Frances Swan

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The Frances Swan story is a 20th-century legend of a Maine housewife who, in 1954, claims to receive messages from extra-terrestrials via automatic writing.^[1] Allegedly instructed by the messages to contact the Navy, the housewife reaches out to her next door neighbor, a retired admiral, who arranges for Naval investigators to interview the woman. Using automatic writing, naval investigators summon a UFO.^[2]

The story was publicized in a 1974 film hosted by Rod Serling (of Twilight Zone fame). Later accounts would label the housewife as “Frances Swan” and the Admiral as “Herbert Bain Knowles“.^[3][4]

The story would become widespread in UFO folklore, featuring in the writings of ufologists including Stanton Friedman and Jacques Vallee.^[5]

Frances-Swan-Wikipedia

Initial narrative[edit]

In the 1974 film UFOs: Past, Present, and Future,^[6] retired Lt. Col. Robert Friend, former head of Project Bluebook, relates that “a retired Rear Admiral had information about a woman in upper Maine that purported to have contact with extraterrestrial beings. Two Naval Intelligence officers were sent to investigate. The naval officers met with the woman and she went into a trance, supposedly to establish contact with the purported extraterrestrials, and then they asked her scientific and technical questions that a woman of her education could not possibly know the answers to. Yet as the questions were put to her, she was able to answer easily, with seeming-telepathic help from these extraterrestrials.”^[2][7]

Friend reports the supposed-‘extraterrestrials’ allegedly identified by names such as “Affa of Uranus”, “Crill”, and “Ponnar”; Affa and Ponnar were names that had been featured in The Saucers Speak (1954) by alleged-contactee George Hunt Williamson.^[8]

Friend continued “Then an unexpected turn took place. One of the naval officers was informed by the woman that they, the extraterrestrials, were willing to answer questions directly through him, a Naval Commander and Intelligence officer with no prior experience in telepathic communication. He took over and attempted to write down the answers to questions put to him by his fellow naval officer.”^[2]

Friend tells of a subsequent incident involving this officer: “The group asked if they could see a spaceship and the Commander, still in a trance, told them to go to the window where they would have proof. The group moved to the window where they supposedly observed a UFO”.^[2]

Subsequent lore[edit]

The story was later featured in a 1979 issue of Second Look magazine and a 1980 book.^[9][10][11] The housewife was labeled “Frances Swan” in Jerome Clark‘s 1992 book The Emergence of a Phenomenon–UFOs from the Beginning Through 1959 and other subsequent publications.^[8][12][13]

In 2003, ufologist Grant Cameron released documents purportedly from the Swan incident.^[14][15] In 2007, ufologist Stanton Friedman reported that Admiral Knowles had attempted to introduce Swan to UFO abductees Betty and Barney Hill, but Swan refused. Betty Hill recalled:

“A few miles from Portsmouth is a woman who claims she is in contact with the occupants of UFOs, through automatic writing. Almost daily she sits and receives messages. Although she and I share some of the same friends, we have never met. She refuses to meet me, for she believes that Barney and I met the wrong ones—the evil ones, the ones of wrong vibrations. Hers are different types, who are kind, loving, concerned for all; who give her messages of brotherhood and the Kingdom of God. Barney and I both agreed that we had never seen those of a different vibration! But, in those days, we had never heard of George Adamski.”^[16]

https://web2.ph.utexas.edu/~coker2/calbum/calbum.html

The Swan story has been featured in the writings of Nick Redfern, Brent Raynes, and numerous others.^{[17][18][19][20][21][22][23]} The Swan story was the basis for a 2013 episode of the series Wisdom Teachings.^[24]

FRANCES SWAN was certainly among the most obscure of the classic 1950s contactees, those ill-assorted individuals who claimed to have established direct personal contact, or some other form of regular communication, with friendly extraterrestrials. When Mrs. Swan came to the attention of flying saucer researchers in 1954 she was a housewife living in Eliot, Maine, reportedly not too far from later contactee/abductee Betty Hill. Mrs. Swan, like a number of other 1950s contactees, particularly women, used somewhat esoteric methods in her communications with space aliens.

While others used the Ouija board or trance channeling, Mrs. Swan used the spirit-medium’s old standby, automatic writing. In April 1954, Mrs. Swan began to receive messages from Affa of Uranus, who was in command of spaceship M-4 currently orbiting the earth, and later from Ponnar, commander of another orbiting ship, L-11. (The names of Mrs. Swan’s extraterrestrial contacts suggest that she had just finished reading The Saucers Speak (1954), by George Hunt Williamson and Alfred J. Bailey, which reports Ouija-board contacts with dozens of space aliens, including Affa and Ponnar.) Mrs. Swan’s Affa had the usual Space-Brotherly messages from his “Universal Association of Planets,” such as that earthmen needed to be sternly warned against further experimentation with nuclear weapons.

Surviving letters from Mrs. Swan to highly gullible Canadian saucer researcher Wilbert B. Smith indicate she was hostile to most of the other 1950s contactees, and particularly to George Van Tassel. She later claimed to have once met Affa in the flesh, when he walked into the Grange Hall in Eliot which she was decorating for a party, and conversed for a few moments about generalities, back in the fall of 1953. At that time he did not identify himself as either Affa or a space alien. Swan happened to live next door to a retired USN Admiral, Herbert B. Knowles, and used him as a connection to try to bring Affa’s messages to the attention of the US government. [Knowles inevitably later got involved with Betty and Barney Hill.] When Affa conspicuously failed, on June 10, 1954, either to appear personally or to make a radio broadcast, as promised to officials through Mrs. Swan, Affa’s five minutes of fame seemed to be over.

