THE GREAT ALIEN BAKE-OFF
PANCAKES FROM SPACE AND SASQUATCH CRACKERS
If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens. – Robert Browning
on 6 July 1990, Anna Dmitrievna Yerygina was herding goats down a lonesome road in Zvarykino, Belgorod, Russia, when a mysterious woman appeared out of thin air. Dressed in a light-grey loose-fitting outfit with a hood, she seemed ordinary, if a bit on the tall and lean side.
The woman approached Yerygina to greet her, then asked if goats’ milk was tasty. Yerygina said it was, but expressed her preference for that of cows. The woman listened, then without segue abruptly invited her on a brief excursion that would last no longer than three hours. Though initially concerned for her herd and family during any absence, Yerygina’s worries evaporated when the woman touched her shoulder and said: “Do not be afraid.” She felt a peculiar calm fall over her and was escorted toward a large oval craft in a nearby field. A man awaited them, ready to help the two ladies aboard.
Yerygina sat in the dimly lit interior and, the next thing she knew, she was in an entirely different room with several other individuals dressed in the same grey coveralls. In spite of the lack of windows or other clues, she had the intuition that she must be on another world, a sentiment expressed to her hosts. Asked how that felt, Yerygina replied that everything seemed wonderful there, a heaven in contrast to her joyless life on Earth. The entities seemed to radiate a sort of spiritual warmth and hospitality. One of them offered Yerygina some bread, which she described as very tasty, as well as a strange liquid. When she finished the meal her memory went blank – she recovered consciousness back in the field by her goats, the strange woman at her side. The woman said goodbye to her with a smile, promising they would meet again. Yerygina went on to have several more experiences, her curious encounters reported in both the Zarya (Belarus) and Leninskaya Smena (Belgorod Oblast) newspapers. 1
FAIRY LOAVES
Like other examples of food and drink exchanged between eyewitnesses and non-human entities – what I term ‘entity food’ – bread often precedes a trance or lapse in memory. Although occasionally encountered in contactee naratives, this is most commonly found in fairy folklore.
The children of Sandy MacDonald saw fairies in 1912 near Ardnamurchan, a remote peninsula in the Scottish Highlands. The two boys were playing by the water when two tiny figures in green miraculously appeared. The entities invited the boys to their nearby boat, where a tiny woman and her rat-sized dog could be seen in the cabin. The lads declined, and were instead treated to “a few loaves of faery bread, each about the size of a walnut” (it is interesting that the boys were by the sea, since fossilised sea urchins are sometimes referred to as “fairy loaves,” and roughly correspond to the size of the bread described). 2
After they ate, one of fairies said: “We are departing now... We will not be coming back here any more, but others of our race will be coming.” The boys were snapped out of their
one of the entities offered Yer Y gina some bread, which She described as very tasty
trance by their sister, who arrived shortly thereafter, and neither seemed further affected from eating the loaves. 3
The rare appearances of bread in Sasquatch abductions are presumably the result of theft; in a 1602 French case related by Norwegian cryptozoologist Erik Knatterud, one Anthoinette Culet claimed to have been abducted by an “ugly but amorous” hairy beast that “stole and brought her baskets of bread, fruit, cheese, linen and thread”. That same night the beast wandered into the village, where it was shot dead, the postmortem declaring it to be a bear, albeit one that “almost looked like a human” with “a navel like humans [sic]”. 4
Entity-offered bread is often described as delicious or sweet. Scottish lore held that any beautiful, healthy mother who allowed a fairy babe to suckle at her breast would receive delicious food tasting of “wheatenbread, mixed with wine and honey.” 5 In 1645, Anne Jeffries fell ill, afterwards possessing clairvoyance and the ability to visit the fairies; they would leave her food, which, when shared with her employer, was described as “the most delicious bread that ever I did eat, either before or since.” (See FT198:38-41) 6
Modern accounts explicitly mentioning bread are much harder to come by than those from fairy lore, though they are not unheard of. Lina Ivanova Kravets had a lengthy encounter with a trio of 11ft (3m) tall, three-eyed “extraterrestrials” in Shtanivka, Ukraine, in August 1953. They claimed to be on a mission to rescue a missing scout team. The host and her unlikely guests discussed several issues of great importance, including spirituality and life on the visitors’ planet. Before her encounter ended, Kravets was given a piece of “bread” the size of a small coin. Breaking it open she spied something dark and odourless inside, and decided to return the gift without partaking. The tiny size of the bread evokes the aforementioned 1912 MacDonald case.
