Rule one when going to a planned UFO sighting: don’t be too hopeful of being whisked away by giant, gently glowing, triple-breasted or amply hung aliens. Rule two: carry a handy tab of some hallucinogenic substance, in case of disappointment.
Alas, both mind-altering psychedelics and nubile extraterrestrials were in short supply on the farm in KwaZulu-Natal’s Kamberg Valley visited by the Mail & Guardian this week.
There, dedicated ufologists unsuccessfully attempted to summon Ayling, the son of local woman Elizabeth Klarer and her alien paramour, Akon, from the planet Meton.
Until her death in 1994, Klarer insisted that after much telepathic chatting up, she had been visited and seduced by Akon, a tall Aryan type. In 1956, she says, she spent four months with him on Meton, a planet circling the nearest star to Earth, Alpha Centauri, where she gave birth to a galactic cross-breed.
The idea of extraterrestrial sex holds a strange fascination for humankind, as can be seen from the proliferation of sci-fi porn since the mid-20th century and repeated claims of men and women being abducted by aliens for scientific/sexual purposes.
Klarer’s account, alongside that of Brazilian Antonio Vilas Boas — who claimed that, in 1957, he was forced aboard a UFO, tested, injected with a serum (Venusian Viagra?) and then rogered by an insatiable, statuesque blonde alien for several hours — is among the most widely quoted by ufologists and alien contactees.
The Kamberg Valley community, hoping that Ayling may still be kerb-crawling the galaxy, turned out its finest male-bait to entice the 50-(Earth)-year-old.
Past the gathering of farmers and other Kamberg luminaries sipping gluwein, coffee and local ale, swans Vera Sutherland (nÃ