The Ray Stanford UFO-Alien Legacy
By Douglas Dean Johnson
@ddeanjohnson on X/Twitter. My gmail address is my full name.
Originally published on April 8, 2024. This is not an article, but rather, a portal or "hub page" for all of my investigative reports about the claims and stories of Ray Stanford pertaining to UFOs, aliens, channeling of messages from purported extraterrestrials and other entities, and related matters. This page may be updated from time to time as I make additional material available. Questions or comments may be directed to me by email; my gmail address is my full name.
NOTE: If you are reading the email version of this post, to be able to access or download any of the embedded audio files, PDF files, or the like, you will need to visit the web-based version (click "View in browser" under the top headline).
Ray Stanford– born June 21, 1938– has been making bold personal-experience claims pertaining to UFOs and aliens longer than any person now alive.
It is a long and dubious legacy.
Personally, I think that some UFOs are of non-prosaic character, and that in some cases, likely either aliens are involved or something else just as weird. I also think that fabulists such as Ray Stanford have done much to retard our collective understanding of those UFOs that are genuinely anomalous.
In 2011, Ray Stanford wrote of himself, "Frankly, at age 73... as the most seasoned researcher into these phenomena alive today..." referring to UFO phenomena. Over a period approaching seven decades, Stanford, now age 85, has made innumerable specific public claims to having personally obtained many astonishing photographic proofs (and physical artifacts) of alien technology. For a period of more than twenty years, he was also widely known as a recipient of and direct trance-channel for communications from certain extraterrestrial intelligences (among other exotic entities).
Stanford was only 19 in 1958 when he co-published a book relating his purported personal encounters with Space Brothers (Look Up). From about 1960-1980 he was widely known as a trance-psychic, purporting to channel a diverse array of highly evolved beings, including extraterrestrials such as Aramda of the Watchers, Sirelius ("from Sirius"), and the Archangel Gabriel (who revealed that he traveled at times in a "star craft").
Stanford gave up the trance-channeling decades ago. But as I write this in April 2024, Stanford continues to claim that he has personally obtained numerous unique photographic evidences related to alien visitors, including "thousands" of frames of film and still photography, many containing graphic evidence of unearthly technologies in action, as Stanford interprets them.
It is my judgment, based both on my experiences during four years of close association with Ray Stanford long ago (1974-1978), and on extensive subsequent observation and research, that none of Stanford's remarkable claims relating to personally obtained evidence of UFOs and/or aliens should be trusted.
None of Stanford's more provocative claims have been substantiated by competent analysts who are truly independent of Stanford. More than a few of the "interesting" claims have been convincingly discredited by critics, myself included, as the products of subjectivity, delusion, and in some cases outright fiction-writing. Stanford himself has abandoned or repudiated some of his own past claims about aliens contacts and extraordinary devices. In some instances, Stanford has vehemently denied past activities and claims of which I have abundant documentation. For example, he has denied that he ever claimed to be channeling extraterrestrials, and he has denied ever trying to raise money to build a time machine– and yet these denials are clearly refuted by his own explicit writings, interviews, and audio-recorded speeches and "psychic readings" of decades ago.
Despite Stanford's objectively abysmal track record with respect to claims related to UFOs, aliens, and exotic technology, occasionally one or another of his dubious claims is seized upon by some incautious author, scientist, or journalist. For example, Kevin Knuth, a professor of physics at the State University of New York at Albany, in presentations before the American Academy of Aeronautics and Astronautics in August 2021 and a Sol Foundation symposium in November 2023, presented unsubstantiated photographic images produced by Ray Stanford as possible evidences of exotic non-human technology in action (i.e., use of a plasma-beam to break a path through the atmosphere, and concentric rings around a UFO produced by an ultra-strong magnetic field, respectively). Author Christian Lambright in 2011 devoted part of a self-published book to amplifying Stanford's claims about the unsubstantiated plasma-beam image.
Over the past five years (beginning in 2019), I have written a number of articles examining elements of Ray Stanford's history relating to his UFO-alien-evidence claims and related matters. Each of the articles is heavily laden with embedded or linked historical documents, audio recordings, and images that constitute primary sources to back up my accounts and assessments. The purpose of this "Ray Stanford hub page" is to make this material more easily accessible through a single nexus. I may post additional pertinent articles and/or links to primary documents here in the future.
