Pierceall, Phyllis
Phyllis “Phyl” Pierceall is a relatively obscure American contactee whose case became known mainly through the book UFO Contact from Beyond Rigel, compiled from her correspondence and testimony by Lucius Farish and Wendelle Stevens. The case is unusual within contactee literature because Pierceall’s mother was reportedly present when the initial encounter began, while Pierceall subsequently supplied detailed written notes and drawings of the experience. There is also an important qualification to the usual description of the case: according to Pierceall’s own reported account, the beings did not actually claim to originate in the Rigel system. Rather, they said that Rigel and the Orion Nebula were a recognizable point of reference or route through which they came from somewhere “beyond” the Milky Way.
Biographical data
There is surprisingly little independently documented biographical information about Pierceall. Most of what is known comes from her own correspondence reproduced in UFO Contact from Beyond Rigel and from later accounts based on that material.
She was an American woman who described herself as having Cherokee ancestry on her mother's side. The published material identifies her as nineteen years old at the time of the principal 1974 experience. She was living with her mother in or near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The AFU catalogue, which records the book and its contents, likewise describes the case as that of a “Cherokee” girl and identifies Pierceall as the principal author/witness.
The available material gives somewhat inconsistent information about her birth date. A later reconstruction based on her correspondence says that she described herself as twenty-four in a letter apparently written around 1981, which would place her birth around 1957. The original case material, however, describes her as nineteen in 1974, implying a birth around 1955.
Pierceall apparently had a strong academic record. In her correspondence she described herself as having consistently performed well at school and having obtained university scholarships. Financial circumstances prevented her from continuing conventional university education, after which she pursued studies by correspondence. She also had ambitions for a theatrical career and was concerned that publicity about the UFO experience might damage her prospects. This is one reason why she initially preferred to remain anonymous.
She subsequently maintained an extensive correspondence about her experiences with a woman named Joan, with Lucius Farish of the UFO Newsclip Service, and eventually with Wendelle Stevens. Pierceall apparently kept a personal notebook or “journal” in which she recorded unusual experiences and developments following the 1974 event. The original account supplied to Farish reportedly consisted of seventeen pages of handwritten notes, with the first page dated 8 October 1974, only two days after the alleged encounter.
There appears to be little reliable public information about her later life. Stevens stated that contact with Pierceall was eventually lost after she moved several times. He apparently encountered her again briefly years later, but did not subsequently maintain contact. Consequently, most information about her ends in the 1980s.
The 1974 encounter
The central event took place on 6 October 1974 at approximately 9:30 p.m. near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Pierceall and her mother were reportedly outside when they noticed a bright, pulsating object approaching from beyond the trees. According to the published account, Pierceall moved toward the object and an occupant emerged from it. She was subsequently taken aboard the craft.
The encounter lasted considerably longer than the activities she later remembered performing aboard the craft. Pierceall and her mother reportedly noticed an absence of approximately three hours and forty-five minutes. This difference between the elapsed time and the apparently remembered sequence of events became an important feature of the case for Farish and Stevens. They suggested that portions of the experience might have remained inaccessible to her memory.
Pierceall described the principal occupant as a humanoid but distinctly non-human being. Other descriptions in the material characterize the entities as having greenish skin and an appearance that Pierceall found unusual. The principal being identified himself as Andrak.
A particularly interesting feature of the encounter is that Andrak apparently communicated with Pierceall through what she interpreted as a form of telepathic communication. The account describes an apparatus attached to her head and explains communication in terms of “brain waves” and cerebral impulses. Andrak allegedly told her that he was not literally speaking English but that Pierceall was receiving the communication in her own linguistic form.
Andrak then reportedly showed her various parts of the craft and demonstrated technological equipment. Pierceall was repeatedly told, in effect, to observe and remember rather than necessarily attempt to understand what she was seeing. Her account contains descriptions of what she interpreted as machinery involving magnetic fields, charged particles, cyclotron-like processes, diamagnetism, and other concepts. The account is therefore interesting as an example of the technological-information strand of contactee literature, in which the witness is allegedly exposed to advanced technology without possessing the conceptual framework necessary to understand it.
The Rigel connection
This is where the case is often slightly misrepresented.
The beings did not, according to Pierceall's account, say that they were from Rigel. Andrak allegedly explained that his people came from beyond the Milky Way and that the nearest recognizable astronomical reference point was “Rigel 2” and the Orion Nebula, M42. When Pierceall apparently asked whether he came from there, the answer was essentially “through there” rather than “from there.”
The account consequently presents a rather unusual cosmology. The beings supposedly originated in another galaxy but maintained a base in our own galaxy, on a planet associated with the star Alrescha (Al Rischa) in Pisces. Rigel was described as a navigational or positional reference for their route into the Milky Way rather than their home star.
Note that the book's title, UFO Contact from Beyond Rigel, can easily lead readers to assume that “Rigelian” is the claimed identity of the beings. It was not quite that simple.
Subsequent experiences
Pierceall's experiences apparently did not end with the 1974 encounter. She described recurring dreams in which elements of the experience returned to her. She also reported later UFO observations and what she regarded as further mental communication.
Her correspondence from the early 1980s contains increasingly elaborate attempts to understand details that she remembered from the craft. She made drawings of its interior and attempted to identify various pieces of equipment. Some of the terminology that appeared to her spontaneously was difficult even for her to interpret. One example concerned four structures that she eventually associated with “telemetric” and “transcommunication” functions.
She also reported a later encounter in which she believed she recognized Andrak in human form, although the circumstances were considerably less definite than those of the 1974 event. By 1983 she was still corresponding with Farish about unusual experiences and UFO observations.
The later history of the case is incomplete. Stevens eventually lost contact with Pierceall. He stated that Andrak had apparently re-established contact with her during the period when Stevens himself was out of circulation, but he did not have the details. Thus, the later stages of the story are considerably less well documented than the original 1974 account.
Documentation and significance
The case is interesting from a historical ufology perspective because there is a relatively substantial body of contemporary-to-the-event material associated with the witness. Pierceall reportedly wrote down her initial account on 8 October 1974, only two days after the alleged encounter, and later supplied copies to Farish. There are also letters written during the early 1980s and drawings of the alleged craft. This makes the case considerably more document-rich than many contactee narratives that were reconstructed only decades later.
At the same time, the available evidence remains primarily testimonial. The published documentation establishes that Pierceall described the experience and that Farish and Stevens preserved and published her account.
Online sources
The principal source is Lucius Farish, Wendelle C. Stevens and Phyl Pierceall, UFO Contact from Beyond Rigel. The AFU library catalogue records the work, gives the ISBN as 0-934269-50-5, and describes it as a 123-page digital copy.
A detailed online reconstruction of the case, including extensive material attributed to Pierceall's correspondence and the book, is available at Contact Stellaire – Phyl Pierceall. This is a secondary source, but it is unusually useful because it reproduces and discusses substantial portions of the original case material.
The AFU (Archives for the Unexplained) library catalogue provides an independent bibliographical record of the book and confirms its authorship, title, language, pagination and ISBN.
There is also a contemporary UFO-contactee-oriented discussion of the book at Hearts Connect – “UFO Contact from beyond Rigel”, which reproduces portions of the alleged dialogue concerning the craft and its technology.
Finally, the book appears in Ignacio Darnaude's extensive bibliography of UFO contactees and related literature under both Pierceall and the title UFO Contact from Beyond Rigel.