Coe, Albert

H. Albert Coe is one of the earlier contactees and the author of the book, "The Shocking Truth" (published in 1969) that details his decades long interactions with a man from a group of human extraterrestrials that claim to be observers on Earth that originally came from a planet in the nearby Cetus constellation, called Norca.

Case Information

In June of 1920, Albert and his friend Rod were on a school holiday canoeing adventure from the wilds of Canada, back down through the river and canal system to their home of Hastings-On-Hudson, NY.

The two teenagers were near Trout Lake, Ontario on the banks of the Mattawa river; Albert and Rod at that point had separated to look for a clear route through the rough terrain that lay before them, when Albert suddenly heard a man cry out; "Oh help, help me. Down here."

Stuck in a deep cleft in the rock, where he had apparently fallen was a young man (later on Albert is to discover from the stranger; "I am exactly three hundred and four years older than you.").

After freeing him from his predicament and tending to his wounds, Albert couldn’t help but notice the unusual silvery jumpsuit the man was wearing which had an instrument panel on the chest which had been smashed in his fall.

Inquiring as to what the man was doing in such a remote area was met with the reply that he had a ‘plane’ parked in a nearby clearing.

Albert helped the man look for his missing fishing rod and tackle box.

The ‘fishing rod’ he found and noticed it was highly unusual; "...the likes of which I had never seen."

It was bright blue and the line came directly out of the tip.

The stranger who had been facing death was extremely grateful for Al’s assistance and requested his name and address for he; "would surely write, as he would be eternally grateful for giving him back his life."

Albert insisted on helping the man to his ‘plane’ and was quite surprised to see a circular flying disc parked in the clearing.

After agreeing to secrecy, the disc rose vertically and silently zoomed off rapidly into the clouds.

The strange young man does indeed write Albert and during a series of subsequent meetings, a couple that take place in New York city and also a fishing trip together; the man who is given the name; "Zret," tells Albert who he really is and his involvement on the Earth.

In order to understand this, we must go back in time 14,000 years to Norca around the star Tau Ceti, one of the closest Sun-like systems.

Planet Norca is 7/8 the size of the Earth and has 4 moons, a larger outer ‘natural’ one, and 3 inner artificially constructed moons that were specially designed to curtail evaporation and to stimulate moisture and temper the contrast between a very cold night period and a very hot day. Their planet is slowly becoming uninhabitable over the millenniums with a thinning atmosphere and increasing escape of infra-red light.

An attempt was made to try to evacuate a portion of the population and try to reach our Sol star system.

The larger Norca ships are circular and the outer edge measures 19 miles around. They each house up to 2200 families.

40 of these passenger ships and 22 transport ships, a total of 62 ships departed the Tau Ceti system and their main duration of flight lasted 58 years and 7 months which brought them to the edge of our solar system.

In a tragic miscalculation which led to them being drawn into our Sun and destroyed, all of the ships were lost except for 1 containing approx 3700 people which miraculously survived a controlled crash on Mars.

These survivors managed to establish themselves on Mars using the technology and expertise they had with them.

Over successive generations, once again, they were able to advance to the scientific potential of launching twin probes to Venus and Earth. Allegedly, both were subsequently colonised.

On Earth the first landing by explorers from their Mars base was in Northern Atlantis approx 13,000 years ago. Over the following years, 5 cities were established and thrived, in; North Atlantis (now submerged), Peru, west of the Marshall Islands (now submerged), Southern Tibet and Lebanon. Eventually after a period of 300 years, their atomic and other advanced sciences were exploited by the natives that they had civilized and educated, which led to a massive destruction on Earth and the evacuation of the Norcans back to the other planetary bases.

In 1904, one hundred Observers came from the Tau Ceti colonies on Mars and infiltrated the Earth as small groups of technicians in every major country.

Zret explains; "Our mission here will forever be cloaked in the tightest secrecy. If the events that we foresee do not come to pass, our presence will not become known."

Their job was to watch and evaluate each step of our scientific advancement. As Zret states; "..To evaluate an advance in destructive forces, and in determining our potential of shattering our planet."

In 1937, the group in Germany had discovered that experiments with atoms were being conducted, and by 1939 they were fully aware that science was in the initial stages of exploiting the atom for nuclear destruction. The solution the Observers worked on for many years was to put in place a protective belt around the Earth which was activated in 1958.

"We are indebted to them for efficiently fabricating a neutralizing screen, encompassing Earth, comprising the inner status of what is now known as the Van Allen Belts.

This action was a fore-thought to counteract a possible cataclysm through a chain reaction of the hydrogen atom, if or when we may lose control of these devices, thus guaranteeing a chance of limited survival."