I welcome comments on, challenges to, or questions about any of this material, or any of the underlying source material. The documents and audio recordings embedded in the articles linked below, or at the bottom of this page, are just a small part of a much larger collection. Researchers who are seeking information on some specific Ray Stanford story or incident involving UFOs, aliens, psychic channeling, teleportation, etc., are welcome to contact me to see what I might have. My gmail address is my full name: Douglas Dean Johnson.
Wild & Woolly Alien Claims Lifetime Achievement Award Goes to Ray Stanford
Partly because Ray Stanford has repeatedly "reinvented" key elements of his own past, in August, 2021, I wrote the original version of this article for the forum AlienExpanse-dot-com, to give something of an overview of Ray Stanford's various "careers" relating to UFOs, aliens, the "channeling" of purported elevated beings including extraterrestrials, and so forth. In May, 2023, I updated the article slightly and republished it here on Mirador. In a sense this article barely scratches the surface regarding seven decades of extraordinary claims and remarkable antics by Ray Stanford, but I hope it provides an engaging and accurate overview, while at the same time providing pointers to many primary sources for anyone who wants to explore one or another aspect in more depth. Click here to read the entire article.
Ray Stanford and His Super-Power-Inducing Time Machine Project (The Hilaron Accelerator)
Ray Stanford has made many extraordinary claims during his 85 years, including claims and activities that he later vigorously denied ever having been associated with– the time machine project, for example.
Yet, in provable truth, over a period of about 15 years, intermittently Ray Stanford vigorously promoted the creation of a device called the Hilaron Accelerator. The plans for this device had been provided in discourses from members of the "White Brotherhood" for whom Stanford ostensibly served as a channel while in an "unconscious state." (In this context, "White Brotherhood" had no racial connotation, referring instead to a purported league of elevated spiritual beings in various realms, a staple of various imaginative metaphysical worldviews.)
In a 1974 lecture, Stanford described the planned Accelerator as "a device that in many respects is similar to a UFO." It was to be a 25-foot "great big polished copper medicine capsule," the walls of which would be charged with 1 to 3 million volts, in order to create an "electro-static field." Through use of the Accelerator, Stanford said, "a hyper-person, a super-person if you prefer, might be created."
Indeed, if the right kind of person sat or laid inside the chamber while it was charged up, that person's psychic powers would get a huge boost, permitting super-clairvoyance, teleportation, and even the ability to physically travel transport into the distant past, Stanford said. Stanford warned that there would be risk involved in such an exercise– the risk of becoming physically stranded in the past.
Not long after I initially wrote about this in 2019, Ray Stanford was asked about it on a UFO-themed podcast; his response was a denial that he had ever sought to raise money to build a time machine. This article, titled "Ray Stanford and His Super-Power-Inducing Time Machine," published May 7, 2023, documents the Accelerator affair in great detail. The material leaves absolutely no room for doubt that Stanford presented literal, physical time travel as a possible application of the proposed device, and no doubt that he had personally solicited funds for the project. I have even linked .mp3 audio files of two entire lectures that Ray Stanford gave, promoting the "Accelerator" project.
(I am grateful to the AlienExpanse-dot-com forum for hosting the earlier components of this article that I wrote in February-March 2019 and June 2021.)
Stanford did not set aside the "Accelerator" project until he was 37 years old– and then, only on a provisional basis, explaining that the anticipated costs currently were beyond the organization's resources.
Click here to access the true and amply documented story of Ray Stanford's never-fulfilled scheme to create a "hyper-person" with the power to travel back in time– included embedded .mp3 recordings of two complete lectures that Stanford gave about "the Accelerator" in 1974.
"Plasma Beam"– or Fever Dream? Key Questions for PhDs, Journalists, and Regular Folks About Ray Stanford's "Beam Ship UFO" Movie of October 5, 1985, and Other Stanford Tales
On October 5, 1985, Ray Stanford took a Super 8 color movie of something(s) in the afternoon sky over Corpus Christi, Texas. In Stanford's accounts, eight non-human craft moved in progression across the sky, several of them providing singular and awe-inspiring displays of astonishing unknown technologies.
On-the-record corroboration or independent documentation for such an event is lacking, and the film itself has never been subject to any independent forensic examination. Nevertheless, a number of far-reaching claims have been widely disseminated on the basis of dubious interpretations of a few specific frames. For example, physicist Kevin Knuth, Ph.D., during a presentation at a forum on UAP sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) on August 6, 2021, presented an unsubstantiated Ray Stanford image from the film as possible evidence of a craft projecting an energy beam to break a path through the atmosphere. On April 29, 2022, I published a lengthy article closely examining Stanford's claims about the October 5, 1985 event and about the film, and raising numerous questions about those claims– none of which have yet been answered.
In addition, in Section 6 of the article, I provided detailed documentation regarding another "UFO" event that demonstrated Ray Stanford's proclivity for delusion and/or fabrication regarding UFO-related events. As as a young staff person for Project Starlight International, I was personally present for this second event, which occurred on the night of December 10, 1975. In recent years Stanford has related, and presented on PowerPoint slides, an exciting account of what happened that night, including Stanford striking a hovering UFO with a laser beam (and obtaining a photograph of this historic event), after first obtaining permission by telephone from a nearby Air Force base– a very colorful tale, but a story that contrasts markedly with both the actual event and with descriptions of the event that Stanford recorded or approved not long afterwards. Click here to access the in-depth article here on Mirador.
Project Starlight International (P.S.I.), Fact and Fiction
Ray Stanford sometimes claims to have been a pioneer in "instrumented UFO research." This claim is based mainly on his role in Project Starlight International (P.S.I.), which was based in Austin, Texas, during the 1970s. P.S.I. was an activity funded by a small non-profit organization called the Association for the Understanding of Man (A.U.M.), an organization that was centered on Stanford and his "psychic readings"--discourses dictated by Stanford while ostensibly in a state of super-clairvoyance, from which he could also serve as a channel for direct speeches by members of the White Brotherhood (this being, in occult lore, a league of highly advanced spiritual adepts). From late summer 1974 until March, 1978, I, as a young fool, was personally directly involved with A.U.M./P.S.I. in Austin. From December, 1974, until March, 1978, I was a full-time, paid staff member of the tandem organizations.
Although both A.U.M. and P.S.I. had folded by around 1982, in the ensuing decades Stanford has often made claims about the scope and accomplishments of Project Starlight International– claims that often ranged from gross exaggerations into what I regard as outright fictions. On December 17, 2021, I published an article in which I sought to set the record straight regarding P.S.I. The article included observations based on my personal experience with P.S.I., but the centerpiece was a new and hard-hitting 11-page open letter written by Daniel H. Harris, Ph.D. (astronomy, University of Arizona), who was employed as P.S.I.'s full-time Research Director from September 1, 1977 through the end of 1978. Dr. Harris's tenure largely coincided with P.S.I.'s period of peak exposure in the UFO research community and in the national news media. Click here to view both my article and Dr. Harris's eye-popping open letter.
Gravity waves and Faraday rings– or imaginary things? The Ray Stanford movie of December 4, 1980
In public presentations, physics professors Auguste Meessen (in 2012) and Kevin Knuth (most recently in 2023) displayed a distinctive image as photographic evidence of a "Faraday effect" caused by a powerful magnetic field surrounding a UFO. The image is derived from a Super 8 movie shot by Ray Stanford through an airliner window on December 4, 1980. In an article published here on Mirador on April 4, 2023, I reported on my in-depth investigation into the image's history, and evaluate the far-reaching claims that Stanford and others have made based on images derived from that movie.
Ray Stanford's Carnival of Incredible and Unsubstantiated UFO Claims (the "Ray Stanford Close Up" series by "Justice Fodor," 2019-2021)
Between February 8, 2019, and November 14, 2020, under the pen name "Justice Fodor," I wrote a series of eleven "Ray Stanford Close Up" posts on the forum AlienExpanse-dot-com, focusing on some of Stanford's specific UFO-related claims. I abandoned the pen name in August 2021, when I concluded that it was no longer required to protect the innocent; I fully embrace everything that I published under the pen name. All of these can be accessed through a single index page at the link found at the headline above and the link below. Some but not all of the claims or incidents examined in these old posts are also discussed in the more recent articles linked above.
Here are a few of the specific Ray Stanford claims that I examined in the "Ray Stanford Close Up" posts:
● Scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center in 1964 confirmed that metal recovered by Stanford at the site of the Lonnie Zamora UFO encounter in Socorro, New Mexico, was of extraterrestrial origin– but then they stole the metal from Stanford. Ray Stanford had information on a similar egg-craft captured by the Air Force just six days later, and was willing to testify to Congress about it.
● Also in 1964, at Socorro, Stanford took "a wonderful photograph in which...people will be able to see, in broad daylight...the Socorro object [an egg-shaped UFO], with its landing gear deployed."
● U.S. Air Force officers in Austin in 1973 promised to scramble fighter planes against UFOs anytime Stanford phoned with such a request.
● Ray Stanford in 1984 took a photo of a 3-foot alien with big ears sitting in a domed craft, so clear that "you can count the fingers on his hand!"
● Ray Stanford possesses manufactured material ("the Space Material") that was debris from a gigantic alien space city that exploded.
● Ray Stanford was guided in his UFO-related activities, including Project Starlight, by an extraterrestrial named "Aramda," with whom he had been associated for 38,000 years, and whose wisdom he "channeled" for members of the Association for the Understanding of Man during the 1970s.
● Ray Stanford took a photo that proved that an alien craft had traveled "either two-thirds or three-quarters of the speed of light in the atmosphere" while the shutter was open.
And much, much more.
A table of contents with links to the eleven individual "Ray Stanford Close Up" posts is here.
Note: When I abandoned the pen name "Justice Fodor" on August 1, 2021, in a post on AlienExpanse-dot-com titled, "I Am Justice Fodor," I explained why I had employed a pen name in the first place, and why it was no longer necessary; it can be viewed here.
A FEW SAMPLE DOCUMENTS FROM MY RAY STANFORD ARCHIVES
The documents and audio recordings embedded in the articles linked above, and the few samples embedded below, are just a small part of a much larger collection. Researchers who are seeking information on some specific Ray Stanford story or incident involving UFOs, aliens, psychic channeling, teleportation, etc., are welcome to contact me to see what I might have. My gmail address is my full name: Douglas Dean Johnson.
PSYCHIC MAGAZINE INTERVIEW (March-April, 1974); TELEPORTATIONS, PSYCHIC CHANNELING AND VISITATIONS, ETC.
In a wide-ranging nine-page interview and profile that appeared in Psychic magazine for March-April 1974, Ray Stanford told various stories and made various claims, among these: having been present for the materialization in a brightly lighted room of a 7-foot-tall helmeted "Brother"; Stanford's knowledge of the extraterrestrial "Watchers" with whom he'd had contacts; Stanford's receipt of guidance from "the Brothers" for construction of "a complicated research device...which might be able to enhance psychic and healing abilities considerably" [referring to the "Hilaron Accelerator"]; his claim to "have been teleported three times"; his certain knowledge of the location of the lost tomb of ancient Egyptian sage Imhotep; his plans for Project Starlight International; his predictions of "great economic chaos," and other matters.
RAY STANFORD COULD "REMEMBER VERY WELL" SEEING A "GIGANTIC" ALIEN SPACECRAFT LAND – 38,000 YEARS AGO
A number of the "Brothers" channeled by Ray Stanford were presented as extraterrestrials, including Aramda, a member of a wise race known as "The Watchers" (not to be confused with garden-variety exploring aliens). In 1973, Aramda (speaking, you understand, through the borrowed vocal cords of the "unconscious" Ray Stanford) said, "Today I am counted among those who been been called The Watchers. For the past several thousand years we have observed...the world." Ray Stanford and Aramda went way back. Not just back to 1957, but 38,000 years back! In a lecture (not a trance reading) to an A.U.M. conference on August 22, 1974, which I attended, Stanford (age 36) described an event he said had occurred during one of his previous incarnations, 38,000 in the past: "[O]ne night 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, and it was an expedition from outside the Earth"– and Aramda was there! [Telos was an outpost of the mythical ancient civilization called Lemuria.] Hear more about it in this excerpt from Stanford's lecture (my audio recording of the full lecture is also available). [Note: in 2003, Ray Stanford called respected UFO researcher Richard Hall a "desperate fool" for referring to Stanford's history as a psychic channel. Stanford insisted, "I never believed space beings were speaking through me." If Stanford never believed it, then he was blatantly lying to the members/donors of the Association for the Understanding of Man during the 1970s; for more details and pertinent audio recordings, see the "Wild & Wooly" article, especially the subsection headed "So– Why Not Look to Ray Stanford for Trustworthy Info on UFO and Alien Stuff?" See also End Note No. 1 in that article, which contains images of the entire 2003 AOL listserv exchange between Richard Hall and Ray Stanford.]
