On November 11, 1953, a small plane was preparing to take off at Garden Grove Airport, near Los Angeles. The rented electrician Karl Hunrath did not fill out the flight plan. He said he was going to be in the air for no more than an hour. Sitting next to Karl in the cockpit was Wilbur Wilkinson, 38, department manager at the Hoffman Radio plant.
Last flight
The plane took to the skies and headed towards Arizona. An hour has passed. The dispatcher tried to contact the pilot, but received no response.
The fuel in the tanks was supposed to last three hours. When the time was up, the dispatcher raised the alarm. Despite extensive searches, no traces of the plane or people were found. Rescuers could not even roughly outline a square for a more thorough search to go there with dogs and metal detectors.
Wilkinson's wife told reporters that UFO studies have been the main passion of her husband and Karl Hunrath for some time now. It turns out that the buddies designed devices for communication with aliens. Wilbur's room was filled with electronic equipment, all the walls were covered with clippings from newspapers and magazines on the subject of UFOs and painted with some formulas. There were strange icons among them. Mrs Wilkinson said they were symbols of an interplanetary language.
- Karl Hunrath persuaded her husband to move to California, said that he could show a real plate, - she said. - I know that Karl had tape recordings of conversations with aliens.
Police found that Hunrat had called several acquaintances in Los Angeles the day before the flight. He hinted to them that he was going on a long journey.
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“People leave Earth to fly to other planets,” he said. “Don't worry if I leave soon too.
Ufologist Manon Darlene, with whom Karl was well acquainted, he told that communication with the UFO crews worked smoothly. The aliens promised to land at a predetermined location and take them to their planet. The earth is doomed to perish. You can only be saved in space. Karl invited Manon to go with them. Darlene politely declined the offer.
Mysterious device
FBI officers arrived with the police at the airport. Hunrat was already mentioned in their file after the scandal with contactee George Adamski.
George said that UFOs often fly over his house. He felt when the next plate would appear, and had time to photograph it. Upon learning of this, Karl collected all kinds of equipment and arrived at Adamski's Palomar Garden estate with two friends - Gerald Baker and George Williamson. Adamski warmly received the amateur ufologists and gave them a room to experiment. All three began to wait for a new UFO visit.
Soon Karl and two of his friends began to realize that the matter was not clean. The final epiphany came when Gerald Baker discovered a secret door in a barn next to the house. Behind the door was an entire studio with mock-ups for creating fake UFO images. The ufologists immediately left the house of the false ufologist, saying many unpleasant words to the owner at parting.
Adamsky immediately reported the entire trio to the FBI. He stated that Karl Hunrath had developed a terrible device to shoot down saucers, and allegedly added that he would turn it on when he saw a UFO, even if earthly planes were in the radius of destruction. He accused Williamson of having conferred an academic degree on himself without graduating from any educational institution. The latter, by the way, turned out to be true. However, having heard from Adamski that Karl Hunrath became possessed due to occult experiences and let a demon into the soul, the agents laughed and did nothing. They didn't even check if such a device really existed.
Alien contact
After parting with Adamski, Baker and Hunrath left for Los Angeles and rented an apartment there. Williamson returned to his pregnant wife in Arizona.
Soon, what all three had been waiting for happened. But it was Williamson who was lucky. He first came into contact with aliens.
The main device for communication was … the Ouija board. Under the hands of ufologists, she came to life, transmitting messages from aliens with strange names. Williamson fell into a trance, making long speeches on their behalf. Then messages began to arrive on the radio in the form of Morse code. A number of texts, adopted by George by means of automatic writing, were written "in the universal language of symbols Solex-Mal, common for the inhabitants of the planets of the solar system."
Karl wrote about the success to amateur ufologist Wilbur Wilkinson, offering to come with his wife and children to Los Angeles to work together. The future passenger of the missing plane accepted the offer without hesitation and joined the group's activities. Wilbur did not visit George, preferring to study the findings with the instruments in his room. The hieroglyphs on its walls, which we have already mentioned, were the symbols of Solex-Mal.
After the disappearance of Karl and Wilbur, FBI agents found out that this language is unlikely to have an alien origin. It was composed of a mixture of Indian languages, Latin and Sumerian. The name itself is a distorted Latin sol ex mal, that is, "the sun is harmful." The unknown forces that lured the gullible contactees did not hide much, but the prey had already taken the bait firmly.
Manon Darlene said that four amateur ufologists were so carried away by the idea of contact that they even took on "alien" names. The creatures speaking from the other side gave Hunrat the name Firkon, Baker became Markon, Wilkinson received the name Ramu. Williamson got the strangest, quite earthly name - Mark III.
Wilbur himself began to go into a trance, transmitting messages from the aliens to the others. He and Hunrat began to see symbols of the Solex-Mal language appearing before their eyes. Ufologists drew the signs they saw on paper and glued them to the first wall they saw, trying to figure out their meaning. Wilkinson believed that the symbols were conveyed by the inhabitants of the planet Masar, known to us as Mars. The most absurd revelations did not bother him.
However, soon Gerald Baker had to return to his hometown - his mother fell ill. After the disappearance of the plane, the police found a letter addressed to him from friends with a proposal to jointly meet with aliens and fly to another planet. The message was not sent. Apparently, ufologists realized that Baker would not be able to return by the appointed date, and offered to take his place by Manon Darlene.
From memories
Why didn't George Williamson become the second passenger? Perhaps he did not dare to leave his wife in an interesting position or began to guess that the messages did not come from good aliens from Mars.
Several years later, George tried to bring Hunrat to clean water, stating that he could be an alien agent or simply possessed.
“I knew Karl Hunrath, but I never met Wilkineon,” he wrote in Other Languages, Other Flesh. - He visited many ufologists and stayed with me in Prescott for a whole week. Then he received copies of our contacts.
Karl was a strange man, instantly changing his train of thought, putting forward opposite ideas in meaning. Sometimes I wished there were millions of miles between us. Everyone who interacted with him experienced the same. Was he under the control of the Orion forces? He visited ufologists as a friend, and then began to spread baseless rumors about them and their works. Wherever he appeared, discord soon arose. Was he part of the plan of the negative forces?"
After the disappearance of Hunrath and Wilkinson, George continued to receive messages from unknown forces. In 1954, "from there" it was reported that the end of the world would soon come. The news spread widely, but nothing happened to the world.
Five years later, George officially changed his name to Michel D'Obrenovic. The former name was too tainted by scandals. He spent the rest of his days trying to attract as little attention to himself as possible. The last participant in the fatal events died in 1986, leaving a huge library of books on UFOs.
Who he was, nobody knows
“Hunrath was said to be in England and would soon announce that he was recently seen in Los Angeles with dyed hair,” wrote George. - He was called an alien from space, possessed by evil spirits, an angel, an FBI agent or a Russian spy. Who he really was, no one knows …
I don't believe the aliens were involved in the disappearance of Karl and Wilbur. They are certainly not on Mars or any other celestial body. They are on Earth, alive or dead."
The pilots believe that the plane crashed in the mountains of California. Hunrat had too little flying experience. The downdrafts and the deceiving outlines of mountain ranges could have ruined a small plane. However, its fragments were not found even in the summer of 1954, when the snow melted. Many people think that ufologists fled to Mexico, but they would not have enough fuel for the flight.
Creatures capable of putting a person into a trance and showing him strange symbols could cause the pilot to direct the plane into a lake or a narrow crevice where he would never be found. I would like to believe that they died happy, having seen the image of kind aliens inspired by them on a flying saucer.
Mikhail GERSHTEIN