twenty-five of the observers signed a
report of the incident that Gill prepared soon afterwards. 209
The ships returned the two following evenings, with the human witnesses and humanoid figures
eventually waving to one another (waving being the extent of communication between witnesses
and e.t.’s in this case). In response to the affidavit attesting to the veracity of the account,
Menzel surmised that the New-Guinean parishioners of Gill had signed the affidavit to ingratiate
themselves with “their great white leader... I doubt very much that they knew what they were
208 Quoted in Jerome Clark, “Trans-en-Provence CE2,” in The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial
(Detroit: Visible Ink, 1998) 562-563.
209 Thompson, 53.
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