1978: RAY STANFORD CHANNELS A LONG SPEECH BY "JESHUA" (AKA "THE LORD," JESUS CHRIST)
During his 20-year career as a psychic trance "channel," Ray Stanford occasionally ostensibly channeled Jesus Christ (AKA, "Jeshua," "the Lord"). Most of those manifestations were not published, but on September 29, 1978, the Association for the Understanding of Man did publish one such discourse in a newsletter (No. 18) signed by Ray Stanford, in which the discourse took up eight single-spaced typewritten pages. Check it out – it's a doozy. Ray Stanford was age 40 at the time.
I have included all 16 pages of the newsletter to provide further context. Pages 4-5 reported that Project Starlight International had obtained "instrumented recordings of UFOs so scientifically interesting that, if thoroughly analyzed and properly utilized, could prove significantly definitive concerning the nature of UFOs and their activities in the atmosphere." A.U.M. members/donors were asked to be patient until this definitive evidence could be prepared for publication in "standard scientific journals" (remember, this was 45 years ago). Pages 15-16 listed issues of the A.U.M. Journal that were still available for purchase, and the topics covered in each of those issues. The greater portion of the A.U.M. Journal generally was devoted to transcripts of "psychic readings" and discourses from "the Brothers," delivered by/through the "unconscious" Ray Stanford.
ALIEN PILOT: RAY STANFORD CLAIMS HE TOOK A PHOTOGRAPH OF AN ALIEN PILOT SITTING IN A DOMED CRAFT, "SO CLEAR YOU CAN COUNT THE FINGERS ON HIS HAND"
Ray Stanford has made repeated public claims to have personally taken a 35mm photograph on October 15, 1984 that shows a 3-foot, pointy-eared alien pilot, sitting in his domed alien craft, so clear "you can count the fingers on his hand." This claim was publicly recorded at least as early as 2009, and was reiterated by Stanford at least as recently as in this excerpt from the podcast UFO Classified, broadcast on March 8, 2019. Stanford also claims that the same 35mm image contains graphic proof that the craft had traveled at "either two-thirds or three-quarters of the speed of light in the atmosphere" as it moved closer to him (don't ask me to explain that).
IN 2012, RAY STANFORD FINALLY SNARED A TRUE "UFO" (UNIQUE FOOTPRINTED OBJECT) [1]
Ray Stanford, in addition to his oft-demonstrated aptitudes for dreaming up (whether in trance or awake) grandiose tall tales in which he is the star, and for imagining that he sees fantastic displays of alien technology in clumps of silver grain in gross enlargements of old emulsion films, also possesses some more positive talents– among these, a demonstrated ability to find the preserved tracks of dinosaurs and other extinct animals. In Maryland, Stanford has discovered fossils or imprints of many species hitherto unknown to have inhabited the area.
Stanford's greatest footprint find occurred in 2012, when he discovered on the grounds of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, "a slab of sandstone [that] contains at least 70 mammal and dinosaur tracks from more than 100 million years ago..." This 8.5 by 3-foot, four-ton slab has been referred to by experts as "the Rosetta Stone of the Cretaceous" and as "the mother lode of Cretaceous mammal tracks." You can read more about Stanford's Goddard footprint discovery in this article, and many other places. (The article quotes Stanford as saying of the slab, "It's a time machine"– an unfortunate choice of words, perhaps, but still...) A replica of the slab is on display at Goddard’s Earth Sciences Center.
In 2012, Ray Stanford was responsible for the capture of a true UFO (a Unique Footprinted Object)– a slab of sandstone 8.5 by 3 feet, weighing four tons, containing preserved footprints of 70 or more species of dinosaurs and early mammals. NASA/Goddard photo.
END NOTES
[1] The term "Unique Footprinted Object" is my little joke. Stanford's discovery is real.
SUBSTANTIVE REVISIONS TO THIS ARTICLE SINCE ITS INITIAL PUBLICATION ON APRIL 8, 2024
(1) April 9, 2024: In the section headed "A Few Sample Documents from My Ray Stanford Archives," I added a paragraph about Ray Stanford's 2003 statement, ""I never believed space beings were speaking through me," and a link to an article showing that this statement contradicted things Stanford said and did in the 1970s.