The Plantation – AN UNFINISHED STORY

Alien Base: The Evidence for Extraterrestrial Colonization of Earth – AN UNFINISHED STORY

Ludwig Pallmann’s book, Cancer Planet Mission, was published in London in 1970. There must have been some promotion, because I recall that a friend heard an interview with him on BBC Radio, and there was an article about him in the Guardian. The book fell into obscurity, and is known only to a few UFO researchers. A planned second volume, describing some of his experiences in more detail, was not published.

Some time afterwards, I visited the publisher in London, with the aim of tracking down Pallmann. The place was deserted and I was unable to obtain a forwarding address. Later, I learned that the company had gone into liquidation.

Veteran researcher Wendelle Stevens, a former US Air Force pilot, was likewise unable to track down Pallmann, though he did come across corroboration for some of the claims. In 1967, Stevens was delivering several Beechcraft T-34 trainer planes to the Peruvian Navy, making fuel stops at the last Colombian town, the river port of Leticia, on the Amazon. On impulse, he hired some native boatmen to take him for a trip up the river to view rare orchids in the jungle. Remarking on the lush, dense vegetation along the bank, he asked the Indians why the natives made no plantations of some of the more rare exotic tropical fruits that grew there in abundance. ‘I was certain there must be a market for them,’ said Stevens. ‘It would only require a little organization.’ The natives replied that this might be too large a project for them. Then one of them remarked that he knew of some ‘Americans’, three or four days up-river, who were doing just that. What was more, the native added, he knew of a white man, a German, who had gone up there to look for them some months previously, but who had not returned.

Although the Indians had never seen these Americans, they had heard about them from the wilder tribes farther upstream. The native added that the Americans had aircraft at their encampment.

Further enquiries in Lima led Stevens to a somewhat inaccurate newspaper report about one ‘Ludwig F. Pallimann’ (sic), a German salesman who sold food- processing equipment and health foods to a chain of stores in Lima. This man, reported the newspaper, had gone up-river from Iquitos in the Peruvian/Brazilian border area looking for a giant arrowroot plant for possible hybridizing, seeking a greater yield by improving the strain. (This much is true: Pallmann was doing research for the Agricultural University of Lima at the time, to find an inexpensive high-protein food.) The Indians taking Pallmann up-river asked him why he did not go further upstream, about another three days’ journey, where a party of ‘Americans’ were doing the same thing.

Intrigued, Pallmann took up the suggestion, but found that the Indians would only take him another day up-river, where they would leave him with another tribe for the remainder of the trip.

On arrival in the vicinity of the ‘American’ encampment, the newspaper report continues, the Indians superstitiously refused to take Pallmann any further, but put him ashore and pointed him in the right direction. Pallmann walked to the camp, consisting of plastic-like tents The ‘Americans’ were fair-skinned, dressed in toga-like garments and spoke in a strange language. Pallmann greeted them first in English, then Spanish and German, to no avail. Getting a limited response in French, he was welcomed and provided with a place to stay.

According to the Lima report, Pallmann learned that his hosts, who said they came from another planet outside our solar system, named ‘Itipura’, were hybridizing plants and other stock to be taken back there. These extraterrestrials were served by three streamlined disc-shaped flying machines. After a while, the report continues, Pallmann became concerned that his business associates would worry about his whereabouts. The ‘Itipurans’ offered to deliver him to his destination in one of their flying machines. Because of his long absence, he asked his hosts to take him to his ranch in the Dominican Republic instead of to Lima, and was transported there in 15 minutes.

Stevens believes that Pallmann was covering his tracks in his interview with the Lima reporter. He had associated the location with the Peruvian town of Iquitos because you could never get to the plantation site from Iquitos by river, and the jungle

there was all but impassable. He had omitted all of the earlier contacts with the Itibians as well as what was going on in Lima and elsewhere, probably to head off possible interference for them as the operation was still going on . .

Pallmann was not returned from the plantation to the Dominican Republic when he left . . . and he did not make his first contact with the extraterrestrials by river from Iquitos. 38
‘I searched for Ludwig Pallmann all over South America in 1968 and 1969, and again in 1971 and 1972,’ wrote Stevens in his introduction to a reprinted edition of Pallmann’s book, which he published in 1986. ‘He was moving around Peru in 1968 and then disappeared. I also looked for him in West Germany in 1977 and 1978 but failed to find any productive lead.’

Though German by birth, Pallmann is believed to be a British citizen, having fled to England as a young man to escape the Gestapo during the Second World War. My enquiries at the Passport Records Office in London drew a blank: there is no record of a British passport having been issued to a Ludwig F. Pallmann.

The search for him continues.

Pallmann was the first to admit that his story is unbelievable. ‘As I read what I had written,’ he commented ruefully, ‘I came to the conclusion that all this would be in vain, because who would want to believe such a story? It’s a concatenation of unlikely circumstances for which I can offer very little explanation.

‘I have only tried to tell what happened, and even if it should be considered a waste of time, I felt it necessary to do so, because of the religious theme involved. It is stupid of me perhaps to expect that others should feel about this what Ifelt. Men will continue to be born into their present-day beliefs . . .

‘Cancer Planet Mission may seem [to be] the product of my fantasy, which Itry to pass on as a true story. However, much of what I relate can be checked. Many things may not correspond to the exact date and time as it happened, simply because Idid not date my diary from day to day, and because Iwas overwhelmed by what happened to me. I, myself, did not believe this possible for a long time.

Just to have known Satu Ra and his sister made me realize that none of us at the present time has the slightest notion of peace, real peace, so great was their relaxed and modest humanism, so great their contentment with “Time”,’ wrote Pallmann, followinghisinitialmeetingsinIndia. ‘They just seemed to live every hour, every minute, without being “Time-conscious”. . .