A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

and a Saturnian named “Ramu.” 239 The two latter figures approached him in an unnamed Los
Angeles hotel, to which Adamski had been summoned by what felt to him like impulse. He
noted that Firkon and Ramu had “nothing in their appearance to indicate that they were other
than average young businessmen.” 240
Again, Adamski’s contacts were human, though humans
who had achieved a level of perfection superior to terrestrial humans. Thus while they were
perhaps more alien than nineteenth century spirits or ascended masters in their point of origin,
they were still quite familiar in visage and deportment. Adamski was alerted to their
extraterrestrial origin only when one of the contacts touched him. “As I acknowledged the
greeting, the speaker extended his hand and when it touched mine a great joy filled me. The
signal was the same as had been given by the man I had met on that memorable November 20,
1952. Consequently, I knew that these men were not inhabitants of earth.” 241 Said signal is
communicated viscerally—it was only through touch, a sense that Adamski’s alien contacts later
affirmed as the primary faculty, that Firkon and Ramu revealed their otherness. The progressive
embodiment of contact, from astral travel, to trance-based communiqués, to embodied desert
meetings, here extends to the touching of hands, a touch without which Firkon and Ramu would
have appeared to be just another pair of pretty Anglo Angelinos. They even spoke perfect
English, a skill explained by the “fact” that they were both “contact men,” individuals who
resided on Earth in an effort to gather more information on the troublesome terrestrial humans.
Firkon and Ramu ushered Adamski into a Pontiac and took him for a ride to the outskirts
of town, where he re-united with Orthon. These proceedings had the texture of human
interaction. Their car, the hustling of Adamski into the back seat, their journey to the outskirts of
239 George Adamski, Inside the Flying Saucers (New York: Paperback Library, 1967 (originally published in 1955
as Inside the Spaceships).
240 Adamski, 1967, 29.
241 Adamski, 1967, 30.
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