AREA 123

Dolly Madison

 Highway 123 is one of our major roads here in Northern Vlrginia. In the war of 1812 it was the road that President Madison and his wife traveled to get out of Washington before the British captured them. To this day it's called, Dolly Madison Boulevard.

 According to my own personal research I discovered that the road has been vexed from the very beginning.  It goes right through the middle of the town of Vienna and that's where, according to my calculations, James and Dolly got separated.   They didn't find each other again until the next day when they rendevoued at a prearranged location.. Otherwise, it would have been named the James and Dolly Madison Boulevard.

A more appropriate name for it would be the Bermuda Triangle Blvd.

The fact that the highway has been troubled (some say  haunted) at that spot from its very beginning  is bad enough, but to make it worse, in the 1950's the city fathers of Vienna had the brilliant idea that to protect their rapidly growing bedroom community from traffic cutting through their neighborhoods they prohibited through streets.  In other words, there's only one road that leads into and out of the town of Vienna:

Highway 123,  Dolly Madison Blvd.

But that's another story.

This one is about my first visit there.

It was in the Spring of 1962 and I was assigned to cover a story about a flying saucer that was supposed to land there.

What?

George Adamski

 Yep, there was a man named George Adamski who had announced that he was going to “call down” a flying saucer that would be in the area the following night, and have it land in Vienna.  I was to interview Adamski and, of course, any of the aliens who might exit the spaceship.

Now, I don't think anyone at the station really believed that a flying saucer would be landing per Adamski's instructions, but some thought that we had to cover it...just in case.

And remember, UFOs were pretty big news in the '50's, just a few years earlier.

UFO's Over the Capitol in 1952

Still, to this day, there are a few sightings that have not been “explained,” or “solved.”

One of the most well documented events happened here in Washington.

On July 19, 1952. Edward Nugent, an air-traffic controller  at Washington National Airport , spotted seven objects on his radar . The objects were located 15 miles south-southwest of the city; no known aircraft were in the area and the objects were not following any established flight paths. Nugent's superior, Harry Barnes, a senior air-traffic controller at the airport, watched the objects on Nugent's radarscope. He later wrote:
"We knew immediately that a very strange situation existed...their movements were completely radical compared to those of ordinary aircraft"

At this point, other objects appeared in all sectors of the radarscope; when they moved over the White House  and the United States Capitol , Barnes called Andrews Air Force Base , located 10 miles from National Airport.  ( -Wikipedia)

Studying Crash Debris

And then, there was the famous “UFO Crash” in Roswell, New Mexico and all the “Area 51” conspiracy theories.

Area 51 is a part of Edwards Air Force Base located in UTAH some 80 miles from Las Vegas.  It's where the US develops and supports experimental aircraft and weapons. The intense secrecy surrounding it (the government denied it existed until 2003) made it a prime target for conspiracy theories, particularly UFO tales.

Adamski on NY Television

Now, back to George Adamski.

He claimed the he and several friends were in the Colorado Desert  one day and spotted a large submarine-shaped object hovering in the sky. Believing that the ship was looking for him, Adamski said he left his friends and headed toward the object, which had now landed. He described it as a scout ship made of a type of translucent metal. He said its pilot, a Venusian named Orthon disembarked and greeted him. 

He described Orthon as being a medium height humanoid  with long blonde hair and tanned skin wearing reddish-brown shoes. He said they communicated via telepathy and through hand signals.  Orthon then invited him into the space ship and proceeded to take Adamski on a tour of the Solar System, including his home planet Venus.
We didn't know at the time that Adamski was only the first of many New Age UFO prophets and so-called “abductees.”to follow.


Apparently it was Orthon on the other end of  the telepathic line as about 15 Adamski followers along with three other reporters and I stood quietly in the backyard of a home on Lawyers Road in Vienna.and watched Adamski stare at the sky and mentally listen to messages from a yet unseen spacecraft. The silence was broken only by the sounds of the cars of first time visitors making U turns looking for a way out of Vienna.

 Then suddenly Adamski said, "There it is! “Look closely at the sky....right up there.  See that blinking light.......that’s it....that's the space craft.  Orthon is saying “Hello.”

Spaceship saying "Hello."  Look closely.
(Me neither. -Ed)

“Yes, I see it.” shouted someone behind me.

“Me too,” echoed several of Adamski’s followers.

To me, it didn’t look like a blinking spaceship at all. It looked like “Twinkle, twinkle little star.”

Adamski stared knowingly at the sky a bit longer, then said, “Apparently there’s a problem.”

A few tense moments later he added,

“They think there’s someone here, who is very skeptical and could potentially bring them harm”

"Uh oh," I thought, "Orthon knows I'm here."

But being  a mild mannered reporter, not unlike Clark Kent, I certainly wasn’t going to do anyone any harm. In fact I was already fantasizing about the fame and fortune that would come my way if I were to become the first Earthling to interview a space alien on TV!

I wanted Orthon and his buddies to land in that backyard more than I had ever wanted anything in my life...with the possible exception of a Red Ryder BB gun, when I was in Miss Terry's class at Elizabeth School.

The  reporters and I were beginning to get strange looks from the other invited guests as
Adamski continued to try to convince Orthon to come join us for cookies and cokes.
After about 20 more minutes of telepathic pleading, Adamski announced that because of
the negative vibes coming from Earth, the spaceship’s crew had decided not to land at that time.

Darn!

 Now, don't think for a moment that I was naive enough even back then to believe that a flying saucer was going to land that night at that gathering in Virginia.

Balderdash!

Route 123, Dolly Madison Blvd entering Vienna, VA

No indeed. I knew  all along there would be no spaceship landing that night.  It was totally predictible.  As everyone knows, any society advanced enough to build spaceships that could traverse the universe in a matter of hours would certainly have known that it was almost impossible for anyone, even a spaceship, to get in or out of Vienna, Virginia.   -Ed




(During the early 1930's when Prohibition was still the law of the land, Adamski founded a monastary in Long Beach, California. Where upon he was able to make sacramental wine, for religious services. Wagging tongues claim that he made a lot of money  selling the wine to thirsty dry Californians. 


How was Adamski able to become the premier UFO celebrity of the 1950's? At that time, the American public was very trusting, and Adamski's tales hit home with the public. Adamski, painted himself as Joe Everybody, and his encounter at first seemd real to certain segments of the population. but as his tales became more and more bizaar his popularity declined.

Adamski wrote many books about his alien encounters and became a lecturer and celebrity.

One of his followers swears that he once saw Adamski with his shirt off and noticed that he didn't have a naval. )