UFOland, Valcourt, Quebec
Meeting the Raelians (Beam me Outta Here!!!)
Quebec’s Raelians believe that their prophet—the French sports reporter and race car driver Claude Vorilhon who now calls himself Rael—is Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed all wrapped into one. I had to go to Valcourt, Quebec to see the UFO-Land theme park for myself. And to peek inside the famous alien ship.
UFOland headquarters - eventually put up for sale, after the Raelians never landed
Too kookie to resist, I had to see UFOland for myself
"The World's First Theme Park Devoted To UFO's." What a grand idea, a theme park for aliens. And what a preposterous location—Valcourt, Quebec.
I'd been intrigued by UFOland after seeing the website advertised on a car. After hiking down Mont Saint Hillaire one afternoon, I could hardly believe my eyes. There in the parking lot of this Quebec park, fixed atop a white Ford sedan—right where you'd expect to see a plastic St. Hubert's fried chicken—was a hoaky plastic flying saucer announcing www.UFOland.com. Quebec could be adorably corny and weird, with swear words inspired by saints' names, and a giddy-up Western rodeo in a town called Saint Tite. I decided to pay a virtual visit to the dot.com to see what the hype was about.
The web site said that UFOland was built from 5, 825 bales of hay and featured the world's tallest replica of DNA, and promised: "for the first time on this planet, the public will be able to visit the interior of a UFO." It grandly compared UFOland to Disneyland, and ambitiously announced that after UFOland, Quebec, there would be a UFOland in Orlando, and another in Japan—all devoted to UFO's, space exploration, genetic engineering, and The Future.
UFOland was run by Raelians, not aliens, members of the godless Raelian Religion who believed that—Yee-gads!—we, and all life forms on Planet Earth, are products of Cloners from Outer Space, who, at any moment before the year 2025 will land at the Raelian Alien Embassy, whose design was inspired by a crop circle Rael saw in a vision.
Hmmmm. Bales of hay. Crop circles. After seeing the campy sci-fi spoof Killer Clowns from Outer Space—(Trans World Entertainment, 1987)—where aliens disguised as giant clowns land in a UFO disguised as a huge circus tent, then attack humans with popcorn guns and killer pies or zap them into giant pink cotton-candy pods, and—ick—suck out their vital fluids with straws—I wondered what the Raelians might land in—flying barns?
Home of Bombardier snowmobiles
A wall mural in Quebec’s Eastern Townships depicts an early Bombardier snowmobile. Could the Raelians fly it to the moon?
Valcourt, in Quebec's mountainous rural Eastern Townships bordering Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, wasn't exactly on the beaten tourist path, unless you arrived by snowmobile or flying saucer. Its delapidated farms and Appalachian villages were a far cry from chic micro-brewery towns like North Hatley and picturesque Wine Route villages like Dunham. But Valcourt was the home of the Ski-Doo inventor Joseph-Armand Bombardier and the museum devoted to the history of the snowmobile. And closeby was another astonishly place: one of the earth's seven mother lodes of high-quality quartz crystal, mined by Cristal Kébec.
“RAELIAN MANIFESTO
We recognize all the other prophets throughout history. What Raelians want is to have is a world agreement that the gods of the past gave messages to certain prophets that were appropriate to the time. And the Elohim said they would bring back Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Joseph Smith and all the other prophets they sent to earth. All these prophets are really the same prophet, because after their bodies died, the Elohim transferred the dead prophet’s memory and personality to the brain of the newly cloned bodies.”
Should Bombardier make special skiidoos to go with the flying saucers? Bombardier should help build the landing pad and Raelian embassy for the celestial entities arriving soon here in Valcourt, Quebec. The aliens would probably enjoy driving the snowmobiles. It would be a novelty form of transport allowing them to experience primitive ways of living. Having to drive somewhere, and use gasoline. And make noise.
Off to see the Alien Embassy
I wanted to see this alien embassy made of hay. And most of all, I wanted to find out why the Elohim had chosen Quebec. It seemed that ever since the Catholic Church had lost its power in this renegade province, there wasn’t much left to believe in except Quebec Independence—and cults, like the Solar Temple, Scientology... and Raelians.
The following week I decided to drive the 60 miles from Montreal to Valcourt, Quebec see the UFO. A hand-painted sign off Quebec rural route 243 lead me down a dirt road to a big barn and a rambling white building, where I was greeted by a sexy French woman in tight leather pants. I told her I’d come to see the “alien embassy, ” the one I’d seen on the web site.
“Malheuresement,” she cooed, the one I’d seen online was only a miniature model. The one where the aliens will land has not been built yet, since cash has to be to be raised to buy land in Israel, The Chosen Place. (Never mind that Middle East air space isn’t exactly the friendliest air space on earth). It was simply too cold for the Elohim to land in Quebec, regardless of how much fun they might have driving snowmobiles.
And the 5,825 bales of hay? They were embedded in poured concrete in the 400-foot long, four-storey high adobe-type building which housed the UFO paraphernalia gift shop, photos of the Miss UFOland competiton, and the seven thematic halls with exhibits on Cloning, Genetics, Crop circles, Nanotechnology, UFO sightings around the world, and other fascinating stuff, which I enjoyed oogling very much.
