The Walt Disney company has embarked upon a multi-pronged media blitz designed to promote its new “Alien Encounters and Extraterrestrial Experiences” attraction scheduled to open this summer at the new "Tomorrowland” exhibit at Walt Disney World in Orlando. According to Phil Klass in his Skeptics UFO Newsletter, (March 1995) Disney Chairman, Michael Eisner, visited the exhibit and found it disappointing and ordered it closed down for drastic changes. Disney decided, however, to go ahead with its planned “UFO Summit” to give news media and invited guests the opportunity to meet with leading UFO "experts” such as Budd Hopkins, Kevin Randle, and a number of abductees.

Disney has also devoted the majority of the May issue of its children’s magazine Disney Adventures to UFOs, including such articles as “Aliens in Hollywood,” “I Met an Alien-and Lived!,” “D.A,'s Handbook for UFO Hunting,” “Alien Alert (We Believe),” and “Skeptics United (We Don't).”

To further promote its attraction, Disney produced and broadcast in March a syndicated one-hour feature titled “Alien Encounters.” The Wall Street Journal (3/6/95) reported, “On hand to introduce the show is Michael Eisner, chairman of Disney, bringing word that at a top-secret military location in the United States, the government is hiding the remains of a mysterious spacecraft and that there is ‘more and more scientific evidence of alien encounters.'” The show goes on to describe government conspiracies, alien abductions, the taking of genetic material, and impending invasion.

Does this sound like somewhere you'd like to take your kids?

The Disney program did not escape the attention of Seth Shostak, a scientist with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Dr. Shostak sent the following letter to Disney and a copy of it to CSICOP.

20 April, 1995

Dear Mr. Kurtz:

The Disney corporation, in an effort to flog their newest Tomorrowland attraction “Alien Encounters,” recently produced and broadcast a particularly disturbing television show aimed at kids that promoted the view that extraterrestrials had landed and were probably up to no good. Unlike most TV fare having similar themes, this was presented as a “straight” documentary. Many viewers, I’m sure, took this to be an investigative piece, and there has been a fair amount of negative reaction on the Internet from folks in education and research.

People here at the Institute were sufficiently disappointed to prompt the enclosed letter. If you haven't seen the television special, I could arrange to make a VHS copy for you.

19 April, 1995

Mr. Michael D. Eisner, Chairman
Disney Co.
500 S. Buena Vista Street

Burbank, CA 91521

Dear Mr. Eisner:

It was with feelings of disappointment and consternation that I viewed the recent Disney television program “Alien Encounters,” produced by Andy Thomas. This program includes a long, documentary-style report on the alleged indisputable reality of UFOs, the cover-up of their existence by the government, and the prediction that we will soon be confronting aliens face to face. For good measure, the additional claim is made that microbes on Earth are the aliens’ “point men,” an infestation that precedes invasion. None of this was qualified in any way. It was presented as fact.

Unfortunately, it is all disingenuous nonsense. Despite nearly a half- century of modern UFO reports, not a single convincing bit of physical evidence attests to their existence. The many hundreds of orbiting satellites that continuously photograph the Earth’s surface and atmosphere have never seen a UFO.

Whether or not Mr. Thomas personally believes in alien visitors, this show is an unfortunate exploitation of the natural credulity of young people. I am sure you are aware of the many test results showing that America’s youth are dangerously unskilled in science. Newspapers regularly print editorials stressing the crying need for students who can think critically. In light of these national concerns, it is disheartening to find that the Disney organization apparently wishes to perpetuate the problem, rather than contribute to the solution.

I would not offer similar objections to Disneyland’s “Haunted House,” although one might argue that ghosts fall into the same category as UFOs. After all, despite popular belief in ghosts, there is no scientific evidence for their existence either. However, the subjects differ in two regards. First, I know of no television special posing as serious documentary that has told young people that ghosts really do exist (but are being kept from us by a paranoid government). Second, the “Haunted House” is not in Tomorrowland.

This latter point is important. I first went to Disneyland in 1959, and still vividly remember the attractions that presaged future scientific and engineering developments. My later studies in physics and astronomy were inspired by the “Trip to the Moon.” The Monsanto ride through “inner space” is still a subject of praise among science educators. But “Alien Encounters"-at least to judge by the television special-is devoid of science. It seems fitter fare for Fantasyland.

This need not have been the case. Our institute, as well as organizations such as the Planetary Society, the University of California, and Ohio State University, are engaged in a serious effort using radio telescopes to find evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations. Numerous researchers, many of them within NASA, are busy trying to uncover planets around other stars. The question of whether life once existed on Mars is being actively investigated.

Not all of these research projects will bear fruit immediately. But some will. At that point “Alien Encounters” will be in striking discordance with scientific evidence. This is reminiscent of Chester Gould’s elaborate descriptions of Moon Maid and other characters in his comic strip, “Dick Tracy.” Although he never pretended to portray reality, Mr. Gould’s lunar characters were suddenly and completely upstaged when Neil Armstrong stepped onto a sterile moon in 1969.

Why Disney has chosen to ignore the real story of life in space is puzzling. In 1992, Dr. John Billingham, who then headed up the NASA project to search for extraterrestrial intelligence, was approached by Hank Robitaille about the possibility of incorporating some ideas from the NASA effort into an exhibit at Epcot Center. Nothing seems to have come of this contact. Has a decision been made to offer the sizzle instead of the steak?

