From Here to Obscurity
Howard Menger, a thirty-four-year-old Lebanon, New Jersey, farmer who claimed to have met a female angel as she emerged from a spaceship in 1941, was in the news again during the 1956 Christmas season. On December 29, Menger invited four people to meet a spacewoman—not at a spaceship or other high-tech hideaway, but at a local paint store! The quartet obediently followed Menger to the rendezvous, where they quickly identified the space lady as Connie Weber (later Mrs. Menger), a comely blonde who lived in town, Menger’s ghostwritten 1959 book From Outer Space to You gives a Christian- oriented account of his various telepathic and in-person encounters with aliens.
The highlight of those is contact number two, which occurred on Okinawa during World War II, after Menger (who had blithely swiped a jeep and gone AWOL) heroically took out three Japanese soldiers without firing a shot. Shaken (and after going AWOL again), he was consoled the following night by a male alien, who offered, “It’s too bad about last night.” Menger used his book to answer dozens of frequently asked questions that encompassed propulsion drive to alien breastfeeding. He devoted space to a discourse on disease pathology, and many pages to animal husbandry and soil care. In the book’s most exciting section, Menger revealed that he was a reincarnated Saturnian.
From Outer Space to You caused a mild stir, and Menger gave interviews to New York radio host “Long” John Nebel, TV personalities Jack Paar and Dave Garroway, and others that anticipated controversy and some fun. Menger made a few dollars by selling UFO illustrations that he passed off as photos. He had his moment in the sun, but after releasing a record album called Music from Another Planet, Menger grew disillusioned with his alien friends—or perhaps other people just grew disillusioned with him. A failed attempt to market a palm-sized “free energy motor” Menger assembled with alien guidance discouraged him.
According to a How Stuff Works Web piece credited to “the Editors of Publications International, Ltd.,” Menger eventually recanted his saucer tales, “vaguely muttering about a CIA experiment.” He passed away in Florida in 2009.