Yamski
Adamski’s death in 1965 hardly diminished his appeal and influence. Later that year, a Brit named Ernest Bryant identified himself as a contactee. That sort of thing was familiar enough in the UFO community, but what caught the attention of UFOlogists was Bryant’s insistence that the extraterrestrial he spoke with appeared to him on April 24, one day after Adamski’s death. Further, the alien looked like Adamski as a young man—and called himself Yamski. The alien carried artifacts similar to ones Adamski had once described. Bryant’s contention was that George Adamski’s spirit lived on, restored and reconstituted as an extraterrestrial.
Some sources claim that Bryant was able to produce a medal Adamski received from Pope John XIII during an audience in 1963. Yamski himself, Bryant said, handed him the medal. However, skeptics describe Adamski’s Vatican medal as a cheap plastic souvenir, available at the Vatican and in shops across Rome. In any event, hard evidence of Adamski’s special audience with the pope is elusive.
Today, the George Adamski story is persuasively disseminated on a Web site, adamskifoundation.com. The site is an evolution of The Adamski Foundation, which dates to 1965.
In a 2001 book, Looking for Orthon: The Story of George Adamski the First Flying Saucer Contactee and How He Changed the World, author Colin Bennett proposes that Adamski’s widely disseminated stories contributed significantly to counterculture thought. Although a pleasing tribute, the book overestimates Adamski’s cultural influence, and even his influence within the UFO community. (Friendly aliens are difficult to find these days.) Further, Bennett offers an unnecessary compliment when he calls Adamski “a phenomenon” rather than simply a man, and ventures into the absurd with a tossed-off description of Adamski as a “Hero”—capital “H,” as in hero figures of folklore and myth.