On 31 December 1989, Moskovskaya Pravda ran an article describing the account of “Mrs L”, a 40-something mother of two living in Protvino, Russia. On 13 September of that year, Mrs L was returning home from the grocery store when two tall women in tight silvery suits jumped out from behind some boulders and paralysed her. The women, who had light blonde hair, grey-green skin, and hats with antennæ, took the witness to a small disc-shaped craft by the side of the road. They invited their captive for a ride, which they insisted would not last long; after some prodding, Mrs L hesitantly accepted. Inside were three chairs, one of which was occupied by a man with his back to her. Mrs L offered some of the bread she had just purchased, but the women declined, instead offering their guest a bit of “their” bread. Without thinking, she reflexively popped it into her mouth and swallowed; she later described the taste as that of a lightly sweet rye bread. The craft ascended, flying over Protvino before dropping Mrs L off at her apartment. The space people told her they would meet again, much to Mrs L’s chagrin. 8
JOE SIMONTON’S PANCAKES
Without a doubt the most famous entity food report of all time is the case of Joe Simonton, a chicken farmer from Eagle River, Wisconsin.
It was around 11am on 18 April 1961 when Simonton noticed a strange sound similar to radials on wet pavement coming from outside his farmhouse. Looking outside, he noticed a peculiar silver machine descending into his yard, around 30ft (9m) in diameter and “shaped like two inverted bowls.” Simonton stepped closer and a hatch opened on the craft, revealing three dark-skinned “Italians” inside. Each was about 5ft (1.5m) tall, dressed in dark outfits with knitted headgear.
One of the occupants held a shiny jug aloft, and the good-natured Simonton took the vessel inside to fill it with water. Upon returning to the craft he caught a glimpse of its interior, which to his eyes appeared made of wrought iron. Simonton’s attention was then drawn to one of the men who was “frying food on a flameless grill of some sort.” Noticing his curiosity, the man offered Simonton four flat, porous pancakes, each about 3in (8cm) in diameter. The entities sealed the craft and departed, the entire exchange lasting around five minutes. 9
Simonton’s credibility was viewed by the local community, and every investigator of the case, as beyond reproach, both for his reputation as an honest farmer and his lack of a motive in concocting such a ridiculous tale. This credibility was only strengthened by the pancakes, which were still in his possession. One was given to a local judge, one to J Allen Hynek (UFO investigator for the Air Force’s Project Blue Book), one to the National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena, and one Simonton kept for himself – he claimed they tasted like cardboard. 10
A thorough analysis was performed on one of the pancakes by the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and the food was found to be made of terrestrial, if tasteless, ingredients, including hydrogenated oil and buckwheat flour. There are conflicting reports as to the exact type of grain used, and rumours circulate about “unknown grains” in the pancake; in any event, the results of the analysis were underwhelming. The official United States Air Force explanation was that Simonton was honest but had mistakenly conflated the reality of his breakfast with his dreams.
JacquesVallée wrote about Simonton’s encounter at great length in his book Passport to Magonia, immediately seeing parallels between the experience and interactions with fairy folk. This is a worthy line of inquiry, and closer scrutiny yields more similarities and questions: for example, is there a link between between inedible fairy food devoid of glamour and the blandness of Simonton’s pancakes? Taking a slightly different approach, is there some connection between the missing flavour of the pancakes and the foyson extracted from food by fairies? (See panel opposite.)
In her Encyclopedia of Fairies in World Folklore and Mythology, Theresa Bane describes the oennerbanske, a race of dwarfs native to the Netherlands’ Friesland Islands prone to stealing young girls and children. The oennerbanske have a gentler side, however, as they are also known for helping in building construction and “assisting the farmers in the field by bringing them fresh water to drink and pancakes to eat.” 11
OTHER GRAINS
Other grains have been reported by entity food witnesses in addition to bread. Rice, a food staple for many cultures, appears in several reports, such as the tale of a boy who was spirited away on 30 September 1907, in Aichi prefecture, Japan. The child was setting out white rice cakes as religious offerings for an upcoming festival when he mysteriously disappeared for several hours. After some time his family heard a loud thump in their house and visited the
roof to investigate, only to find their son unconscious with white rice cake covering his mouth. When he came to, the boy claimed to have met a stranger who “walked over the tree tops” and took him into peoples’ homes, eating all the cakes that had been set out. The boy became a dullard afterward, a variation on the motif of eating in fairyland and returning irreparably changed. Another Japanese tale, this one from 1814, involved a boy taken to a strange land for several days and also fed cakes, but this time to no apparent ill effect. 12
In his out-of-print book UFO Contact from Undersea, the late Lt Col Wendelle Stevens interviewed one “David Delmundo” who was allegedly abducted off the coast of Puerto Rico in 1972. Delmundo (a pseudonym) had been taken by a short, grey-skinned being with wraparound eyes to a secret base beneath the seafloor where he was fed a “white, creamy substance similar to cornmeal”. He described the taste as neither sweet nor salty yet still “very good and satisfying,” leaving him with the sensation of being nourished. 13 This sense of satisfaction is a recurring theme in cases where witnesses consume grain products. Enrique Mercado Orué, author of 28 Horas a Bordo de un OVNI ( 28 Hours on Board a UFO), claimed that on 26 August 1976, in Mexico City he was taken aboard an ET craft by beautiful humanlike inhabitants. The entities, of varying size and clad in form-fitting metallic outfits, escorted Orué to a guest room where his hunger was sated with four “crackers” and a small glass of somethimg resembling wine. He was told that this meal would sustain him for four days. 14
DEATH AND REBIRTH
Bread has long been associated with fertility and rebirth. Wheat dies and is reborn time and again, and has been tied to themes of renewal since ancient Egypt. For millennia, bakers in countless cultures have fashioned bread in the shape of Moons, Suns, and genitalia, representing reproduction and rebirth. This duality is well represented in the Bible: the Old Testament associates bread with the fertility of the Earth, mentioning it more than 20 times, while the New Testament (over 30 references) embraces bread as a focal point of the Eucharist, offering eternal life. In short, bread symbolises the cyclical nature of existence in all its many forms. 15 Bread’s power also extended to protection against evil. In Holland, stale bread in a cradle wards off disease; in Morocco it cures stuttering; in Egypt, indigestion. Bread and salt have long been central to Eurasian hospitality rites. 16 As noted earlier, a bit of stale bread could safeguard against fairies and yet at the same time, along with milk, it was the most common offering made to appease the Good Folk.
