Over ten years ago, the Mutual UFO Network branded the Meier case "the hoax of the century." More recently, a number of researchers claim to have proven that at least some of Meier's famous photos are definitely fakes.
Nonetheless, Meier has equally staunch defenders. Wendelle Stevens was one of the first U.S. investigators to study the Meier case in detail. He remains convinced to this day that the case is genuine, as does photo analyst Jim Dilettoso, who worked with Stevens and Lee and Brit Elders to produce two illustrated books on the Meier case called "UFO...Contact from the Pleiades" (vol 1, 1979; vol 2, 1983). Similarly, Professor James Deardorff has studied both the Meier photos and thousands of pages of "contact notes" Meier produced -- including perhaps the most controversial item of all, the so-called "Talmud Jmmanual," said to be the true story of Jesus given to Meier by Semjase -- and concludes that Billy Meier cannot be brushed aside as a fake.
CNI News recently asked Professor Deardorff for his current views on Meier's photo evidence. Portions of his report are summarized here.
MEIER PHOTO EVIDENCE OF THE UNDENIABLE TYPE
by James Deardorff
Perhaps the best still-camera evidence is the shot of March 29th, 1976 near Hasenbol-Langenberg when the setting sun's rays reflected off a piece of the craft's dome into two golden rays visible as they approached the camera. This is Meier's photo #174.
Such "crepuscular" rays from the sun require a considerable distance of passage through the atmosphere before becoming visible, thus indicating that the craft was no model up close. Also, viewers of Wendelle Stevens' internegative of this, made in a photoshop in Winterhur from Meier's original positive slide, could notice that a couple branches of a mature deciduous tree passed in front of the left edge of the beamship, not behind it. Also, the near foreground was in shade, as the setting sun's rays were already blocked by the foreground hills to the right; hence the UFO could not have been any model up close to the camera, as the craft was catching the last of the sunlight still coming through at a greater distance from the camera than the tree. Any one of these three considerations indicate the craft was no model up close to the camera; further, the tree was no model tree, as a photo of the same deciduous tree when it was in leaf was taken by Stevens 2 1/2 years later.
Also, other slides from the same series (62 of them in all) show the craft earlier as it approached the camera, from when it was just a small spot on the photo until it displayed a diameter 13 times larger. It was at this latter time that Meier took the photo of the setting sun's rays reflecting off of it. This series shows the haze effect very well, of the smaller (more distant) image appearing hazier due to the increasing intervening path length of haze/smog.
The Ober-Sadelegg series of March 8th, 1975 (there are 7 or 8 photos surviving from this series) also shows the haze effect quite well, the beamship being almost twice as far away in the last photo as in the photo at its closest approach. One of these photos, known as the "logpile" scene, was analyzed very extensively for any indications that it was not genuine. None was found. Neil Davis, physicist at Design Technology, Poway, CA 92064, who also analyzed it in 1978, had to conclude, "Nothing was found in the examination of the print which could cause me to believe that the object in the photo is anything other than a large object photographed a distance from the camera."
Then there's the Fuchsbuel-Hofhalden photo series (11 photos surviving) of July 9, 1975, in which Semjase's beamship posed on different sides of, and even behind the top of, a fir tree in the distant foreground during a two-hour period in the afternoon. Two professors in forestry at Oregon State University (R. K. Hermann and E. C. Jensen) were able to identify the tree for me beyond any doubt as a mature abies alba (European silver fir). Thus it was no model tree. In one of the photos another tree much closer to the camera was somewhat blurry and out of focus, as would be expected, but was identified as a picea abies (Norwegian spruce), and hence was also no model tree.
In three of these photos of the 10 in my possession the beamship was edged into the tree's branches itself, in a manner that no double exposure or double-negative superposition could possibly have faked. That is, in one of these three, the tree's branches shadow a portion of the beamship, which itself eclipses two different sets of background hills. In two others, the craft is partially eclipsed by the tree while itself eclipsing the distant hills and/or clouds; in these two cases the craft's darkened underside shows as being darker than the background it eclipses, while its bright upperside is brighter than the hills it eclipses.
And in the two photos where the craft is behind the top of the tree, it shows through small irregular gaps in the branches in some 20 irregular spots, again something that could not have been faked, as the tree was dark, the top of the UFO craft was light, while its underside was darker.
In this series, the beamship and abies alba tree were in sharp focus.
I've noticed that in 9 of the 10 photos I possess from this series, the continuity in particular features of the cloud-cover from one photo to the next can be confirmed. In the 10th, the background hills are different, indicating Meier had walked about farther for this shot than he had in taking the others.
If any of these photos could have been faked using means available in 1975-76, one can be sure that ufologists eager to try to debunk the case would have demonstrated their ability to do so under the observation of impartial witnesses, and would have let others know of it. This has not happened, for obvious reasons.
Nor has any collaborator of Meier been detected even after 18 years. And he had no darkroom or darkroom equipment, and always sent his photos out to a photo shop in the nearby town of Wetzikon for development. The owners of the shop have attested to this (in the book "Light Years" by Gary Kinder, pp. 177-180).
There are many more witnesses to Meier's contact experiences of 1975-1977 in Switzerland, however. In particular, there were 3 named witnesses besides Kalliope Meier (Meier's wife) who had a daytime sighting of a beamship, and besides their three children who also saw it. This is how Kalliope described it (upon translation):
"In June of 1976, seven people were waiting with me for Billy to come back from a contact. He came and said to us, 'go with me to another point.' We went and waited. It was daylight and one of the boys told us to look up into the sky. It was our first sighting in the day. The ship was very big but got smaller as it rose, and I clearly saw the detail around the top of the ship. I saw little ports, and the whole UFO seemed to be light. The children, three other women and one man saw it, too. There are many lights going across the sky at night and I cannot be sure what they are, but this I am sure was the ship of Semjase. I didn't believe if before because I had never talked about UFO's or seen one. But after this day...I believe." (from the Elders' Vol. 2, p. 44).
Much of what I've described here, and much else, is reported in Wendelle Stevens' book "UFO Contact from the Pleiades: Preliminary Investigation Report" (1982), and some in Lee & Brit Elders' "UFO... contact from the Pleiades," vols. 1 and 2 (1979, 1983). In particular, two witnesses to a daytime sighting of a Pleiadean beamship besides Kalliope Meier and her children are named on pp. 142-143 of WS, and another on p. 44 of Vol. 2 by Lee & Brit Elders.
I've called this the "undeniable" evidence because anyone who is interested enough can acquire the references and photos by which to see it for oneself, as these particular sets of movie films and 80 photos show the results of beamship eclipses and/or shadowing by known objects of complicated shape in the distant foreground, and/or the effects of increasing obscuration by haze with increasing distance. Analysis of Meier's several hundred other beamship photos, in search of alleged support lines, etc., requires high quality film (1st or 2nd generation, preferably), to start with and expensive photographic and other test equipment.
Although Meier retains his first-generation photo evidence -- 35mm positive color slides, Wendelle Stevens was able, in 1978, to have internegatives and positive-to-positive prints made from 40 of these slides (in the city of Winterhur when accompanied by a member of Meier's support group). This is what Stevens' group had available for their intensive examination and testing of the photos during 1978-1982.
Original file name: .CNI - Meier.Best Evidence
This file was converted with TextToHTML - (c) Logic n.v.