I had hoped that a company that has been so closely identified with responsible-even educational-products such as the award-winning Living Desert, might wish to offer kids something better. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is accessible science, not the arcane research of theoretical physics or abstruse mathematics. The ideas and the consequences can be appreciated by school children and the lay public. Our institute has developed very successful curriculum materials that capitalize on children’s natural curiosity about E.T. to introduce them to basic concepts in astronomy, biology, and geology. It is no great surprise to find that kids are interested in science when it is presented as exciting discovery.

In closing, let me emphasize that my concern is not with the imaginative aspects of “Alien Encounters.” After all, even Albert Einstein noted that in research, imagination is more important than knowledge. But imagination alone should not be sold as science, especially when the science is every bit as interesting as the fantasy. Slimy critters intent on human abduction are no more than ciphers for the real civilizations that might be scattered among the half-trillion stars of our galaxy. You should at least temper your skewed presentation of contact with cosmic inhabitants by mentioning the scientific attempts to answer one of the most enduring questions ever posed by human-kind: Are we alone in the universe? Kids love fantasy, but in matters of discovery nothing rivals the power of fact.

Dr. Seth Shostak
SETI Institute

I come to you, Dorothy Lea...

I find myself drawn into your life, today, June 29, 1994. I am going to use my power to put you in a world I believe you have never known. A world of big money. Exciting people. Happiness. Well-being.

So begins an 8-page letter addressed to Mrs. Dorothy Lea of Kelowna, British Columbia.

Is it possible for me to do all this?

Yes, Dorothy Lea.

I’m not called “The Amazing Kreskin” for nothing.

Add one more name to the legion of bulk-mail psychics, astrologers, and human potential, self-improvement, motivational gurus popping up in mailboxes throughout the land.

Need a psychic/astrologer? Well, there’s Contessa Di Maria from Torino, Italy, who has been “blessed by God with clairvoyant abilities.” The Contessa says she has helped many people win enormous amounts of money playing lotteries and sweepstakes. She must be good because writing to a man in Sturgis, South Dakota, she claims to know the winning lottery numbers. “Remember,” she writes, “I’m not talking about the daily 3-digit or 4-digit number, but the weekly 6-digit lottery.” Apparently, psychics in Italy are well versed in the South Dakota state lottery.

Need guidance but think Italy is too far to go? How about Katherine, with a P.O. Box in Brooklyn, New York. Katherine tells the addressee:

Do not ask me who I am or how I know. Nor do I want to embarrass you by going into details. Suffice it to say that I can sympathize with what you are going through and believe I possess the knowledge you need to help you out of your present difficulty.

What difficulties does Katherine know about? Well, there are dangerous alliances and entanglements in the future, a staggering debt to repay, a downturn in physical health, bad news from a distant source, and doubts concerning performance in an area where once there was pride and confidence.

Katherine wants to reach out and offer her hand in friendship and guidance. She knows what’s coming: World War! Epidemics! Mass Hysteria and Confusion! All you need to do is reach out and send her $20.00. She will guide you through the stormy and frightening times ahead. You are on the brink of greatness, so hurry. She is anxiously awaiting your reply so that you can rejoice together.

Then there’s the world’s #1 astrologer June Penn, who wrote to my mother to tell her that she traveled halfway around the world, from Sussex, England, to Park Ridge, N.J., because something wonderful is happening in my mother’s life right now. How do we know that June Penn is #1? Well, she said so. June Penn said she knew that my mother needed a lot of money and was about to enter her “Time of Power.” With information like that, Penn just had to write.

Penn guaranteed that my mother could expect $1 million to come into her life during this Time of Power. For only $20.00 Penn will devise an action plan that is guaranteed to bring my mother the CHANCE to enjoy $1 million. Mom saved the $20.00 and sent Penn’s letter on to me, I assumed Mom’s personal Time of Power wouldn’t be the same as mine, so the letter went into my bulk-mail- psychic file.

In a postcard that is likely to get June Penn’s dander up, Norvell, the “world’s #1 astrologer” and “advisor to U.S. Presidents and Hollywood stars” will compute your lottery winning numbers for only $7.00. Within 90 days, you will win at least $10,000, or double your money back!

In a curious bit of shared office space, Lynne Palmer, astrologer and numerologist to the stars, who will for $20.00 make you rich and happy, shares the same address as the Lottery Research Center, who for $15.00 will send you the Winners System. This system will enable you, as a group participant: (1) to enjoy a 75 percent chance of hitting a major $200,000 to $40-million-plus lottery pot, (2) to win the lottery again and again. Someone should tell Lynne Palmer she needs to drop her price if she’s going to continue to pay her half of the rent.

My file is a lot thicker, but the time is right to return to Kreskin.

Kreskin writes Mrs. Lea that he got to be famous “for how I’m able to come into people’s lives ... and move them out of a rut, shake them out of a stagnant existence, through a living performance. I can get into a person’s mind and awaken their sleeping phenomenological power. I’m talking about a strange wonder-power that defies rational explanation. A power that’s been called a fourth-dimensional force....”

Kreskin informs Mrs. Lea that he can show a person how they can, among other things, have “the power to enable a certain kind of special person to Ôpull’ money, success, love, happiness ... even good health into their lives.” This is, Kreskin points out, the best way he can help out Mrs. Lea.

Kreskin goes on to say: “So, now it is my turn to ask you to show your good faith: I need to know that you are serious about wishing to change your life and that you will take directions from me.” All of the wonderful Kreskin services are available for a modest $20.00, with money back-guarantee.

Did I mention that Kreskin’s “fourth-dimensional force” failed to pick up on the fact that Mrs. Lea has been dead for more than two years?

In his promotional material Kreskin includes a quote from Phyllis Diller that reads: “Kreskin is a male witch and should be burned at the stake.” I don’t totally agree with this statement: I don’t think Kreskin is a witch!