‘Aliens in My Bedroom’ : Tiny Newsletter Spreads Word of Close Encounters With UFOs

Crude sketches of flying saucers lay scattered across the dining-room table. Various alien vessels were depicted: Venusian, Pleiadean and those of the Dahl Universe. There were typewritten pages as well, firsthand accounts of extraterrestrial encounters.

Charles Forsher sat at one end of the table discussing Jesus Christ and spaceships. He spoke of television and telepathy. Finally, he gestured to a woman sitting quietly opposite him.

This woman, he said, can communicate with civilizations on other planets. She is, he said, “blessed by the divine.”

“Yes, I came from another planet,” said the woman, Penny Harper, discussing previous incarnations. “I remember coming to this planet 2,500 years ago. Around the time of Buddha.”

Harper and Forsher had been eager to tell their story on a recent afternoon at Forsher’s Westside home. The two met at a UFO lecture in 1987 and quickly joined forces to spread the word about distant universes. Working out of a Studio City office, they produce New Age Dawning, a monthly newsletter of other-wordly essays. Forsher draws the illustrations, and Harper takes care of the words.

Circulation of 500

A year and a half after its first issue, New Age Dawning circulates to 500 people a month. Only 33 of those readers pay the $12 yearly subscription fee; Harper gives the rest away at local UFO meetings.

Yet, the tiny publication has earned some notice. In the “Best of L.A. ‘88” issue, the L.A. Weekly cited New Age Dawning as the “Best Printed Anti-Matter.” Meanwhile, editors at a nationwide UFO magazine are upset by the kinds of articles Harper publishes.

“If someone tells me they were on a spaceship, I say, ‘Wonderful. Write it up,’ ” Harper said. “If someone tells me they’re an extraterrestrial, I say, ‘Write it up.’ There’s a trust between me and my writers.”

In the December, 1987, issue, a woman named Karen Lustrup wrote: “After I had gone to bed on the 2nd of October, 1984, I had three extraterrestrials in my bedroom. . . . They were tall, human-like, around 6 feet tall and dressed in silverish tight suits.” One of them “straightened up, and took farewell with the words ‘I am TZADOR.’ ”

In the July issue, Pat Weissleader offered tips on dealing with undercover government agents who try to wrest information from people in the know about UFOs. The article-- entitled “Paranoid About the Men in Black?”--suggested that one should tell agents “things that will make them dismiss you as crazy.”

“Tell them the aliens peek into your bedroom at night to see you naked. Or tell them that you had the alien to dinner and the spoons have never been the same,” Weissleader wrote. “If your phone acts funny, sing the Oscar Meyer wiener song or breathe heavily; if someone’s there, they’ll know that you know.”

More recently, Harper has written a series of essays proposing that evil aliens are secretly drugging the Earth’s food supplies as a way to gain control of the planet.

“It’s not real journalism,” said Vicki Cooper, co-editor of UFO Magazine, a slick-covered publication with a circulation of 10,000. “Penny’s trying to open up a forum for UFO interests, but I think that sort of thing doesn’t do much for the credibility of the UFO field. What should be done is the accruing of testimony and evidence that can be corroborated.”

Harper, 44, with long blonde hair, casually dismissed such criticism as a lack of universal enlightenment.

“Hey, let people laugh,” she said. “I feel very much like Galileo and Columbus. They probably faced a lot of public skepticism, but they believed in themselves and they were proven right. People laughed at Jesus Christ and crucified him. I’m in good company.”

Forsher nodded in agreement.

“It’s a duty I have on this planet,” Harper said. “I feel like it’s a mission, an assignment to make people wake up and realize that we really need to live and love in peace on this planet. It’s the message of the extraterrestrials.”

That message, in various forms, has become increasingly popular of late.

Hollywood has led the way. “Alien Nation”--an extraterrestrial-earthling buddy film--has become a surprise hit at the box office, and director John Carpenter’s new film, “They Live,” portrays the Reagan Revolution as an undercover invasion by aliens. On television, NBC recently debuted a weekly series, “Something’s Out There,” about a policeman and his beautiful otherworldly partner.

Dozens of UFO magazines are published nationwide. UFOs have made for good business in the telephone industry, as well: Several dial-a-UFO numbers have popped up.

And after a Japan Air Lines pilot reported seeing a UFO over Alaska last November, ago, the Federal Aviation Administration received so many inquiries about it that officials decided to sell an information packet. For $194.30, the FAA offered tapes of interviews with the plane’s crew members, spaceship drawings by the pilot and air controller statements.

Despite all this, Harper suspects that most people don’t believe in flying saucers. During the course of a 2-hour interview, her voice remained quietly earnest as she spoke on this subject.

Elvis’ Secretary

Forsher tended to become more excited. At one point, for no particular reason, he gestured toward a photograph on the wall. It was a picture of his mother standing beside Elvis Presley.

“She was his personal secretary,” Forsher, 42, said.

A moment later, his mother walked into the room offering glasses of apple juice, but Harper waved her off, too concerned with UFOs and her newsletter to take time for refreshments.

New Age Dawning comes as stapled, mimeographed sheets with a photograph or sometimes a spaceship drawing on the cover. The articles are written by Harper and people she has met through UFO meetings. It is usually seven or eight pages thick and costs $110 each month to produce and mail.

Part of the costs are paid for by regular advertisers: The “living oracles” Sean and Michael promote their readings of cartouches (ancient Egyptian symbols) and a woman named Bonnie offers to teach the ancient Tantra science.

Harper pays for the rest of the newsletter’s production costs--and supports herself--by teaching occasional UFOlogy classes at such places as Everywoman’s Village in Van Nuys. She holds monthly meetings for people who say they have been visited by aliens or even teleported aboard spaceships. Forty to 80 such people regularly pay $5 admission to attend.

Harper also speaks at UFO conventions for $25 to $75 an appearance. But, she said, she is barely getting by.

“If I wanted to make money, I’d do something else,” she said. “I do this to get the message out to people.”

Harper said the inspiration for New Age Dawning came after she experienced several close encounters. In August, 1987, she said, she was beamed aboard an alien ship, then deposited 1 1/2 hours later in Glendale.

Voice Inside Head

Harper also said she has felt the vibrations of flying saucers hovering in her front yard. She has had memories of previous spiritual lives spent in the bodies of aliens.

“In fact, I was lying in bed last night and I heard this guy’s voice in my head,” she said. “It’s a guy I’ve been dating. This guy is across town, like 10 miles away. We had a nice little conversation.”

Wouldn’t some people consider all this insane?

“All insanity means is that you see things in a different way, you don’t agree with common knowledge,” she said. “I’m just on the leading edge, that’s all.”

In time, she and Forsher hope for a world where everyone, having reached a state of enlightenment, can communicate with alien beings. These kinds of people will read their newsletter.

“I think people are hungry for this information,” Harper said. “People who have been on spaceships, when they read my articles, they don’t laugh.”