Wayne Aho, one of the 1950s flying saucer contactees, was the founder of a small New Age religion, the Cathedral of the Stars. Born on August 24, 1916 in Woodland, Washington, he dated the beginning of his religious career to a childhood experience. When he was only 12 he had heard a voice telling him that he would be able to do something great for humanity in his later life. He joined the Army as a young man and eventually rose to the rank of major during World War II (1939-45).
Several additional experiences similar to the one he had had in childhood occurred in the years after the war. Among the more vivid was a vision of a crack in the Earth as a result of an impending atomic war. Then in 1957, while attending the Giant Rock Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention, then the largest annual gathering of flying saucer buffs, he claimed he was lured away, and at a distance of some two miles from the convention site, a saucer landed. Once on the ground, the saucer, an object of another dimension, vanished, but Aho received telepathic messages presenting him with a mission in life. That evening he had an intense visionary experience that he described as a cosmic initiation. He founded Washington Saucer Intelligence and began to tell anyone who would listen of his knowledge of the flying saucer inhabitants. Numerous articles of his lectures appeared in newspapers and UFO periodicals.
In 1958 Aho became associated with Otis T. Carr, a man involved in selling shares in a free energy company. Aho believed that Carr could create a saucer that could fly to the moon, and joined him on the lecture circuit. The association proved disastrous when Carr was indicted and convicted of fraud. Charges were dropped against Aho when it was determined that he had also been hoaxed in by Carr. In 1961 Aho was committed to a mental hospital, an event he later attributed to Communist agents opposed to his flying saucer message.
After his brief hospitalization, Aho returned to the state of Washington and established the New Age Foundation, the precursor to the Cathedral of the Stars that opened in 1975. He published an account of his contacts with the space beings and remained the leader of his small group through subsequent years. By the 1980s he had faded into obscurity.
Sources:
Aho, Wayne S. Mojave Desert Experience. Eatonville, Wash.: The New Age Foundation, 1972.
Sachs, Margaret. The UFO Encyclopedia. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1980.
