Dan Martin (contactee)

Dan Martin was a 1955 Texas contactee who, according to Long John Nebel, a radio talk-show host of the day who knew and interviewed most of them, "was at the other end of the spectrum from Orfeo Angelucci." Martin claimed that while he was driving through "a remote section of Texas" he suddenly felt a strange tingling sensation. When he pulled off the road, a giant flying object looking much like a diesel locomotive pulled past him and landed in front of his car. A hatch opened in the rear and a woman wearing a sort of face mask with goggles came out, pulled off the face mask, and greeted him warmly by name. The woman spoke perfect English, and while pretty, looked like an ordinary human. However, she claimed to be from the planet Mercury. After promising that Martin would be taken into the space ship and given a ride on a later meeting, she re-entered the ship and it took off so rapidly that it was gone from sight within seconds. Nebel remarks that Martin's "claims are all really unbelievable," but they don't seem significantly different from those of any of the other 1950s contactees, such as George Adamski, Truman Bethurum, Daniel Fry, and Orfeo Angelucci.

Dan Martin is apparently not related to Marian Dorothy Martin, the leader of a 1954 flying saucer cult described in "When Prophecy Fails", the famous sociological study by Leon Festinger, Henry Riechen and Stanley Schachter, in which was first proposed the equally famous hypothesis of cognitive dissonance.

Dan Martin did later claim to get a "space locomotive" ride, as detailed in his book "Seven Hours Aboard a Space Ship" (1959).

References

Lewis, James R., editor, "UFOs and Popular Culture: an encyclopedia of contemporary myth", Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2000. ISBN 1-57607-265-7.

External links

* [http://mimufon.org/1960%20articles/ContacteesIHaveKnown.htm Long John Nebel's radio interviews with 1950s contactees]
* [http://skepdic.com/cognitivedissonance.html Skepdic.com page on Marian Dorothy Martin]