Uri, UFOs and the man on the moon
Edgar Mitchell
I can still recall the sense of astonishment I felt when I stepped out of the BBC’s Broadcasting House in London, one December night in 1972, and looked up at a bright, full moon. The man I had just interviewed had actually stood on that crater-strewn surface and explored it for nine hours.
I was then editing Hawker Siddeley News, a monthly newspaper for the famous aerospace and industrial company, and Dr Edgar Mitchell had agreed to talk to me about his experiences once he had completed a radio interview at the BBC.
Edgar Mitchell on the moon (NASA)
Almost two years earlier, Mitchell – a US Navy captain, engineer and scientist – was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 14. The third manned mission to the moon, it gave him the honour of being the sixth man to walk on its surface. Only 12 have ever done so. He and commander Alan Shepard touched down on 5 February, 1971.
Since this is the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, the very first manned mission to the moon, which blasted off from Earth on 16 July, 1969, and landed Armstrong and Aldrin on the lunar surface on 20 July, I felt it appropriate to recall my meeting with one of my heroes, particularly as Ed Mitchell has gone on to make a major contribution to paranormal research.
He edited Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science (1974), a massive reference book which I have often found invaluable in my research, and The Way of the Explorer: an Apollo Astronaut’s Journey Through the Material and Mystical Worlds (1996), which tells how he and a small group of explorers established the Institute of Noetic Sciences in 1973 “to explore the inner world of human experience”.
Given Hawker Siddeley’s associations with aerospace, I had no trouble persuading my bosses that an interview with Mitchell would make a good feature in the company newspaper. But I had an ulterior motive. I also knew of Mitchell’s paranormal interests, including an ESP experiment from the lunar surface, and I spent as much time talking with him about them as I did about his journey to the moon and back.
As a result, I am reliably informed by Steve Knight, who runs an excellent online chronological archive of published Uri Geller stories, that I was the first journalist to write about the Israeli metal-bender for a UK-based publication. My Hawker Siddeley News article, published in January 1973, was headlined: “Meet the astronaut who now explores inner space … and the amazing man who breaks metal by the power of thought!”
Mitchell told me that he had formed a business enterprise with others, called Edgar Mitchell & Associates, which would conduct and sponsor research into parapsychology and areas relating to mind-body relationships and consciousness.
Uri Geller (Stemman)
“I have seen one of our subjects, an Israeli sensitive, Uri Geller, deform and, on occasions break, metallic objects just by concentrating on them,” Mitchell told me.
Ten months after my interview with Mitchell appeared in print, everyone knew Uri Geller’s name after he achieved overnight fame in the UK and worldwide with a sensational appearance on David Dimbleby’s Talk-In show (BBC TV, 23 November 1973) with Lyall Watson and Prof John Taylor.
Looking back, I am surprised that I never discussed UFOs with Mitchell. It was probably because I assumed that he and the other American astronauts would have no interest in them, but time has proved me wrong. A number of astronauts have confirmed that they have seen unidentified objects, while on Earth or in space, and Mitchell was particularly outspoken on the subject a year ago in radio and TV interviews and has since participated in a conference calling for declassification of UFO files, at the end of President Obama’s first 100 days in office.
Speaking to a UK radio station in 2008, Mitchell explained that he grew up in Roswell, New Mexico, where a UFO is alleged to have crashed and he could confirm that it was a real incident. Other contacts have also been made, he said, but alien visits to Earth have been covered up by governments for more than 60 years. TV and other media outlets around the world soon picked up the story.
“I happen to be privileged enough to be in on the fact that we have been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomenon is real,” Mitchell told Kerrang Radio on 23 July, 2008, adding: “I can’t say how fast it’s going to happen but I think we’re heading towards real disclosure.”
Uri Geller, incidentally, has also reported close encounters with UFOs.
You may also find these related articles of interest: