Ray Stanford and His Super-Power-Inducing Time Machine (AKA "The Hilaron Accelerator")

Ray Stanford and His Super-Power-Inducing Time Machine (AKA "The Hilaron Accelerator")
Ray Stanford said that the Hilaron Accelerator would look like "a great big polished copper medicine capsule," and that by use of this device, "a hyper-person, a super-person if you prefer, might be created." Ray Stanford said in 1974, "The Brothers [members of the White Brotherhood] have suggested to us that this Accelerator project is one of the most important projects upon which we could engage."



By Douglas Dean Johnson

The material below was originally published on the Alien Expanse forum, under the pen name Justice Fodor, on February 12, 2019; March 22, 2019; and June 21, 2021. I placed this version on Mirador on May 7, 2023; in so doing, I updated some of the links and improved the insertions of primary source materials such as audio files, documents in PDF format, and images. I also lightly edited the original text for clarity on a few points. In addition, I added, at the end, links to .mp3 audio files of two entire lectures given by Ray Stanford about "the Accelerator" in 1974.

Dear reader, you may be puzzled by the headline to this article, "Ray Stanford and His...Time Machine." You may say, "Surely Ray Stanford, who has claimed status as a pioneer of 'scientific' UFO research, never had anything to do with building a time machine . . . did he?"

Well, yes, actually Ray Stanford did actively promote construction of a large device, which he called the "Hilaron Accelerator" (or just "the Accelerator"), that he said would grant some humans various super powers, including the power to physically travel in time. Stanford promoted this concept personally and through at least two different organizations, from about 1960 to at least as late as 1976, when he was 37 years old. He made appeals for funds to pursue this project, which he estimated in 1974 would cost $1.25 to $3 million.

Stanford described the Hilaron Accelerator as a chamber that would be energized in a manner that would, according to Stanford and his usually invisible spirit guides, induce in a human occupant truly astonishing super-psychic powers. Among these would be, for some individuals, the capacity "not only to relocate the body in space [teleport], but to relocate that body, mind, and consciousness in time." Stanford said in one 1974 lecture: “He [the occupant] would begin to glow. His body would disappear instantly or fade out . . . [and he would] to walk the sands of ancient Egypt 5,000 years ago. . . . he will materialize a physical body in ancient Egypt.”

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When somebody raised this issue on an internet listserv in 1999, Stanford responded with false statements that are contradicted by the documented record. [As discussed below, Stanford did this again in a podcast interview that was broadcast on March 8, 2019.]

In order to explain more fully, I must first give further background information.

The Association for the Understanding of Man (A.U.M) was a nonprofit organization based in Austin, Texas, during the 1970s. (There was an earlier short-lived entity with a similar name based elsewhere, also associated with Stanford, but I will refer here only to the Austin-based nonprofit of the 1970s.) Stanford was sometimes referred to in the AUM literature as a "research psychic" on the staff, but whatever the exact technical legal arrangement of this tax-exempt entity, the entire organization was centered on Stanford and his psychic readings. He was calling the main shots -- directly and through authoritative direction given through the in-trance discourses. These "readings" emanated from Stanford while he was said to be in an "unconscious state." The discourses were attributed to "the Brothers" (members of the "White Brotherhood" of spiritual adepts) or the "Source" (AKA "the Source of the Readings"), defined more or less as the supermind of Stanford's soul.

A.U.M published a thick journal several times a year, periodic newsletters, and a number of books. The bulk of the journal content consisted of transcripts of trance messages ("readings") from the "Brothers" and "the Source," by way of Ray Stanford's vocal cords, on lots of different topics, but especially on various projects that would have world-shaking effects, once fulfilled. Fulfillment was generally presented in being within a fairly short time frame -- a few years or less -- if sufficient support was forthcoming, etc.

Among its other activities, A.U.M sponsored summer conferences for members, held in Austin from 1973 until at least 1979. Some summers there were two such conferences, other summers only one. Attendees at these conferences heard lectures by Stanford, other A.U.M staff, and guest speakers.

In addition, conference attendees participated in "conference readings," which occurred in a church-in-the-round in Austin. Stanford laid down in the middle of the room, went into an ostensible unconscious state, and channeled long discourses from "the Brothers" and "the Source" on world events to come, alien visitations to Earth, the world-saving importance of the various Stanford/A.U.M projects, and many other subjects. (Occasionally, for discourses from important "Brothers," Stanford remained seated in a lotus position, but still supposedly unaware of what was being said.) These discourses sometimes continued without interruption for two hours or more. Transcripts of most of these "conference readings" were subsequently published in the Journal of the Association for the Understanding of Man (or "A.U.M. Journal," for short). Stanford was listed as "Editor-in-Chief" of the Journal when it began running a masthead in 1976.

