New Page 1

Udo Wartena's Story of an Alien Encounter

In May, 1940, Udo Wartena (YOU doe, WAR tena), a Mormon prospector working at a remote claim near Townsend, Montana, had an encounter with a saucer-shaped craft with strange "men" aboard. Udo was known by friends as an honest man who led a straightforward, simple life. For years he remained silent, worried that his experience was a figment of his imagination. He first wrote down his experience in a letter to Senator John Glenn dated 1980. Udo gave copies of his letter to several friends, one of whom was my cousin John Dell (now living in Tucson, Arizona).

Having read The Observers (his duty as my cousin!), John Dell was reminded of Udo's letter and made a copy for me in January 2007. I've transcribed the letter into an html file (keeping the original punctuation): Udo's letter.

Skip the rest of this page if you haven't read The Observers!

Without getting into the validity of Udo's experience, it is an interesting exercise to interpret his letter in terms of the alien motives and technologies described in The Observers. In that context, the "men" encountered by Udo would be humanoid colonies. Their ship would probably have been for rapid movement of humanoid colonies and equipment around the earth. For interstellar travel (such as in Chapter 19) they would have organized things around smaller colonies of microbots.

The aliens' offer to take Udo with them would have involved taking a virtual copy of Udo with them (not the biological Udo). Udo would not have understood this distinction and the two colonies would not have tried to explain it to him under the circumstances. The microbots in The Observers can make virtual copies without injuring the biological organism. A more sinister scenario could be imagined where the copying procedure does destroy the biological organism, but the microbots equate the biological organism with its copy and thus have no qualms about destroying the former. If this were the case, it is good that Udo refused their offer to "go along with them." Udo's instinct that his going along would, "... inconvenience too many people," would have then been correct from the point of view of most of us humans!

Udo asked the two men (colonies) to explain their purpose for coming here. The reason given, "...mingle with you people, gather information, leave instructions, or give help where needed," is pretty much on the mark in terms of the humanoid colonies in The Observers where these motives derive from the task of selecting core personae.

For an interpretation of Udo's experiences not involving the ideas in The Observers, take a look at the UFO Magazine March/April 1998 discussion. by Warren Aston.