Yet it was not until the very recent public call for papers -- essays which by their very nature require the author to indulge in endless ungrounded speculation with an eye towards bolstering the faltering and traditionally rejected "outer space alien" meme, albeit camouflaged in the requisite scientific rhetoric; not until we read of the costly ads trawling for such clearly subjective epistles placed in numerous scientific journals did the fog finally lift, allowing us to recall with greater clarity the historical analogue which had been gnawing away at our mildly unsettled subconscious.
"Those who forget history..." etc.
In fact, it could be reasonably well argued that what we are currently witnessing with the NIDS group -- or, for that matter, the current Rockefunded© equivalent -- is yet another only slightly modified iteration of the quasi-mysterious Teesdale Inheritance affair brought to our attention by that ever-insightful heretic of UFOlogy, the venerable Dr. Jacques Vallee:
Nouvel Observateur is a large-format weekly for elegant leftists. The articles cover the burning issues of the day: human injustice in the Third World, the destruction of the environment, and the plight of the poor. Between these generous and idealistic, or indignant, stories are lavish advertisements for luxury cars and expensive perfumes. The classified advertising section ranges from yoga training to an offer of private consultation by a "woman sexologist." There are sessions of therapy for couples, Californian massage, Shiatsu, and the inevitable diets to make people thinner and more attractive. These are hardly the kinds of services that will appeal to the auto mechanics in Renault factories, the homeless folk who sleep every night under the bridges of Paris, or the starving populations of faraway Ethiopia. And in the lower right comer of the page, in a neatly bordered rectangle, we find the following text:
The trustees charged with the estate of A.P. Teesdale, Esq. of Durham County in England are attempting to enter into contact with those responsible for organizations that may be able to meet the requirements of his will.The groups in question are "serious organizations that have as their goal the establishment or the maintenance of relationships with extraterrestrial beings."
Those concerned may bring their existence to the attention of the trustees by sending a brief summary of their organization and its activities to the paper, reference 1001, before March 31, 1988.
Intrigued by the language of the advertisement, a French investigator answered the query by providing some documents about his research. He soon received a telegram from London on March 31, 1988, entitled Teesdale Bequest. It indicated in good French that the candidacy was duly noted and that a contact would be made very soon."
Nothing happened, however, until January 26, 1989, when the investigator was called by an Englishman who identified himself as Mr. Wensley, and who proposed an appointment in Paris on February 28.
This phone call was followed, in very businesslike fashion, by a letter typed on the impressive stationery of Theard, Theard, Smith & Theard, 31 Sussex Mansions, London SW7, bearing the reference T.35.1/MB/WL.89, and signed by M. Bates. It confirmed the appointment in Paris at the Intercontinental Hotel at 7:00pm.: "You will be kind enough to ask at the reception for Mr. Grapinet, who will greet you."
At the appointed time, my correspondent arrived at the hotel with a friend. Two well-dressed men, one of whom introduced himself as Grapinet, did greet him. They announced that the actual meeting place had been moved to a private dining room in a Paris restaurant, where they would meet the other candidates. Furthermore, the Frenchman must go there by himself, without the friend he had brought as a witness.
The two representatives from Theard & Co. drove him to the restaurant, where he met, as best as he can recollect, the following remarkable group. First, there were two other candidates, who turned out to be Francois Raulin, a distinguished chemist from Paris University, who has done research on the nature and origin of life, and Claude Vorilhon, a notorious sect leader who has claimed contact with extraterrestrial beings and has gone on to organize a worldwide movement.
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| Claude "Rael" Vorilhon |
The most remarkable facts about Rael-Vorilhon are that he has acquired a large number of disciples -- including thousands of followers in French Canada -- and that the cult seems to have sources of income beyond the donations from his flock, leading some to speculate that the Raelian movement, like Prevost's group after Pontoise, like UMMO in Spain, and like Jim Jones's Peoples' Temple, may have attracted the attention of social engineers motivated by the observation and the management of such belief systems.
In the restaurant, which was located on rue du Cloitre Notre- Dame, a table in the shape of a horseshoe had been prepared. Around the table, in addition to the three candidates, were the following twelve people:
My correspondent sat between Mr. Cellier and engineer X8. Neither one of them knew anything about Theard & Co., and they had no connection to the late Mr. Teesdale. All they knew was that they had been invited to this dinner.
At that point Mr. Bates summarized the requirements of the assignment entrusted to them by the late A.P. Teesdale and he read the "confession," which represented the major motivation of his will and testament.
It goes on to give some personal details about the author. Born in 1899, he enlisted in the British forces in 1916 and soon found himself in the trenches of northern France. One gray November day he was involved in an attack and was caught in the explosion of a shell: "Everything dissolved in a prolonged flash." He thought he had been killed until he heard a voice tell him he was not dead, but was not alive either: "You are outside all that."
Teesdale goes on to describe a near-death experience characterized by a feeling of white and gold, with a darker central region containing a definite personality which identified itself as "a sentinel for those who set life on the planet."
"I have been trying for eons to get hold of somebody," said the voice, explaining that its reserves of energy had been exhausted after thousands of years of waiting, and it could only manifest when a burst of energy took place in the vicinity of its target.