For a number of years, many of these conference talks and "conference readings" also were sold on tape cassettes, some of which have survived in private collections, such as mine. I believe that some of Stanford's current associates would be shocked to hear some of the claims and notions that Stanford put forward in these recordings.

Now, to return to the story of the "Hilaron Accelerator":

In a 1974 interview with Psychic magazine, Stanford said that in 1957 he "began to go into a semi-conscious state [in which] a number of entities came through who called themselves Brothers." In 1960 he started channeling from the ostensibly fully unconscious state. From 1960 on, many of the "readings" were attributed to "the Source of the Readings," considered to be Stanford's own higher self, but others continued to be attributed to various "Brothers" (each of whom is heard, on the cassettes, speaking with different accents and inflections).

"The Hilaron Accelerator" apparently was a concept that emerged in some of the earliest readings, around 1960. The design was credited to a "Brother" named Hilarion (note the difference in spelling). Regarding this Hilarion character, in the Psychic interview (page 9) Stanford said that on April 13, 1961, a "Brother" "materialized physically in a brightly lit lighted room," that he was "over seven feet tall," "was actually glowing," and was accompanied by "a globe of light about eighteen inches in diameter [that] hovered near the ceiling, glowing a diffused white-blue light." In an 1974 lecture, Stanford said that this materialized Brother was in fact Hilarion, that he "materialized" in a "physical body," was "eight feet tall," and wore a pointed helmet. Also, "His body glowed like Moses."

The Accelerator was to be a big metal chamber, once described by Stanford as looking like "a great big polished copper medicine capsule," on the order of 25 feet long, with an attached control room. The idea was that if one charged the chamber walls with 1 to 3 million volts, it would create an "electro-static field," and if the right kind of person sat or laid inside the chamber while it was charged, that person's psychic powers would get a huge boost, permitting super-clairvoyance, teleportation, and even the ability to physically travel back in time. It would, Stanford said in a 1974 lecture, be "a device that in many respects is similar to a UFO." [Note: audio files of this entire lecture are available through the links provided at the bottom of this post.]

Stanford also said, in the same lecture, that with the Accelerator, "a hyper-person, a super-person if you prefer, might be created." He characterized the project as "one of the most important projects in which we will ever engage."

Stanford also said that the group he'd been associated with in 1960 had actually obtained a piece of land on which they intended to build the device, only to be blocked by opposition from local Baptists.

Now, let's stop here for a moment and fast forward to 1999 -- when somebody was impolite enough to bring up this time-machine business (along with some other sticky issues related to Stanford's A.U.M. period) on an internet mailing list (listserv) devoted to dinosaur-related issues, of which Stanford was a member. Stanford reacted as he often does when such issues are raised -- he attacked those raising the questions (who were promptly kicked off the listserv), and he offered a short defense regarding the "time machine." Stanford's defense was to claim that A.U.M. “NEVER, EVER collected any money to build the ‘Time Machine’ . . . I often cautioned persons that the ‘Accelerator’ was possibly an unconsciously [sic] contrivance of my mind. . . . I was 22 years of age when that stuff ‘came through’ and I’m now 60.” (capitals in the original)

Unfortunately, these words by Stanford in 1999 are contradicted by his own recorded words from the mid-1970s.

It is true that at the time of the initial Brother-messages that Stanford said pushed for construction of the Accelerator, in or about 1960, he would have been about 22 years old. But the Accelerator concept was heavily promoted in many pieces of official A.U.M. literature published from 1973 until 1976, and by Stanford himself in speeches and written material during that period, when he was in his mid-to-late 30's.

In a glossy A.U.M. promotional booklet first published in 1973, intended to attract members and donors to support the work of the nonprofit organization, said: “Plans for the Project Starlight laboratory building include the installation of a high-energy field-effect research device capable of isolating research subjects from most outside electromagnetic frequencies and also of surrounding the subject in an electro-static field of perhaps as much as three million volts, while generating still other fields inside the controlled-environment device. The research facility will become part of a continuing program researching the relationships of matter, energy, space, time, and consciousness.”


Stanford (at age 36) also discussed the Accelerator at some length in his 1974 interview with Psychic magazine. Stanford said:

They [the Brothers] told us how to build a complicated research device. We took this data to two engineers who said they could not see how some of the required engineering features could possibly be accomplished. But then the Brothers came through with additional information which the engineers thought was fantastic. Now it looks like, the time is coming very soon when we can actually build a laboratory and start researching this device , which might be able to enhance psychic and healing abilities considerably. The device would isolate a person from outside electromagnetic impulses while enclosing him in a very high-energy electrostatic field. The Brothers say that the effect achieved would be very much like that which happened to Moses on top of Mount Sinai. They say that the "Pillar of Fire" that Moses saw was actually a technological device from an advanced civilization. Moses was warned to hide himself in the cleft of a rock when the "Glory of the Lord" approached. If a spaceship were to pass over Mount Sinai with a three million volt electrostatic charge on its surface, any person standing there would act like a lightning rod. So Moses hid in the cleft of the rock. Remember that when he came down after forty days he was glowing. Physically the only thing that could have caused it was that the major electrolyte of the body, ATP (adenosine triphosphate), was energized. This is one of the things that we hope to do in this device-- energize the ATP and enhance the process of consciousness.​

The Psychic magazine interviewer then asked, "When do you plan to have this device built?" Stanford answered: "Fortunately the Association for the Understanding of Man (A.U.M.) now has the land and we're beginning sometime early this year to build the laboratory. Tied in with this work is our Project Starlight International (P.S.I.) for detecting UFOs. . . ." Again, this was in 1974; Stanford was 35 years old.

In the same issue of Psychic magazine, A.U.M. purchased a full-page ad to solicit new members, which said that A.U.M. "is building high-energy-field research equipment and a laboratory for studying the relationships of matter, energy, space, time, and consciousness." You can see the ad yourself on the final page of the PDF file of the interview from the April 1974 issue of Psychic, and in the image below.

In addition, the Accelerator was heavily promoted by "the Brothers" and "the Source" in various Stanford psychic readings during the period of 1973-1976 -- for example, see the August 9, 1974 conference-reading discourse by "Brother Lanto," found on pages 23-28 of A.U.M. Journal Vol. 3 No. 1, embedded below. ("Lanto" again associated the device with Hilarion, "whose influence has been major on the design at the higher level of that device.") Certainly, those who supported the Association for the Understanding of Man through donations or dues had every reason to believe that their financial support was advancing, among other things, this wondrous Accelerator project.

Furthermore, the elevated spiritual voices channeled by Stanford insisted that the Accelerator project was important to the entire human race. In a "conference reading" that Stanford delivered on August 23, 1974, published in A.U.M. Journal Vol. 3 No. 2 (not uploaded, yet), the "Source" said that the Accelerator:

where it is made a physical reality and put into operation . . . will aid in the conscious awarenesses toward the assimilation of the barrage of new data from outside the Earth, from within the Earth, and from within individuals, that will be reaching you. That device, which is influenced under guidance by those from beyond the Earth [extraterrestrials] and by some of those who have overcome the Earth [the "Brothers"], in a sense is as a beginning influence toward the integration of spirit, mind and body. . . . In other words, the project, if fulfilled through the willingness and love of those who would support such activities [i.e., donations], is to bring not only a psychical, catalytic influence to the entire world, but to allow the breakthrough, under controlled and repeatable conditions, of the demonstration of the superiority of spirit to mind, and of mind to the material, under laboratory conditions . . . of the capacity of spirit, mind, and body to transcend body, mind, and time itself, and to travel not only space but time.​

On August 24, 1974, Stanford gave an entire lecture titled "Space, Time, Fields, the Accelerator, and A.U.M" at one of the membership conferences. I have a copy of this tape. I have listened to it. I have quoted from it above, but hardly scratched the surface. The lecture contains many remarkable statements. However, I am not inclined to transcribe the whole lecture, which goes on for more than an hour. [Note: audio files of this entire lecture, and another lecture by Stanford on the same subject, are available at the links found at the bottom of this article. Stanford gave another similar talk at a 1975 A.U.M. membership conference, of which I do not have a recording.] Contrary to Stanford's 1999 disavowal, during this lecture Stanford made at least two appeals for financial support for the Accelerator project, which he estimated would cost from $1.25 to $3 million. At one point Stanford even said that he could be giving his psychic readings from within the Accelerator at future A.U.M. conferences, even within a year or two, "depending on when the funds come in."

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So, you may ask, what happened when A.U.M. actually built the Accelerator/time machine? I bet the answer won't surprise you: No such device was ever built. Not even started, apparently.

You may also ask, didn't those the A.U.M. members and donors complain about that? I don't know, maybe some did. But Stanford (and "the Brothers" and "the Source") during those years were always promoting more than one world-shaking project at any given time -- establishing open contact with alien visitors; uncovering Imhotep's tomb and Essene scrolls (those discoveries that would prevent a terrible war in the Middle East); spreading the proper Ray Stanford interpretations of certain apparitions of the Virgin Mary; and more.

These projects all had just one thing in common -- Ray Stanford was the super-hero of each story. One "reading" [a "work reading" given February 16, 1976; transcript embedded below] said Stanford's soul had first incarnated on Earth "more than 40,000 years ago, and every incarnation has been pointing to the present time, to the fulfillment of an opportunity . . ." A.U.M. Journal Vol. 3, No. 4, p. 68.

But the payoff days somehow never arrived. Aliens did not emerge from landed craft to greet Stanford at the Project Starlight facility. [On this point, see the transcript of a Stanford "psychic reading" given on October 21, 1973 specifically to guide Project Starlight International, the transcript of which is embedded below.] The tomb of Imhotep and the Essence scrolls were not uncovered. The imminent world catastrophes predicted in numerous of Stanford's psychic readings did not occur.

As for the Accelerator, it just quietly slid off the list of immediate priorities. Remarkably, the guidance from "the Brothers" and "the Source," and even from "Jeshua" (Jesus Christ), seems to have consistently ratified such swerves and lurches in the Stanford agenda of grand missions. Funny how that works.

In the A.U.M. newsletter dated April 2, 1976, Stanford revealed that the Accelerator project was "a low priority simply because it is not practical to pursue it at this time. I realize I’ve made some over-optimistic statements in the past about how soon we could undertake this project, but the fact is that it may take several million dollars and a number of top-grade professionals to really get that project underway, and it doesn't appear likely that we'll have such research available until the Association's work is far better known than it is now."

So, then, in 1976 the Accelerator was still on his to-do list, but would have to wait awhile longer, until . . . later.

Ray Stanford wrote that newsletter when he was 37 years old. He's 84 now.

*****

[As indicated, the above article was originally published on Alien Expanse on February 12, 2019. I returned to the subject of Ray Stanford and his time machine on with a new post on Alien Expanse on March 22, 2019, after Ray Stanford made false claims about his "Accelerator" history during an interview with podcaster Erica Lukes on March 8, 2019.]

Ray Stanford Close-Up No. 9:
Stanford Swipes at His Critics; Plus Alien Fingers,
"A Major Government Operation," and
the Stanford-Goddard-NASA Connection


On March 8, 2019, Ray Stanford was interviewed on a radio/podcast program called UFO Classified. The program, associated with KCOR Digital Radio Network, is hosted by Erica Lukes, who is identified elsewhere as the head of an organization called "Unexplained Utah."

The March 8 podcast, which may be accessed or downloaded here or via the embedded file below, is about 90 minutes long. Stanford was afforded completely indulgent treatment from Lukes, who repeatedly gushed that Stanford was "a legend"; she offered no challenge whatever even to Stanford claims that diverged far from the well-documented record. This is the usual pattern with interviews of Stanford -- he greatly prefers admiring, deferential questioners, most of whom accept his stories with wide-eyed amazement and no apparent attempt at independent verification of anything. Stanford studiously avoids subjecting himself to well-informed and skeptical questioners. When he encounters even a modest amount of push back, such as he received from Walter Bosley during a March 8, 2009 Radio Mysterioso interview (which I previously wrote about here), he generally handles it poorly. I again recommend that anyone with a serious interest in the Stanford UFO-evidence claims listen to the March 8, 2009 Radio Mysterioso interview [the .mp3 audio file is embedded below] to see how Stanford reacts when his "facts" encounter even a modest measure of well-informed skepticism.

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[Note (May 11, 2023): What I have written above was my assessment of how Erica Lukes interacted with Ray Stanford in this specific 2019 interview, an assessment that I wrote only two weeks after the interview. However, I have reason to believe that Ms. Lukes, having subsequently learned much more about Stanford's history, would likely approach the subject differently if there was ever a re-match.]

Much of the UFO Classified interview is devoted to semi-rants in which Stanford disparages pretty much every variant of UFO investigation as useless and irrelevant, when considered in light of the massive trove of UFO evidence that he claims to possess. For example, he dismisses the military UFO videos released through the To the Stars Academy in 2017 ("I'm not impressed," "It is almost a joke," "I laugh at this stuff"). MUFON he characterizes as "basically a mole hole." The interviewing of UFO witnesses, and UFO field investigations generally, he pronounces to be of little value, with narrow exceptions. Those UFO researchers who fail to petition him for a viewing of his private collection will "waste decades" by their failure to receive the revelations that only Ray Stanford can impart. "I need Nobel-laureate-level minds to come here [to my home]," he said. If you think I may be mischaracterizing what he said, please listen to the entire program, embedded and linked above. Here is an excerpt that will give you the flavor:

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During the Lukes interview, Stanford made some remarks about subjects that I have touched on in past posts in the "Ray Stanford Close-Ups" series. I will now comment on some of these.

STANFORD MAKES VAGUE COMPLAINTS ABOUT CRITICS,
BUT DISPUTES ONLY ONE SPECIFIC POINT -- AND ON THIS, HE LIED


In the UFO Classified interview, Stanford never refers explicitly to this series of "Ray Stanford Close-Up" posts [on Alien Expanse], but on several occasions he does so obliquely. Referring to unnamed critics, he rattles off a series of vague complaints, such as "they can make up all kinds of stuff," "they are not being honest," and "they take things out of context."

However, any reader of this series of "Close Ups" will find that what I have written is based almost entirely on public statements and published writings by Stanford himself, along with documented narratives regarding some of his past activities. Everything is based on and backed up by documents and audio recordings, many of which I have uploaded with my posts (although I have barely scratched the surface of the material available).

Rather than taking things "out of context," I am putting Stanford's current extraordinary UFO-evidence claims into context -- the context of Stanford spending 60 years or so making remarkable UFO-evidence claims that have not been subjected to critical scrutiny, or that have been convincingly refuted or abandoned -- as well as innumerable specific public promises that have not been fulfilled.

Despite Stanford's statement, "They can make up all kinds of things up," during the entire 90-minute interview, he directly disputes only one of the factual statements that I have made in the first eight "Ray Stanford Close-Up" posts. At about one hour and eleven minutes into the program, Stanford disputes that he had tried to raise money to build a time machine; he asserts that this claim was based on his engaging in "a bit of joking with somebody in [an audience]."

This defensive claim by Stanford is demonstrably and utterly false. As I have documented in detail, for about 15 years, Stanford intermittently but most seriously promoted a scheme to build the "Hilaron Accelerator," a device which he attributed to the "White Brothers" (ostensibly elevated spiritual beings, speaking through the entranced Stanford), beginning in 1960. Stanford repeatedly claimed that the Accelerator would confer "super-person" (Stanford's term) powers on suitable individuals (such as Stanford himself), including the ability to travel in time (and teleport in space).

Stanford gave an entire lecture promoting the "the Accelerator" project at a conference of the Association for the Understanding of Man (A.U.M.) on August 24, 1974, titled "Space, Time, Fields, the Accelerator, and A.U.M." [The complete .mp3 audio files can be downloaded from the links at the bottom of this article.] In this lecture, Stanford made many incredible claims about the powers that would be conferred by the Accelerator. I quoted some of those statements in the earlier posts. During the lecture, Stanford made several appeals for financial support for the Accelerator project, which he estimated would cost from $1.25 to $3 million. At one point he even said that he could be giving his psychic readings from within the Accelerator at future A.U.M. conferences, even within a year or two, "depending on when the funds come in." Stanford's tone throughout the lecture was in dead earnest -- he was an evangelist for the Accelerator.

Here is a four-minute excerpt from Stanford's lecture, in which Stanford twice referred to the need for funding (and these were not the only such appeals). You will also hear Stanford tell the assembled believers, "The Brothers [members of the White Brotherhood] have suggested to us that this Accelerator project is one of the most important projects upon which we could engage."

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It was not until an A.U.M. newsletter dated April 2, 1976, that Stanford (age 37) sidetracked the Accelerator project, and he did so on grounds that there were not yet adequate funds available ("the fact is that it may take several million dollars and a number of top-grade professionals to really get that project underway").

It is quite understandable that Stanford is now embarrassed by the fact that, intermittently over a period of about 15 years, he promoted construction of (and repeatedly solicited funds to build) a machine that would confer "super-person" powers, including the ability to physically travel in time. But this does not excuse Stanford's repeated denials -- nor are such denials particularly smart, since anyone who cares to look into it can hear Stanford's new lie refuted by his own words, as recorded in 1974 and in 1976.

STANFORD MISREPRESENTS THE ROLE OF HIS PSYCHIC READINGS

In the UFO Classified interview, Stanford speaks very briefly about his years as a trance-psychic (which extended to at least age 40), suggesting that he was never entirely sold on the validity of his trance discourses. Maybe not, but for the best part of a decade he drew his pay from the Association for the Understanding of Man, the publications of which consisted mostly of Stanford's trance-delivered "psychic readings." In these trance discourses, the spiritual commandos of the "White Brotherhood," along with Stanford's "superconscious mind" ("the Source"), excited the organization's members and donors with promises of contact with visiting aliens through the work of Project Starlight International, archeological discoveries that would alter the course of world events, construction of the time machine, and several other grandiose projects -- Ray Stanford being the savior at the center of each of these world-shaking endeavors (none of which, of course, actually came to fruition in the real world).