Albert received a series of letters over the years from Zret, which he had agreed to burn after reading. He only told his wife of his experiences and kept quiet completely until after other people such as Adamski went public with their claims of meeting advanced space-people.

‘The Shocking Truth’ was written in 1964 and privately published in 1969 and much of the manuscript is an intense discussion of biological and ecological matters concerning the people of Earth.

In one of his messages to Albert Coe, Zret states; "The highest priority on the planet today is a need for a complete study of ecology."

The above information was contributed by Ash Staunton.

Biographical information

H. Albert Coe was an American mechanical engineer who later became known primarily as a contactee. The available sources describe him as having had an established professional career in mechanical engineering before he became publicly associated with his claims of extraterrestrial contact. Timothy Good, who interviewed Coe and studied his account, specifically described him as having an “excellent work record as a mechanical engineer.”

Coe was born approximately in 1904, if his account of the 1920 encounter is taken at face value. He stated that he was sixteen years old when the encounter occurred in June 1920. Contemporary biographical information is otherwise remarkably scarce. Sources consistently place his home, at least during his youth, in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. His 1920 journey was a canoeing expedition with a friend, identified as Rod, through the Canadian wilderness. The two were travelling through Ontario towards Ottawa when Coe became separated from his companion near the Mattawa River.

Coe subsequently lived in New Jersey. By the late 1950s he was living in Beverly, New Jersey, where he maintained a small apartment. This is significant because it provides one of the few reasonably specific pieces of information about his adult life outside the contact story. According to Coe, beginning in 1958 he believed that he was being watched and questioned by people whom he assumed to be federal agents. He claimed that this continued for about a year. These claims are reported by Timothy Good in Alien Base, based on Good's interviews and research into the case, but there is no independent evidence establishing that the people were government agents.

Coe appears to have kept his alleged experiences largely private for many years. According to his own account, he had promised Zret that he would maintain secrecy and destroyed the letters he received from him after reading them. He reportedly discussed the matter only with his wife, Hazel, until other contactees, particularly George Adamski, began making similar claims publicly in the 1950s. Coe subsequently received permission, as he understood it, to make part of his own story public. He gave interviews to radio and television stations in the Washington, D.C. area and claimed that he also met several U.S. government officials there.

His wife, Hazel Coe, is of some interest to the biography because later accounts say that she was aware of his experiences and, according to Coe's supporters, had some direct encounters with the alleged extraterrestrials herself. After Albert's death, she apparently retained some of the letters that he had received from Zret. Wendelle Stevens, who later republished Coe's book, stated that he maintained contact with Hazel for several years but that she declined to show him the letters, respecting her husband's wishes. This information comes primarily from Stevens and should therefore be presented as part of the case tradition rather than as independently established biography.

Coe's book, The Shocking Truth, provides the principal autobiographical source. The manuscript was apparently completed in 1964, but the work was not privately published until 1969. It was issued in a very small number of copies by The Book Fund in Beverly, New Jersey, rather than through a conventional commercial publisher. Later accounts state that Coe sold copies at speaking engagements and that the book never entered normal bookstore distribution.

This limited publication history is worth mentioning because it helps explain why Coe is considerably less well known than contactees such as George Adamski. His account also appeared relatively late. Although he claimed that his first encounter had occurred in 1920, the story did not enter the public record in book form until nearly fifty years later, at a time when the contactee movement was already well established.

The principal independent investigator associated with Coe was psychiatrist and UFO researcher Dr. Berthold E. Schwarz. Schwarz conducted a lengthy interview with Coe, reportedly lasting about ninety minutes. Timothy Good later used both this interview and The Shocking Truth in evaluating the case. Good noted that Coe denied having suffered from delusions, encephalitis, hallucinations or paranoia and that he had never been confined to a psychiatric hospital. These observations do not establish the truth of Coe's extraterrestrial claims, but they are relevant to the historical assessment of the witness.

There is also an interesting point concerning Coe's attitude towards other contactees. According to Good, when Schwarz asked him about George Adamski, Coe described Adamski as a “faker”. This is noteworthy because Coe's own narrative contains several elements characteristic of the contactee literature of the 1950s and 1960s, while he apparently regarded at least some of his better-known contemporaries as fraudulent.

After Coe's death, the original book became extremely difficult to obtain. Wendelle C. Stevens eventually republished it in 2004 under the title UFO Contact from Planet Norca: The Shocking Truth. Stevens stated that he had obtained one of the few original copies and subsequently acquired additional copies for his collection. His edition preserved Coe's account and added introductory material.

Sources: