People who did crazy things because aliens told them to

People who did crazy things because aliens told them to

Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager was asked about UFOs recently, and he publicly announced that if she is elected, she will work to unseal and release to the public as many documents as she can about our country’s extraterrestrial interactions. That’s a pretty ballsy move for a Presidential candidate, but in a year that’s seen a new season of The X-Files, it might be politically savvy as well.

People have been claiming contact with outer space for nearly a century, and those alien messages have contained some curious requests. In this feature, we’ll introduce you to eleven people who took action on messages from beyond the stars. Some created amazing artwork, while others ended up on the wrong side of the law. We’re sure it’s all part of the plan, though.

Build a pyramid

One of the most iconic scenes in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind is when Richard Dreyfuss builds a replica of Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. Constructing edifices to bring us closer to our alien friends is a time-tested UFO trope, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that in the heart of the Mexican desert there’s a real example. In 1984, farmer Raymundo Corona was visited by an extraterrestrial who commanded him to build a 22 foot tall Aztec-style pyramid. The visitor was a “tall man with honey coloured eyes and white hair down to the ground,” so this could have certainly been a wandering hippie, but Corona did as he was told and his structure stands outside the town of Monclova.

Rob your mom

Not all extraterrestrial directives are good ideas. Case in point: John Michael Kirby, who got a message from outer space telling him to break into his mother’s house and steal food to give to the homeless. This wasn’t out of character for Kirby, who had just weeks previously smashed a window at his uncle’s house and swiped food and toiletries. After he made the incursion into his mom’s, police got fingerprints and brought Kirby in. He confessed readily to his crimes but insisted that he was under orders from space aliens. A judge sentenced him to a year in prison, where hopefully he’ll be protected from any more orders from UFOs.

Break into an amusement park

Amusement parks at night, when they’re all abandoned and spooky, are certifiably cool. But why would aliens tell North Carolina woman Francis Greene to leave her 8 month old baby in the car so she could break into Carowinds, a family fun spot on the outskirts of Charlotte? In January of 2015, security at Carowinds discovered a tiny child locked in a truck in the parking lot’s drop-off area, crying its eyes out. They called police, and 20 minutes later Greene and her boyfriend came back to pick up the kid. When interrogated, Greene claimed that “the voices that she thought were God, were actually extra-terrestrials, and that they wanted her to leave her body behind and come with them.” And that was going to happen, uh, on the roller coaster?

Murder two people

If creatures from outer space were transmitting messages into your brain, how would you know? It’s not like that happens every day. In 1993, Robert Joe Moody murdered his 56-year-old neighbor Patricia Magda and a woman named Paige Malone. Even though he had smoked a copious amount of crack cocaine before the crime, Moody refused to blame the drugs for his actions. Instead, he claimed that “extrasensory biological entities” from another dimension had taken over his body and compelled him to do the crimes. The trial was a slam dunk for the prosecution, and Moody actually requested the death sentence. He believed that after his body died the extraterrestrials would resurrect him to prove to humanity that they were real. Needless to say, that didn’t happen.

Build a dome

There are a number of structures on this planet that people think aliens had a hand in. The great pyramids of Egypt are dogged by nasty rumors that they couldn’t have been built by humans alone. A little closer to home, a strange domelike structure in the middle of the Mojave Desert called the Integratron was allegedly made with instructions from beyond. Designer George van Tassel believed that entities from Venus contacted him in 1953 and mentally transmitted the knowledge necessary to build the structure, which could work as a time machine, fountain of youth and anti-gravity device. None of those things has happened so far, but van Tassel died in 1978 before it was finished. There was talk of turning it into a disco, but a pair of sisters bought it and use it for “sound therapy.”

Shoot a pastor

One of the most common science fiction plotlines is that the alien invasion isn’t coming – it’s already here. Creatures from outer space live among us, wearing human disguises and carrying out sinister plans. That’s what former US Marine Kyle Odom alleged in his 21 page manifesto that he mailed to a number of TV stations and newspapers. Odom’s screed alerted the world that Martians had infiltrated all levels of our society in human form, and a few days after it was sent he went to the Altar Church and shot its pastor, Tim Remington, 12 times. In a Facebook post, Odom admitted to it and said “there is no way any human could have survived that event.” But, Remington survived.

Neglect kids

We’re trying very hard to not make any mental health judgements against the people on this list, but 66 year old Edelina Shaw is making it very difficult. The former psychiatric nurse was living in a Leytonstone hovel with her wheelchair-bound husband and a severely neglected young boy of uncertain relation. Shaw claims that she was contacted by aliens in 1975 and given a set of orders to carry out on this planet. Some of them seemed reasonable — write a letter to Prime Minister David Cameron, for example — but why would aliens want a little kid to live in a filthy, vermin-infested house and lose all of his teeth because they never brushed them? Aliens are weird, man. Who can tell what they’re thinking?

Make weird paintings

Most alleged alien abductions don’t last terribly long — do extraterrestrials not dig our body odor or something? British artist Lloyd Canning has been visited by space aliens a flabbergasting six times, and ever since 2005 they’ve been piping ideas into his skull using telepathy. Those ideas come out in his seriously intense paintings, which are made with seemingly endless layers of acrylic to produce detailed, unsettling images. At first he wasn’t comfortable sharing them with the world, but now he makes a good living attending UFO conventions and selling his work.

Crash a car

Space aliens seem to really enjoy contacting people when they’re driving, despite the danger. So when Australian man Damian Amos received a mental transmission from extraterrestrials ordering him to crash his car into a hatchback at 86 miles an hour. According to Amos, a “head alien” beamed a signal into his brain telling him to turn around and get home as fast as possible and don’t let anything get in his way. Unfortunately, the car of 58-year-old Keith Evenis was in his way, and Amos rammed it so hard it flew forward and into a tree, exploding and killing Evenis. Police didn’t buy the outer space explanation, possibly because Amos was drunk at the time.

Build an embassy

One of the most notorious extraterrestrial cults is the Raelians, who have been bragging about contact from the stars since the mid-1970s. Founder Claude Vorilhon claims that a UFO came out of a volcano and told him to inform humanity of their true origins, which are too complicated and weird to get into here. The end goal of the Raelian movement is to build an embassy for these etraterrestrials on Earth, and they’ve spent several decades trying to find the right place for it. Most recently, they’ve set their sights on Moscow, because apparently Rael is a big fan of Vladimir Putin. The group is currently recruiting hard in Russia in hopes that they’ll be able to amass enough power to get it constructed.

Cover a house in tinfoil

The last person on this list wasn’t directly instructed by aliens to do what he did. Instead, Pennsylvania man Arthur Brown wrapped his entire house in tinfoil to keep those space creeps away. The 78-year-old Brown’s battle with creatures from beyond the solar system started over 20 years ago, when he was first allegedly contacted. Desperate to keep them away, Brown wrapped his house in heavy-duty aluminum foil and installed a network of searchlights on his porch and in his yard. Things got worse when he decided his nearest neighbors, Nancy and George Raich, were actually aliens and he needed to keep his lights trained on their house to expose them.