Perhaps he felt a sense of desperation when on July 28, 1954 he revealed that “This earth is really going to end as stated in the Holy Bible around 1956.” Affa’s messages generally had the same total and complete lack of coherent content as the standard communications from the spirit world conveyed by mediums in the period 1850 – 1940. A sample: “Hello folks…. Always remember I do not work through any forces like the spirits or feelings of compulsion on the part of anyone…. Never fear— do as you please. All I ask is that you stand by. All is the same as it has been. Now off, love, Affa.” Affa’s somewhat testy remarks about “spirits” and “feelings of compulsion” were apparently triggered by the fact that a number of other individuals near the US-Canada border, including Wilbert Smith himself, had started “receiving” their very own messages signed “Affa,” via automatic writing, Ouija board or trance channeling. 

Attempts to contact the friendly aliens by shortwave radio had been pioneered by George Hunt Williamson, but always resulted in pops and static being proclaimed to be Morse code, which when transcribed oddly enough never seemed to make any sense whatsoever.

References[edit]

1. ^ Clark, Jerome (June 1, 2010). Hidden Realms, Lost Civilizations, and Beings from Other Worlds. Visible Ink Press. ISBN 9781578593385 – via Google Books.
2. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d “UFOs: Past, Present, and Future (1974) – IMDb” – via www.imdb.com.
3. ^ Friedman, Stanton T.; Marden, Kathleen (April 1, 2021). Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience (60th Anniversary Edition): The True Story of the World’s First Documented Alien Abduction. Red Wheel/Weiser. ISBN 9781632657480 – via Google Books.
4. ^ “A Contactee Album!”. web2.ph.utexas.edu.
5. ^ Vallee, Jacques (September 1, 1992). Forbidden Science: Journals, 1957-1969. North Atlantic Books. ISBN 9781556431258 – via Google Books.
6. ^ “UFO’s (It Has Begun) Past, Present, and Future Documentary” – via www.youtube.com.
7. ^ Collins, Paul D.; Collins, Phillip D. (November 22, 2020). Invoking the Beyond:: The Kantian Rift, Mythologized Menaces, and the Quest for the New Man. iUniverse. ISBN 9781663213549 – via Google Books.
8. ^ Jump up to:^a b Clark, Jerome (September 1, 1992). The Emergence of a Phenomenon–UFOs from the Beginning Through 1959. Omnigraphics. ISBN 9781558887411 – via Google Books.
9. ^ Second Look magazine (Vol. 1, No. 12) Randall Fitzgerald
10. ^ Roberts, Anthony; Gilbertson, Geoff (September 1, 1980). The Dark Gods. Rider/Hutchinson. ISBN 9780091387709 – via Google Books.
11. ^ Wilson, Robert Anton (September 1, 1977). Final secret of the illuminati. Falcon Press. ISBN 9781561840038 – via Google Books.
12. ^ Christopher, Paul (September 1, 1998). Alien Intervention: The Spiritual Mission of UFOs. Huntington House Publishers. ISBN 9781563841484 – via Google Books.
13. ^ Fitzgerald, Randall (September 1, 1998). Cosmic Test Tube: Extraterrestrial Contact, Theories & Evidence. Moon Lake Media. ISBN 9780963916129 – via Google Books.
14. ^ https://www.turbulence.org/studios/crawford/38_messages.pdf^{[bare URL PDF]}
15. ^ Crawford, David (August 1, 2008). 38 Messages from Space: The Wilbert Smith Archives Remixed. David Crawford. ISBN 9781438263403 – via Google Books.
16. ^ Friedman, Stanton T. (January 28, 2009). Captured!: The Betty and Barney Hill Ufo Experience: Easyread Large Bold Edition. ReadHowYouWant.com. ISBN 9781442961692 – via Google Books.
17. ^ “Contacting Extraterrestrials by Automatic Writing – Allegedly | Mysterious Universe”. mysteriousuniverse.org.
18. ^ Redfern, Nicholas; Redfern, Nick (August 1, 2013). Final Events and the Secret Government Group on Demonic UFOs and the Afterlife. Anomalist Books. ISBN 9781938398117 – via Google Books.
19. ^ “AP Magazine”. www.apmagazine.info.
20. ^ Joyce, Judith (January 1, 2011). The Weiser Field Guide to the Paranormal: Abductions, Apparitions, ESP, Synchronicity, and More Unexplained Phenomena from Other Realms. Weiser Books. ISBN 9781609252984 – via Google Books.
21. ^ Martinelli, Michel Zirger and Maurizio (February 9, 2016). The Incredible Life of George Hunt Williamson: Mystical Journey. Verdechiaro Edizioni. ISBN 9788866232612 – via Google Books.
22. ^ Holcombe, Larry (March 17, 2015). The Presidents and UFOs: A Secret History from FDR to Obama. St. Martin’s Publishing Group. ISBN 9781466835870 – via Google Books.
23. ^ Gooch, Stan (February 7, 2007). The Origins of Psychic Phenomena: Poltergeists, Incubi, Succubi, and the Unconscious Mind. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9781594777486 – via Google Books.
24. ^ “”Wisdom Teachings” The fifth kind (TV Episode 2015) – IMDb” – via www.imdb.com.

Categories: 

• Contactees
• UFO sightings in the United States
• Urban legends