Stanford's long role as a psychic oracle are pertinent to evaluation of his current UFO claims for several reasons. For one thing, Stanford has for decades portrayed Project Starlight International as a groundbreaking, hard-headed scientific enterprise -- but he has taken pains to conceal that the enterprise was inspired and actively guided in part by an ostensible UFO-riding extraterrestrial, Aramda of The Watchers, who spoke through the "unconscious" Stanford. [A sample of one of these "channeled" discourses is embedded below.] Be sure to check out the audio clip from a lecture (not a psychic reading) delivered by Stanford on August 23, 1974, in which Stanford spoke of his association with Aramda going back nearly 40,000 years [the first of the clips embedded immediately below this paragraph]. It seems that Stanford and Aramda were associates in Telos, a colony of Lemuria, when "a gigantic craft -- and I remember well the scene, and how it appeared -- a gigantic craft, probably at least 200 feet tall . . .landed at Telos." Stanford, age 36, made these claims in front of the A.U.M. members and donors while wide awake.

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Stanford has also long failed to acknowledge that those involved in Project Starlight International were told by "the Source" that they would make direct contact ("if you persist") with aliens in landed spacecraft, as documented here and in the document embedded below, from a "work reading" given by the entranced Stanford specifically to guide Project Starlight International, on October 21, 1973. "The Source" even provided specific guidance that only Stanford and his then-wife should make the direct approach when the spacecraft door opened.

STANFORD AND THE 1984 ALIEN PILOT PHOTO

In the March 2019 UFO Classified interview, Stanford spends a good deal of time talking about a complicated UFO event that he claims to have witnessed from outside his then-home in Austin, Texas, on October 15, 1984. (From the details, it is clear that this is the same event to which Stanford repeatedly referred in his 2009 interview on Radio Misterioso -- but in the 2009 interview he gave the date as "October 15, 1954," which had puzzled me.)

According to the story, Stanford saw a "mother ship" at a distant he later determined to be 90 miles, of which he took a movie. After running out of movie film, Stanford started shooting 35mm still shots with a 12x telephoto lens. There were smaller objects operating in conjunction with the mother ship, one of which he says suddenly darted to within about one mile of Stanford's position. Somehow, according to Stanford, this entire 90-mile shift was captured on a single 35mm still-camera image! Even more amazing, Stanford claims to have extracted data from this single still image that proves that the smaller object had traveled at "either two-thirds or three-quarters of the speed of light in the atmosphere" as it moved closer to him.

Well, we don't have the image to examine, but I think these claims on their face raise substantial questions about Stanford's methods of photo "analysis," which owe much to his rich imagination. This a subject to which we might return on another day.

But wait, there is more: That quick smaller object had a dome. The very same single 35mm image, according to Stanford, shows the alien pilot sitting inside the dome -- so clearly that "you can count the fingers on his hand," Stanford asserts. (In the 2009 Radio Misterioso interview, Stanford also said this alien pilot is "three or three-and-one-half feet tall, and has a bald head and pointed ears.")

Regarding this photo, Stanford says, "People say, is this just a blur?" It's not clear whether he is referring here to people who have seen the photo, or people who have not seen it.

Well, 34 years have passed since Stanford says he photographed this diminutive alien pilot, sitting in his domed craft. Yet, Stanford has never released this world-shaking photo showing the alien pilot actually piloting a vehicle of apparently extraterrestrial manufacture. Why not, do you suppose? Well, it is pretty clear that Stanford is not in the habit of subjecting his purported UFO evidences to truly independent analysis or to unfiltered critical scrutiny -- perhaps because on the rare occasions when he has done so, his claims have generally fared poorly. Stanford is a man who often "sees" what others do not see, in photos and elsewhere -- and perhaps if he released the photo, there would be too many who see "just a blur."

(Stanford also claims that after the October 1984 event, he and other witnesses developed "Beau's lines" on their fingernails, which Stanford attributed to the UFOs. Beau's lines are horizontal lines that are sometimes an indication of underlying disease. It was not entirely clear to me whether Stanford thought the malign UFO influence emanated from the mothership 90 miles away, or the from the domed craft a mile away, but presumably he blamed the latter.)

I have uploaded here an audio file of the segment of the UFO Classified interview in which Stanford describes the alien-pilot image and the manner in which he says he obtained it, as well as his extrapolation regarding the object's speed.

