Up Rainbow Hill

Dana Howard reveals the future of the planet and mankind from her contact with extra-terrestrial aliens in the 1950-60s.

Excerpt:

The Mystical Contactee
Encounters of Dana Howard
by Regan Lee

There aren't as many female contactees of the Golden Age of UFOs as there are male, but there are a few. One was Dana Howard, who wrote about her encounters in My Flight to Venus (1954), Diane: She Came From Venus (1956), Over the Threshold (1957), Vesta, the Earthborn Venusian (1959), as well as others. As we can see, Howard was a prolific writer! (Daniel Fry, another contactee, had a short announcement in his newsletter Understanding about Dana Howard's appearances in California.) (In that same issue is a letter from contactee Orfeo Angelucci!)

While I'm intrigued by the contactees in general, and realize there are many perspectives and theories surrounding "what really happened" I'd like to focus on the symbolic of Howard's experience, rather than attempt to prove or disprove her experience. What stood out for me as I read about Dana Howard's accounts were the similarities to Marian Apparitions. Howard's experiences seemed to be a blend of space age contactee encounters, complete with flying saucers, and some of the characteristics of appearances of the Virgin Mary.

1939: The First Encounter

"Still wrapped in the warm intoxication of the spirit, my vision was directed to a gnarled old tree overlooking the antediluvian hills. Leaning casually against the grotesque trunk was a woman being of unsurpassed loveliness. Her head was radiant with a crown of fire, strands of golden hair cascading gently over her beautiful, slightly olive-tinted shoulders. The strange mystic light flooding her dark, prophetic eyes, added a wistful something to all her other charms.

Similar in ways to reports of seeing the entity Mary. But the sighting turns space age, for Howard follows Diane into a flying saucer:

. . . a beautiful rocket-shaped ship suspended in mid-air about three hundred feet from the earth. . . In the main it seemed to be constructed of some sort of translucent materials, but trimmed in gold, and gem-studded. An almost invisible "ladder" extended from the ship to the earth, and I obediently followed the radiant being up the filmy stairs without questioning. Once aboard, my sacrosanct companion vanished, and I never saw her again."

Sixteen Years Later

In 1955, sixteen years after the first encounter, Diane the Venusian appeared for the second time, this time during a sèance. The sèance was conducted by a well known medium at the time, Reverend Bertie Lillie Candler, in Los Angeles, California. An eight foot tall female figure, described as being very beautiful, appeared before them. Howard describes the materialization:

I saw a rising glow of phosphorescence. It was very tall at first, but out of this phosphorescent substance a form began to manifest itself. She was definitely different from the other "spirit" manifestations, a solid, fleshly being, delicate in charm and manner. I'm reminded again of some parallels to Marian apparitions. (After Diane appeared, she changed her appearance from the eight foot tall being to a more human like five foot tall being.) The female entity said she was the same Diane from Venus that Dana had met sixteen years ago, and was responsible for giving Dana telepathic messages during that time. Like most of the other good looking humanoid beings of the Contactee era, she imparted messages of the importance of spiritual growth, transformation of both body and psyche, and eventual life on Venus.

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