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1,500 people gathered at the Congress. Long John introduced him from the stage. Menger was still shy and boyish, and his palms were covered with sweat. Although he had given many lectures and appeared frequently on radio and TV, his nerves were visibly raw that afternoon. ‘‘Here,’’ I thought to myself, ‘‘is a very scared man.” His brief lecture was a bitter disappointment to the little old ladies who had come to hear a message of hope and faith. His retraction on the Long John show a few years earlier was forgotten, and he made a conscious effort to please the crowd of believers by sticking to a positive pro-extraterrestrial line. He avoided discussing the CIA’s alleged experi- ment and his own misgivings about the reality of UFOs. Instead, he talked about the saucer he was trying to build in his basement, presumably from plans given to him by you-know-who, then he spent several minutes knocking the National Investigation Committees on Aerial Phenomena and its deputy director, Richard Hall, for their attempts to thwart his plans for a UFO convention in Florida, and finally, he got around to his controversial contacts. “T think the most important thing that happened to me,”’ he said, ‘‘was in High Bridge, New Jersey, in the summer of 1956. It was in August. The craft came down from the west. It looked like a huge fireball. I was frightened. Gradually, as it came closer, it slowed down. The pulsations subsided. A metallic appearance was plainly visible. It was no longer a ball of fire, it turned into what looked like a man-made craft, reflecting the sun as it came close to the ground. It was a beautiful sight, very similar to the one on the screen here. [He was showing a UFO movie.] It stopped about a foot and a half from the ground. An opening appeared in the side of the craft. There was a small incline or platform. Two men stepped out, very nicely dressed in shiny space suits, such as what we have today for our astronauts, very similar. Of course, in those days—this was way ahead of the time. One man stepped to the left, and the other stepped to the right, and then another man stepped out, a man I will never forget as long as I live. He was approximately six feet one, maybe six feet two. He had long blond hair over his shoulders—yes, long blond hair. He stepped toward me, and the message he gave, of course, was what most people don’t want to hear, a message of love and understanding. He said he had come from outer space, which is what most people really don’t believe in. Someday they will. “I often wonder what would happen to these people who say, “Well, what proof do you have? If I could see a flying saucer or someone step out of a craft, boy, I would make sure the people knew about it.’ Well, I “You Are Endangering the Balance of the Universe!" / 185