Meier, Eduard Albert "Billy" (1937-)

One of the most famous of modern flying saucer contactees, Billy Meier emerged out of obscurity in 1975 when he claimed to have encountered people from the Pleiadian star system. To verify his claims he presented some dramatic photos of the spaceship and eventually made some videos of the ship flying near his home in rural Switzerland.

Meier was born on February 3, 1937, in Bulach, Switzerland. According to his story, he had seen a UFO as a child and subsequently heard a voice and saw mental pictures. These communications occurred daily and he learned to respond to them telepathically. In 1944, he met a humanoid named Sfath and took his first ride in a saucer. Sfath told him that he had been chosen and would come to understand his special status at a later date. His telepathic contacts with Sfath continued for some years but he was replaced after Meier's 16th birthday by Asket, a youthful female. These contacts existed side-by-side with outward signs of an unsettled life. As a youth Meier ran away from home several times, eventually landing in the French Foreign Legion. In 1958 he began a period of wandering through the Middle East and southern Asia. Following an accident in 1965, he lost his left arm just above his elbow. He finally returned to Switzerland in 1970 and settled on a farm.

In 1974, he advertised for people who would like to be part of a metaphysical study group, and soon had a small gathering joining him for discussions of occult matters. The next year he announced that he had not only seen a flying saucer, but that it had landed and a beautiful woman disembarked. He talked with her for an hour and a half. The woman, Semjase, hailed from the planet Erra in the Pleiades. Of all the people with whom the Pleiadians had made contact, only Meier had passed all the tests. Semjase set the stage for Meier to take a host of pictures of what were termed "beamships," Meier's primary evidence to an unbelieving world. He claimed to have taken a number of rides in the beamships, including a visit to the Pleiades.

European media began to give Meier coverage and controversy grew through 1976. His following also grew and with money they raised, he moved to property purchased near Hinterschmidruti that has been his headquarters ever since. The study group evolved into the Freie Interessengemeinschaft für Grenz-und Geisteswissenschaften und Ufologie-Studien. Among the people who learned of the Meier claims were Lou Zinstagg and Timothy Good, who were working on a biography of George Adamski, the original 1950s contactee. They brought copies of the Meier pictures to the United States and gave them to contactee enthusiast Wendelle Stevens. Stevens visited Meier in October of 1977, and after investigating his claims, created a company, Genesis III Productions Limited, to market the photos and related stories. In 1979, a coffee-table book, UFO… Contact from the Pleiades, Volume One, made the world aware of his claims. Additional books and several videos subsequently appeared.

As controversy swelled around Meier, with most ufologists rejecting his contactee claims, in 1981 Kal K. Kroff published the results of his investigation, The Meier Incident: The Most Infamous Hoax in Ufology. He demonstrated that Meier's photos were of small models held by string. He followed with a second book, Spaceships from the Pleiades, in 1990. Among the most damaging discoveries concerned some pictures supposedly taken from space by Meier that turned out to be NASA photos. More people, however, read writer Gary Kinder's generally favorable book, Light Years.

Stevens and his associates have remained staunch supporters of Meier and have continued to distribute the many Genesis III publications through the 1990s. Stevens has edited a multi-volume series of Meier's contact notes. The Semjase Silver Star Center was opened as an American counterpart to the Meier organization in Europe. The Meier material freely circulated through the New Age Movement, with New Age bookstores being a major means of distributing it. The impact of this material is visibly demonstrated in the prominence given the Pleiades in channeling material. Beginning in the late 1980s, a host of New Age channelers have regularly received messages from entities identifying themselves as Pleiadians.

Sources:

Elders, Lee J., Brit Nilsson-Elders, and Thomas K. Welch. UFO… Contact from the Pleiades, Volume One. Phoenix, Ariz.: Genesis III Productions, 1979.

——. UFO…Contact from the Pleiades, Volume Two. Phoenix, Ariz.: Genesis III Productions, 1983.

Kinder, Gary. Light Years: An Investigation into the Extraterrestrial Experiences of Eduard Meier. New York: Atlantic Monthly, 1987.

Kroff, Kal K. Spaceships of the Pleiades: The Billy Meier Story. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Press, 1995.

——, and William Moore. The Meier Incident—The Most Infamous Hoax in Ufology. Fremont, Calif.: The Authors, 1981.

Meier, Eduard "Billy." Decalogue or the Ten Bids. Alamogordo, N.Mex.: Semjase Silver Star Center, 1987.

——. The Psyche. Alamogordo, N.Mex.: Semjase Silver Star Center, [1986].