Message from outer space
The day I arrived, it was dead quiet. No throngs of visitors. I was greeted by the enthusiastic energetic director who introduced himself as Michel Beluat, the Director of UFOland. He guided me past the simple cardboard exhibits to what was supposedly his “inner sanctum.” Here I turned on my tape recorder and he gave me his astonishing "Message from Outer Space."
"You see, Nancy, there is no God,” explained Beluat. “Human beings and all forms of life on Earth, were CLONED by scientists 25,000 years more advanced than us who came here from Outer Space. These were the ‘Elohim’ of the Bible, translated from the Hebrew as those who came from the sky. They had the secret of eternal life—DNA and genetic combination, and WE ARE THEIR SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT. Jesus was not resurrected from his tomb at Golgotha—he was cloned by these extraterrestrial geneticists! And now that we earthlings have matured enough to accept and understand our true origins, our true parents are getting ready to return."
“And when the Elohim return, “ Beluat continued, “they’ll bring back Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Mohammed, Joseph Smith, and all the other prophets they’ve sent to us over time. They are all still alive, because when they died, their minds and personalities were transferred to their fresh clones.”
You mean their souls were re-incarnated?
“There is no such thing as a soul, Nancy. The belief in a soul reflects a lack of the scientific understanding. Your brain is a biological hard disk that can be erased and loaded with new data. Look at the word re-incarnation: it is the scientific transfer of the soul—the DNA—from one body to another. Life is pure energy. There's no actual spirit coming into the body, no. The soul is the DNA. DNA—not soul—is what animates life.”
So when people have a near-death experience does their DNA leave and come back?
“No, it’s their oxygen that leaves the body, explained Beluat, continuing his scientific reasoning for everything. “A near-death experience can be provoked in laboratory. It is the deprivation of the brain of oxygen. Astronauts have near-death experiences every time they train in that device that reproduces the atmosphere of 7 or 8 G's. This is just physical, chemical.
“Depending on whether you're a Christian, Mormon, Buddhist, you see that being when you have this near-death experience. The fact that people claim to experience a tunnel is due to the oxygen deprivation. They're not dead, their brain is just functioning at a lower level. Nancy. It’s only the DNA that animates.”
I see.
No photos inside the UFO!!!
Painted glass window inside Raelian headquarters
"Please, no photos inside the UFO," Beluat said as I reached for my camera.
"Ah come on, just one shot of you on this Throne from Outer Space?" I chortled, referring to the clear plastic inflatable armchairs we were sitting in—the only objects inside this UFO. "There's nothing in here to photograph, “ I said. “No simulated flight controls, signs, cryptograms, windows—nothing but blank white walls."
Suddenly I realized that the NO PHOTOS policy inside the UFO made perfect marketing sense: If anyone saw what wasn't inside this simulated saucer, they wouldn't be lured by the UFOland brochure headline: "Montez a Bord d'un OVNI!' - Climb Aboard a UFO!"—and to pay $10.00CN for a 90-minute guided visit through a building made of 5,825 bales of hay.
The Sci-Fi Messiah’s UFO
This flying saucer, hyped as "the most fascinating part of UFOland," was supposedly a full-sized replica of the one that supposedly abducted the French sports reporter and race car driver Claude Vorilhon, (now the Sci-Fi Messiah called “Rael”) to the planet of the Elohim on December 13, 1973. But this saucer looked more like the ones in the old Ed Wood cult movie Plan Nine From Outer Space, which were really aluminum pie tins dangling from strings. Still, I had no regrets about being lured to Raelian Headquarters and "The World's First Theme Park Devoted To UFO's." What a grand idea, a theme park for aliens.
Racecar driver turned prophet
Who is Rael? The Raelian propaganda goes that on Christmas Day, 1945, Rael’s mother was abducted and inseminated by the Elohim and gave birth to Rael. Now, in between race-car driving and press conferences to spread the Raelian movement (see www.rael.org) and soliciting funds for a cloning revolution, Rael handles his company CLONAID (www.clonaid.com) offering customers the opportunity to be cloned for a piddling $200,000 Canadian (not US) dollars.
And now there’s CLONAPET, “cloning the pets of rich individuals who wish to bring back to life their lost pet—especially champion race horses.” And for $50,000, INSURACLONE provides the safe sampling and storage of cells from a living child to create its clone if the child should die.
I can't afford to be cloned, nor would I wish to be, especially after hearing that Dolly the sheep, cloned from a six-year old Scottish sheep, was born with telomeres (those cufflike bands at the end of chromosomes) which are six years older than her cloned body. Which could mean that a clone made from a cell of a 35-year old adult human would be “born” pre-aged by 35 years!
Much as I snicker at the name CLONAID and the name of Rael’s business partner/ scientist who wants to be first scientist to clone a human—Dr. Richard SEED— it appears that over $15 million “human cloning cash” has been raised to buy land on Hokkaido in Northern Japan, where human cloning operations for infertile couples will soon begin.
Of all the fantastic statements I heard on my tour of UFOland, and in my interview with Michel Beluat, the most shocking was Beluac explaining that when cloning really gets going, only those who are worthy will be cloned.
“And who will decide who ‘s worthy to be cloned?” I asked.
“Our most brilliant scientists, and artists—they will be cloned.”
“But who will decide? “ I prodded.
“Those who have made valuable contributions to the world, but not just the rich—a poor person could be worthy...”
What was inside “Hangar 7”
“But who will decide...?”
