THE BELIEVERS

SKAGIT VALLEY HERALD
Mount Vernon,, WA
By Beverly Crichfield
Annotated



Dena Blatt, a believer in extraterrestrials, says she bought her house just outside of Anacortes, WA after having seen the view through the windows of the home in her dreams for years. Blatt has been writing a book about a Vancouver, BC surrealist artist who says she had a two-year friendship with an alien.

People who have had encounters with UFOs don't talk about it in polite company.

No, if you mention that you believe in aliens - let alone that you think you were abducted by extraterrestrials - it's likely you will get that look, said "Ruth," as she gazed around the living room of her Mount Vernon-area home.

Ruth isn't her real name; she doesn't want to deal with the stares and whispers of people she knows who might read this story and recognize her. She's never been interested in drawing attention to herself, she said.

She is willing to admit that she believes she's seen things -- unexplained lights in the sky -- on more than a few occasions.

More importantly, she has what she says may be hard, physical evidence that she's been visited by beings from other worlds.

She picks up a small photograph taken four summers ago, of a triangular shaped red mark on her left shoulder. Ruth doesn't know where it came from. In fact, she says, she'd been sleeping and woke up to find it burning on her shoulder.

It's not that uncommon for me," she said softly, running her hand along her opposite arm. "I remember waking up with scratches on my arm and shoulders and wrists, bleeding enough to leave scabs."

UNEXPLAINED CONTACT

Ruth's experience with UFOs goes way back to a clear, bright day in the 1950s when she was just 10 years old playing in the front yard of her home in Eastern Washington.

According to Ruth, 61, she looked up in the sky and noticed a disc-shaped object zooming at a distance overhead, glistening in the sun. As it whisked out of sight, her mother called out, "That must have been one of those flying saucers."

"That was right after the Roswell incident," Ruth said quietly. "You know, at that time it was kind of a fad. There were flying saucers this, and flying sacuers that."

No sooner did the disc zip out of sight, but what looked to be a fast-flying aircraft came zooming after it, Ruth said. That incident seared itself into her memory and re-emerged later in her life to create a deep fascination with what she calls "otherworldy" or "unexplainable" phenomena.

As Ruth grew up, she noticed other things in the sky - ciagrette shaped objects flying overhead, red-colored orbs just hanging still on the horizon.

She began learning and researching about UFOs on her own until she met CONTACT director Matthew Thuney. Ruth had read one of Thuney's weekly columns, "Thuney Casserole," in the Echo advertising paper. Thuney used the column one week to ask if anyone in the Bellingham area had seen strange lights in the sky and if they'd be interested in joining a group to talk about it. (Matthew Thuney was one of UFOCCI's Associate Directors. He began his group after we did a lecture in the Bellingham area arranged by Matthew.)

Ruth was eager to discuss her experiences with someone who could relate. Since then, she's been involved with the group and has attended international UFO conferences.

She's even done some hypnotic regressive sessions in hopes of uncovering buried memories of abduction. So far, those sessions haven't uncovered much.

"In all the years I've studied this, what I've learned is the more you study, the less you know," she said.

UFOs AND synchronicity

Dena Blatt knows all about the widespread UFO enthusiast belief in synchronicity. The former real estate investor, medical technologist and owner of an electronic store said she can see it every day through the windows of her Fidalgo Island home.

Even before she moved to the house from Santa Barbara in late 1989, she knew what her current view across Burrows Bay from her large picture window in the livingroom would look like. She'd seen it in her dreams.

For most of her life, Blatt had never really thought about UFOs.

"When I'd seen these things (UFOs) talked about in magazines and TV, they all looked so stupid," Blatt said, laughing.

But Blatt's UFO story would begin in 1996, when she attended a Whole Life Exposition in Seattle. The exposition included hundreds of vendors, speakers and teachers who explore different aspects of sustainable living spiritual growth and natural health.

Blatt had been walking out the door of the exposition building when she heard a woman speaking about having a two-year relationship with an alien.

Blatt felt compelled to stop to talk to the woman. "When I saw her, I knew she was telling the truth." The more she spoke with the woman, an artist from Vancouver, BC, named Shirle Klein-Carsh, she discovered an unusual list of similarities between the two.(Shirle also was an Associate Director in my organization the UFOCCI! - Aileen)

For instance, both women's parents came from the same area in Russia, both women married survivors of the holocaust, both had a common friend, although they lived in different cities. They had lived in Montreal at the same time, and went to the same college at the same time.

"I knew from the moment I saw her that I was supposed to know her," Blatt, 80, said. "Since then, I've had one synchronicity after another."

And somehow, Blatt said she's sure other extraterrestrial races or higher forces have been guiding some parts of her life.

After her initial meeting with Klein-Carsh, Blatt began to research the UFO phenomanon and the paranormal by reading dozens of books published on the topics.

What Blatt discovered through her readings was a bevy of different theories about UFO races, movements, contact with Earthlings, psychic abilities and the long-standing knowledge by the government of extraterrestrial activies.

But the best evidence of extraterrestrials came from Klein-Carsh, who detailed her contat with extraterrestrials and their warnings to the human race. Blatt said Klein-Carsh already has written a book entitled "Permutation, A True UFO Story," released in 1993, about her two year contact with an alien. The book is no longer in print.

"She was given a mission to paint planets that had already been destroyed," Blatt said, gazing up at a painting on on the wall of her livingroom. The painting by Klein-Carsh shows what looks to be a city full of bright, tall buildings and a disc shaped aircraft hovering just on the outskirts in the sky. The City is supposed to be the mythical Atlantis. "They (aliens) seeded us here. They don't want the planet ruined."

Ironically Blatt said she thinks she's only seen one UFO which was in Bellevue, WA in 2004. Blatt announced out loud one day that she wanted to see a UFO - as a joke. A short time later, while standing in front of a window, she saw a rectangular-shaped object with no tail or wings traveling across the sky much more slowly than an airplane.

"I said, 'If you're a UFO, do something to prove it'," she told the strange shape so far away. "It went down suddenly, and then vanished."

She added, "That's how they do things. It was given to me because I asked for it."

During the past few years, Blatt has been working on a book about Klein-Carsh's experience. According to Blatt, the book carries an important message through Klein-Carsh's experience and what she learned from the extraterrestrials who she says contacted her: The human race must change its destructive ways.

"They stress over and over that we have the choice to change things," Blatt said about the extraterrestrials. "We can choose not to be destroyed. We can choose not to go down that route."
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The book is now available on www.amazon.com, The Artist and the Alien by Dena Blatt, $21.95.