Billy Meier’s “beamship” photographs
Eduard “Billy” Meier, from the canton of Zürich, says that on January 28, 1975, he met Semjase, a woman from the Pleiades, beside her spacecraft, and that contacts which had begun in his childhood went on for years. From 1975 he produced hundreds of sharp colour photographs and some film of saucer-shaped “beamships” over the fields and woods of the Zürcher Oberland, later the basis of books, a following and the 1987 film Contact. Scientists, sceptics and most ufologists regard them as fraudulent. Investigators such as Kal Korff argued that models had been photographed close up or combined with landscapes; Meier’s former wife Kalliope said in 1997 that she had seen the models and that the stories were invented; Meier conceded that he had used models to re-create scenes; and pictures he presented as the aliens Asket and Nera were traced to performers on American television.
Explanation
A hoax. Meier’s former wife said in 1997 that the “beamships” were models made from household objects such as dustbin lids and carpet tacks; Meier admitted to Gary Kinder that he had used models to “recreate scenes”; and photographs of two “Pleiadian” women turned out to show dancers from the Golddiggers troupe on The Dean Martin Show.
What was seen
Shape: Disc-shaped “beamships” with domes and rings
Witnesses: Eduard “Billy” Meier alone; no independent witness of any contact
Duration: Claimed contacts from 1975 onwards
Sources
Browse
- Switzerland
- 1970s
- Identified
- Photo and video cases
- Photographs
- Motion-picture film
- Discs and saucers