Close Encounters: Former UFO Investigator Captivates Listeners with Extraterrestrial Tales

By Carla Occaso
Times Argus
5-30-05

     DANVILLE – Those who have ever seen a strange object hovering in the late-night sky might have felt right at home at Dowser's Hall Saturday morning.

     Better still if they had an invisible, hairless alien came to stay as a houseguest to channel information from other galaxies.

     Such were the tales told by John M. Meloney of Claremont, N.H., a journalist-turned-UFO investigator, to a rapt audience of about 50 people filling the small lecture hall at the American Society of Dowsers' Danville headquarters.

     A well-educated, World War II veteran with years of journalism experience, Meloney spoke with great sincerity of several outer-worldly encounters – including some that happened here in Vermont.

     His motives for telling the stories seem to be to inform the public.

     "If something is going through the atmosphere of this planet, the people on the planet have a right to know what it is," Meloney said of his life's work that began when he started working for the National Investigative Committee on Aerial Phenomenon in 1966.

     His first brush with the topic started when he was a sports editor for the St. Petersburg Independent in Florida and a man came in, excited to report he had seen a flying saucer over the Gulf of Mexico. As a newspaperman, skepticism kicked in and the man was ignored. Today, Meloney said he wishes he had asked the man probing questions about the sighting.

     A few months later, Meloney moved to New Hampshire when a fateful newspaper article changed the course of his life.

     The article recounted an incident reported by a man traveling from White River Junction to Concord, N.H., on Route 4 before Interstate 89 was built. As the man approached Enfield, N.H., his car engine suddenly – and inexplicably – died. As the man opened the hood to look for loose wires, he heard an all-pervasive humming sound. He looked up and saw an object moving away from him. As the object disappeared, the humming sound decreased, then suddenly, the car engine spontaneously turned on. He reported the incident to the local newspaper, where Meloney read about it.

     Hostile letters to the editor followed, accusing the paper of sensationalism to sell newspapers. But one letter from an engineer in Detroit said the car's behavior was typical of a car involved in a flying saucer incident, and referred readers to Meloney's future employer: the National Investigative Committee on Aerial Phenomenon.

     Meloney fielded hundreds of sightings in Vermont and New Hampshire until the organization went defunct in 1968. The public stopped reporting sightings because people did not want to be considered kooks, Melony said, but he continued to study UFOs independently, keeping his own files, which he kept hiddden in Vermont.

     Soon after the UFO research project folded, Meloney says he began working directly for the aliens. His second wife, he said, could channel information from extraterrestrials.

     It started one night when she was talking in her sleep and he began conversing with her.

     "I realized I was talking to someone else who was using her body," he said. "She was very psychic. … the people who were using her to talk to me were in fact, extraterrestrials. They said we would make an excellent team to teach new arrivals on this planet."

     Soon, Meloney said, a series of aliens arrived at their home from distant galaxies to study the ways of earthlings. The first, he said, was a 2,000-year-old, 3-foot-tall, hairless female named Dolia, who considered herself very beautiful with webbed hands and feet of three digits each.

     The couple went on to contact 46 alien beings from several different planets, he said. Meloney said they were invisible to him because their vibrations were too high, but his wife could see them.

     Meloney recounted being questioned by FBI agents, brushes with political issues and joining the American Society of Dowsers in Danville.

     Meloney ended his lecture saying most aliens are friendly and people should not fear them.

     Many audience members shared alien stories of their own after the lecture. One woman, however, was not completely sold on the idea.

     Mickey Smith, a retired banker from Lyndonville, said she enjoyed the lecture because it was very entertaining, but said she the part about the alien visitation was hard to swallow.

     "I was a little bit pessimistic to be totally honest," she said. "Personally, I didn't know what to believe."

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