"This is one of the best contactee accounts of the 1950s. Mr. Angelucci's Secret of the Saucers is a memoir of a more innocent time, and a tale of spiritual growth. It was edited by Ray Palmer, the gray eminence behind FATE magazine, the publisher of the first flying saucer accounts, and the Shaver mythos before that." (J.B.Hare, December 20, 2007)
The following is an excerpt from the Orfeo Angelucci's book Secret of the Saucers.
I TRAVEL IN A FLYING SAUCER
July 23, 1952 I didn't go to work. I wasn't feeling well and believed I was coming down with the flu. I was in bed all day, but in the evening I felt a little better and thought a walk in the fresh air would be good for me.
I walked down to the snack-bar at the Los Feliz Drive-In theatre, several blocks from the eleven-unit apartment-court where we live. The small cafe has a warm, friendly atmosphere and it gave my spirits a big lift to listen to the small talk and friendly ribbing. Because of the many recent newspaper reports, the talk turned to flying saucers.
Ann, one of the waitresses, laughingly remarked that she couldn't get enough sleep as her husband insisted upon staying up most of the night watching the sky with binoculars trying to get a glimpse of a saucer. This brought on a round of flying saucer jokes and everyone was laughing, including myself. The fact that I could laugh indicates that I had pretty well gotten over the shock of my experience.
When I'd finished my coffee I left the snack-bar and started home. It was a little after ten o'clock. Beyond the theatre is a lonely stretch of vacant lots. The place is eerie and forbidding at night, for huge concrete buttresses rise from it supporting the Hyperion Avenue Freeway Bridge several hundred feet overhead. The bridge casts dense, oblique shadows down below making it a shadowed no-man's land.
It was absolutely incredible—like a huge, misty soap bubble squatting on the ground emitting a fuzzy, pale glow.
As I crossed the vacant lots in the deep shadows of the bridge a peculiar feeling came over me. Instantly I remembered that sensation—the tingling in my arms and legs! I looked nervously overhead but saw nothing. The feeling became more intense and with it came the dulling of consciousness I had noted on that other occasion.
Between me and the bridge I noticed a misty obstruction. I couldn't make out what it was. It looked like an Eskimo igloo—or the phantom of an igloo. It seemed like a luminous shadow without substance. I stared hard at the object. It was absolutely incredible—like a huge, misty soap bubble squatting on the ground emitting a fuzzy, pale glow.
The object appeared to be about thirty feet high and about equally wide at the base, so it wasn't a sphere. As I watched, it seemed to gain substance and to darken perceptibly on the outside. Then I noticed it had an aperture, or entrance like the door to an igloo, and the inside was brilliantly lighted.
I walked toward the thing. I had absolutely no sense of fear; rather a pleasant feeling of well-being. At the entrance I could see a large circular room inside. Hesitating only an instant I stepped into the object.
I found myself in a circular, domed room about eighteen feet in diameter. The interior was made of an ethereal mother-of-pearl stuff, irridescent with exquisite colors that gave off light. There was no sign of life; no sound. There was a reclining chair directly across from the entrance. It was made of that same translucent, shimmering substance—a stuff so evanescent that it didn't appear to be material reality as we know it.
No voice spoke, but I received the strong impression that I was to sit in the chair. In fact, a force seemed to be impelling me directly toward it. As I sat down I marveled at the texture of the material. Seated therein, I felt suspended in air, for the substance of that chair molded itself to fit every surface or movement of my body.
As I leaned back and relaxed, that feeling of peace and well-being intensified. Then a movement drew my attention toward the entrance. I saw the walls appeared to be noiselessly moving to close the aperture to the outside. In a few seconds the door had vanished, with no indication that there had ever been an entrance.
The closing of that door cut me off entirely from the outside world. For an uncomfortable moment I felt utterly alone—lost to my family and friends. But almost immediately a pleasant warmth passed over me giving me once more that feeling of peace and security. I breathed deeply and found the air cool and fresh. Vaguely I wondered what was going to happen next.
Then I thought I heard a humming sound. At first it was almost inaudible, but it grew to a steady, low-pitched rhythm that was more like a vibration than a hum.
Next I was aware that my body seemed to be sinking more deeply into the soft substance of the chair. I felt as though a gentle force was pushing against the entire surface of my body. It was a peculiarly pleasant sensation that put me into a kind of semi-dream state.