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STANFORD's DEC. 4, 1980 SUPER 8 AIRLINER MOVIE

In the UFO Classified interview, Stanford goes into considerable detail about a movie he took through the window of an airliner returning to the U.S. from Mexico on December 4, 1980. This is the Super8 movie from which a photo was taken ostensibly showing "Faraday rings" around a UFO, as discussed here.

Stanford goes on at length about other extraordinary things shown in this movie, including distant mountains that "collapse optically" and then reappear (repeatedly), displays of redshift and blueshift, and other marvels -- all of these effects ostensibly visible on the 4.01 mm x 5.79 mm (i.e, less than one-quarter inch in the long dimension) Super8 frames -- all of them shot through an airliner window no doubt made of double panes of birefringent acrylic material. (Birefringent refers to "stressed material [that] bends and transmits light differently for light waves oscillating in different directions, i.e., light of different polarization states," according to a technical reference book.) Stanford says nothing to indicate that this Super 8 film has ever been examined by any independent analyst, nor the possible artifact-inducing properties of the airliner window explored by an appropriate technical expert. Nor is there anything in the paper by Auguste Meessen, a Belgian physicist (which reproduced a frame from the film), to suggest that the film has ever been directly examined by anybody other than Stanford. This is all discussed in more detail in Ray Stanford Close-Up No. 8: Unearthly Crystal, Alien Pilot, Faraday Rings, and Magnetometer Data.

"A MAJOR GOVERNMENT OPERATION"

In the UFO Classified interview, referring to some unspecified portion of his body of claimed UFO evidences, Stanford says, "I may release this . . . through a major government operation." He does not name the government agency that purportedly has an interest in serving as a conduit for bringing Stanford's material to a broader audience. However, soon after making that remark, Stanford refers to the "credibility" that he has gained with unnamed persons at Goddard Space Flight Center, a NASA facility in Maryland, because Stanford made an much-heralded dinosaur-track discovery on the Goddard grounds in 2012. I am uploading here a 69-second segment in which Stanford discusses his NASA-Goddard connection.

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Ray Stanford on Goddard connections 3 8 19
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[Here is another interview in which Stanford spoke of Goddard associations, this one with podcaster Martin Willis, on November 13, 2018.]

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Stanford on Goddard staff and UFOs Willis 11 13 18
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It seems ironic that Stanford preens so much regarding his current Goddard connections, given that Stanford published a book in 1976 that absolutely trashed senior Goddard personnel. Stanford claimed Goddard scientists and administrators suppressed evidence that metal scrapings from the 1964 Socorro UFO, recovered by Stanford and taken to Goddard for testing, were of non-earthly origin. (This claim was convincingly refuted by the highly regarded Richard Hall of NICAP, among others, as narrated in detail here.)

In the UFO Classified interview, Stanford and the host several times give the email address at which listeners can still order a copy of the book, Socorro 'Saucer' in a Pentagon Pantry ($68, postpaid and autographed). I have to wonder whether Stanford has given complimentary copies of the Goddard-bashing book to the Goddard administrators or scientists who he now cites as witnesses to his scientific credibility.

FINAL THOUGHTS (FOR NOW)

In this March 8, 2019 UFO Classified interview, we have yet another extended recitation of remarkable UFO-evidence claims, by a man who has spent over 60 years making remarkable UFO-evidence claims -- many of which been refuted or abandoned, and the rest of which are unsubstantiated (unless one considers repetitive statements by Stanford and his scribes to constitute substantiation, which I do not).

To repeat what I've said before: I do not exclude the possibility that somewhere in the six-decade cascade of dubious, unsubstantiated, and often absurd public UFO-related claims by Ray Stanford, there may be something of value -- by which I mean, something that can stand on its own, independently of any reliance on Stanford's objectivity (for it seems quite well documented that he is highly subjective, prone to fantasy and confabulation), or on his candor (of which I believe he has too often displayed a deficiency, most recently in the UFO Classified interview).

For any specific UFO evidence claim, Stanford ought to place the original evidence (film and camera, electronic recordings, whatever) in the hands of independent persons who are capable of conducting a competent analysis. Whatever conclusions may be drawn based on competent independent analysis of unaltered images or other tangible data -- analysis not reliant on any favorable presumptions regarding Stanford's objectivity or candor -- should be made public for commentary. If it should happen that a specific piece of evidence -- after having been subjected to such independent, competent, skeptical but honest analysis -- is fairly judged to be evidential on its own, then Stanford should get appropriate credit for whatever constructive role he played in obtaining that evidence.

