A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

signing.” 210 Gill’s amused response was “that great white leader business might happen in
Hollywood movies about African missionaries, but certainly not where I was.” Many of the
parishioners were educated and fluent in English. Failing the psychosocial explanation of the
parishioners blindly following the great bwana, Menzel next went to an astronomical explanation
combined with perceptual miscues. Menzel suggested that Gill, who suffered from myopia and
astigmatism, had mistaken an “out-of -focus, elongated image of Venus for his mother ship.”
The Gill case was further complicated by the fact that it was a multiple witness sighting and said
witnesses claim to have seen the occupants of the craft. The latter factor places the sighting in
the category of CEIII. The claim that Gill and his parishioners saw animate creatures engaged in
some unknown task was “explained” by Menzel as a function of Gills mistaking his eyelash for
an alien, since “slight irregularities of the ‘hairs’ of the lashes, perhaps dust or moisture, could
easily be interpreted as activity of the ‘beings’.” 211
So how to explain the fact that 24 other
witnesses corroborate Gill’s impression? Phillip Klass, who succeeded Menzel as arch-debunker
(and still occupies that position within contemporary UFO debates), pointed to an implied
relation between Gill and Stephen Gill Moi, one of the 24 other witnesses. Klass suggested that
the name shared by both men implies kinship and thus conspiracy. Following this logic, Gill
Moi supported Gill’s claims as the result of their alleged affiliation. Moi’s name “suggests his
close friendship with Gill.” 212 Gill in turn related that he had only known Gill Moi for 19
months prior to their shared experience. “When I arrived on the scene, Moi was a man well into
his thirties and he had had that name since he was a baby. How could he have been named after
me?” 213
Thus given the detailed nature of the account and the close proximity of this encounter,
210 Thompson, 53.
211 Thompson, 54.
212 Thompson, 54.
213 Thompson, 54.
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