A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

occur, one might expect group members to become disillusioned and leave the group. Contrary
to this expectation, individuals, in the face of events that directly contradict their beliefs, tend to
reaffirm their faith and step up their efforts in recruiting others to share their beliefs. 216
With this
basic conundrum in mind the three authors happened upon Dorothy Martin (referred to as Marian
Keech in the study) when a Chicago paper ran an item on the imminent catastrophe she had
prophesied. With the assistance of several others, the researchers became members of the group
surrounding Martin and entered into several months of participant observation. The case of
Dorothy Martin is of interest in the current context for a number of reasons, one being that she
was part of the contactee “mainstream”—contactees with mystical leanings who communicated
with extraterrestrial intelligences via traditional occult means. Martin’s contact with higher alien
intelligences took place through automatic writing. Her case is extremely well documented in
that When Prophecy Fails provides an extensive first hand account of her and the group that
came to surround her. Also exceptionally, the account sets out neither to prove the veracity of
Martin’s claims of extraterrestrial contact nor to debunk those claims. The question of whether
the groups’ beliefs are true or false is largely beside the point. The more interesting question is
what do their beliefs mean, imply or do. It is, of course, the latter approach—coming to Martin’s
group and their beliefs as a text to unpack versus imagining the same as a series of facts to be
verified or debunked—that informs the project you are reading at present. Finally, Martin’s case
is of interest in that the messages communicated by her contacts provide clear examples of many
of the key tropes of contact lore.
Dorothy Martin’s story began when she awoke early one winter morning with a strange
tingling feeling running up her arm and a strong feeling that “someone was trying to get my
216 A dynamic similar to the contemporary situation in the U.S., where in the face of clearly diminishing resources
the response is to dramatically increase levels of consumption.
141