As for the new Stanford claim heard on the UFO Classified interview, that "a major government operation" may embrace Stanford's UFO evidence claims: If something like that is in the works, it seems very likely that Stanford will redouble his efforts to rewrite his own history -- to minimize or deny some of his past activities, claims, and promises. It appears that he might believe that his success in finding dinosaur tracks will somehow paint over his decades of making wild UFO-related claims. Don't bet on it.

Anyone considering associating themselves with the Stanford UFO-evidence portfolio should be prepared to see the UFO-related claims scrutinized "in context." The context is the entire Stanford UFO history-- not only Stanford's version, but also the truth as revealed in the documented record.

*****

[On June 21, 2021, I updated my original Alien Expanse post of February 12, 2019, "Ray Stanford and His Super-Power-Inducing Time Machine (AKA the Hilaron Accelerator," with the following additional information. Anyone who has read the material presented above will find most (but not all) of the following post to be duplicative.]

Ray Stanford recently received a little new attention on The Daily Grail, a website that covers various off-beat topics. A June 10, 2021 review of a recent virtual conference sponsored by the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, contained a short section describing a conference-related incident in which Stanford was involved. The writer-reviewer, "Red Pill Junkie," described Stanford in this way:

Now, for people who are not familiar with Ray, he is a very controversial figure in the world of UFOlogy: a rare remnant of the golden years of the Contactees in the 1950s...and in 1971 he founded the Association for the Understanding of Man (AUM), which were involved in a lot of dubious endeavors (including trying to build a time machine!).

​Seeing that reference to the "time machine" reminded me of how, when Ray Stanford appeared on Erica Luke's podcast on March 8, 2019, he claimed he had never tried to raise money to build the time-machine device ("the Accelerator"), and claimed it was just a joke taken out of context. This was a flat-out lie, as I addressed in my critique of the interview in Ray Stanford Close Up No. 9.

On that occasion, I posted a four-minute audio clip from a talk promoting the "the Accelerator" project that Stanford delivered (awake, not while in one of his trances) at a conference of the Association for the Understanding of Man (A.U.M.) on August 24, 1974. The title was "Space, Time, Fields, the Accelerator, and A.U.M." In the four-minute excerpt, which I post again here, Stanford twice emphasized the importance of the "Accelerator" project and the need for donations to speed construction of the Accelerator. Stanford put great emphasis on the importance afforded to the Accelerator project by the "divine beings" (his term) for whom he was the trance-channel: "The Brothers [members of the White Brotherhood] have suggested to us that this Accelerator project is one of the most important projects upon which we could engage."

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Ray Stanford promotes Accelerator 8 24 74
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Elsewhere, Stanford which estimated construction of the "Accelerator" would cost from $1.25 to $3 million.

This 1974 talk was far from the only occasion on which Stanford spoke or wrote about the importance of constructing the Accelerator, or the need for donations to facilitate that project.

It was not until an A.U.M. newsletter dated April 2, 1976, that Stanford switched gears, informing the A.U.M. membership that the "Accelerator" had been moved to "a low priority simply because it is not practical to pursue it at this time. I realize I’ve made some over-optimistic statements in the past about how soon we could undertake this project, but the fact is that it may take several million dollars and a number of top-grade professionals to really get that project underway, and it doesn't appear likely that we'll have such resources available until the Association's work is far better known than it is now."

Some may also doubt that Stanford could possibly have intended anybody to believe that the "Accelerator" would allow literal, physical transport of a human body into the distant past. Perhaps, some may suggest, he was speaking of some sort of psychic "remote viewing," or such? No, my friends-- Stanford could not have been more explicit. I have uploaded here a second clip from the same presentation of August 24, 1974, this one about 5 minutes long, in which Stanford very explicitly describes how the device would allow physical transport into the distant past-- and also the considerable associated risk of becoming stranded in the past!

At the time he gave this talk, Ray Stanford was 36 years old.

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****

FULL RECORDINGS OF TWO LECTURES ON "THE ACCELERATOR," BOTH GIVEN BY RAY STANFORD DURING AUGUST, 1974

In 1974, the Association for the Understanding of Man had two membership conferences in Austin, Texas, both in August. At each conference, Ray Stanford gave a lecture to A.U.M. members and donors on "Space, Time, Consciousness, and the Accelerator." I was present for the second of these two lectures, and recorded it. I have digitized recordings of both of the lectures, in segments in order to simplify the digitization process.

The lecture presented at the A.U.M. conference in early August 1974 may be downloaded from these links: Part 1. Part 2.

The lecture presented on August 24, 1974, which I personally recorded, may be downloaded from these links: Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.