Teesdale, who woke up in the mud of the battlefield, found a strange object in his hand as the interior voice told him:
"It has been decided that the human race shall be given a clue. All that is required is that you place this in the hands of your best scientists."
Teesdale survived the war and continued to regard the object he had found in November 1916 as a kind of personal talisman.
A quarter century later he found himself serving in yet another war. He was at the retreat from Dunkirk with eight other men running toward a boat when a splinter from an exploding shell hit him in the thigh. One of the men dragged him to the boat and threw him in. A German plane circling overhead dropped a bomb toward them. At that point Teesdale experienced a repeat of the earlier flash of light, the white and gold impressions, the darker center and the voice, scolding him for not getting the "clue" to the right people.
To be sure, he had once tried to give it to a doctor friend, but the man had only frowned on it. Later a chemist and a biochemist similarly returned it without comment. Was it his fault, he asked, if the object he had been given failed to impress these people?
The voice said that a second object would be handed to him. The two together would provide an obvious scientific proof.
Teesdale saw no more active service, but he suffered from a limp for the rest of his life. As for the objects he had been given, he never fulfilled his mission by having them analyzed. The people to whom he mentioned them dismissed his story. He found it unbearable to be suspected of mental aberration. He had a busy life, he said in conclusion, with the state of the family fortune requiring much attention. But he felt guilty at never following up on these two remarkable occurrences. Hence, he "determined that every means shall be granted to some person or persons to ensure that the meaning, if any, of my experiences in France shall be clarified."
And he stipulated that:
"These persons shall be chosen by as competent judges as it is possible to find ... to this end (and perhaps to the salvation of my immortal soul) no effort and no expense shall be spared."
Thus, it was in fulfillment of the instructions given to Teesdale by the mysterious extraterrestrial voice that his attorneys had convened the meeting in Paris, in a private room of a fine restaurant near Notre-Dame.
"Our selection as recipient of the Teesdale inheritance is Claude Rael-Vorilhon," said Mr. Bates, "because he presents the profile that is closest to the spirit of the Testament."
Vorilhon received a large laboratory cryogenic container measuring about twelve inches at the base and fifteen inches high. The frost on its walls made it impossible to see the material. Presumably it contained the mysterious extraterrestrial talisman. And Teesdale's fortune would go to the sect.
Three days later the French researcher had a telephone conversation with Francois Raulin. Neither of them had heard from Vorilhon, in spite of the latter's assurances that he would turn over the specimen to them for analysis.
It was not until March 16 that my correspondent was contacted by an associate of Vorilhon, a man named Dominique Renaudin. He was calling in a certain state of alarm. There was no news of the inheritance, no money, and no further contact with the firm of Theard & Company. The French ufologists decided a little late that it was time to conduct a serious effort to get some answers from the English side.
The first order of business was a visit to the offices of Theard, Theard, Smith & Theard, whose address was clearly listed on their handsome stationery. Unfortunately, no telephone number could be found for the firm. The given address, 31 Sussex Mansions, is close to the French Institute in Kensington, but the numbers stop with 29.
There is a Teesdale River in Durham County, but did a gentleman by the name of A.P. Teesdale ever exist? Quite a few people would very much like to know the answer to this question. They would also like to know why the attorneys for the alleged estate went all the way to Paris to find suitable candidates, while London is filled with groups doing similar research. Why did they hand over the container to Vorilhon, who was clearly preselected, when the other candidates were in a better position to analyze the talisman and to bring the results to the attention of qualified scientists? Why the elaborate charade of a dinner for fifteen people in a Paris restaurant, and why go through the motions of several formal presentations when it was plain that Rael-Vorilhon would receive the prize?
What role were the other group members playing? It seems they were invited purely as fillers, as extras on the stage.
The Teesdale inheritance is pure theatre. The restaurant scene could have been dreamed up by John Fowles, the master novelist who has described similar theatre in The Magus, played out in pursuit of the esoteric pleasure of hidden masters.
Yet there is an element of absurdity in this affair that is also reminiscent of the UMMO business and of the whole saucer crash controversy in the United States. It is for that reason that I have developed it here.
Who could possibly deny that there is a Teesdale Inheritance? How could we claim that Mr. Teesdale's attorneys were not real? Half a dozen French scientists, engineers, a priest, and several researchers have met them and shared a meal with them. Furthermore, the talisman was in fact handed over to one of the three candidates, duly selected through a formal process. Is it relevant that Theard & Company never existed? Or that cryogenic containers were unknown in 1916? Or that a wealthy Englishman could easily have paid any professional forensic analysis firm in England to take apart the talisman, for the result to be simply published at his expense for the edification of the whole world, instead of resorting to this complicated charade? Your answer is as good as mine.
The revelations of Teesdale's extraterrestrial source, which claims to represent those who created life on earth but is sadly running out of energy to communicate with us, are patently absurd. Again, is that relevant? Perhaps it is the very absurdity of these statements that contains the lesson. The assertions of UMMO and the recollections of many abductees are absurd, too. The claims of Majestic 12 and the fascination with the hieroglyphics in the Roswell crash or the Gray Aliens of Area 51 have no other source of power.
The Teesdale Inheritance is only the latest in a series of such manipulations.
Excerpt from:
Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception
1991 by Jacques Vallee, Ballantine Books, NY
ISBN 0-345-37566-1
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