Bread has also, at least tangentially, been used as a means of explaining perceived paranormal phenomena. Ergot, a type of fungus known to grow on rye and other grains, can produce convulsive symptoms if consumed; some have posited that cultures suffering an outbreak of ergotism could mistake the disease for bewitchment. A similar theory gaining traction among historians is that ergot-tainted bread may have caused the lycanthropic hallucinations that lead to the extensive werewolf trials of 16th and 17th century Europe.
It was perhaps a misnomer to cite the Joe Simonton case as the most famous entity food account. Without a doubt, more people are familiar with the manna that rained from Heaven to feed the Israelites, sustaining them as they traversed the desert en route to the Promised Land. Scholars have banged their collective heads against the wall for centuries seeking a scientific explanation for exactly what sustained the Jewish people those four decades, but to no avail. Theories range from airborne bits of lichen to quail dung (!) to tamarisk trees, the candidate currently with the most academic cachet.
Wheat Dies and is reborn, and has been tied to the mes of renewal since ancient egypt
When attacked by insects, the tamarisk tree actually weeps a sugary sap that hardens and falls to the ground in edible pieces. 17 Of course, none of these explain how a generation could subside on such an odd, meagre diet alone.
Researcher Peter Gilman suggested in 1967 that manna could have been “angel hair,” the cobweb-like (or gelatinous, depending on the account) material occasionally found after UFO sightings, particularly at landing sites. There are two primary problems with this theory, however: one, angel hair tends to evaporate quickly, and, as such, its make-up has never been studied for any nutritional value; and two, such a theory simply explains away one mystery with another. 18
Notions of bread as a gift from Heaven go much deeper than the Old Testament tale of manna. The serendipitous crossbreeding between different species of wheat some 10,000 years ago marked a major turning point for civilisation, allowing mankind to make the transition from a hunter-gatherer existence to an agrarian society, where large settlements were able to grow and flourish. In the apocryphal Book of Enoch, this development is attributed to the Nephilim, who taught mankind how to cultivate plants, a role similar to that played by the Kachinas in Hopi legends and the god Quetzalcoatl in Mesoamerican myth.
Just how lucky was this convenient hybridisation? “Since the emergence of bread wheat about 10,000 years ago, the unlikely yet successful crossing of two distinct species of wheat grains has never happened again,” writes Rita Louise. “Scientists continue to claim that nature was able to produce a series of fortunate genetic anomalies that ultimately transformed humanity, yet are still unable to explain how they occurred”. 19 It is well known that 1989-1991 saw a surge in UFO and entity reports from the former USSR, although it is unclear whether this represents an actual ramping-up of such events or if censorship was simply more lenient in the dying days of the Soviet Union. Regardless, consider the fact that a substantial number of modern entity food cases explicitly featuring bread – be it given to or taken from witnesses – are from Slavic countries, with a major window of incidents in this 1989-1991 timeframe. This fact is perhaps ironic when one considers that the region, in particular Ukraine, has long been regarded as the “bread basket of Europe.”
Bread’s association with rebirth may offer some insight into its appearance during this period. Ancient Slavs engaged in a ritual they called “baking the child,” where a young boy or girl was placed inside a warm stove in a symbolic parallel to the transformative baking process. Tamra Andrews writes in Nectar & Ambrosia: An Encyclopedia of Food in World Mythology that baking the child was “a healing ritual; the child metaphorically returned to the mother’s womb to be born again healthy, transformed, and reformed by the heating fire. The Slavs performed this ritual to heal through fire, to change the unacceptable to the acceptable, just as the baking process turned raw food into cooked.”
20 A hideous literal version of this ritual appears in folktales of the witch Baba Yaga and in the tale of Hansel and Gretel.
Could the cluster of reports featuring bread in the collapsing Soviet Union somehow be an expression of the mother country’s transition and rebirth back into Russia? If we entertain the suggestion that a witness’s psychology may have some bearing upon the experience – a notion supported by reports of telepathy with humanoids and UFOs responding to thought – that may well be the case.