Some years ago I noticed a small ad in Fate magazine announcing a contact book called "Date with the Gods" by Charles A Silva ( 1). I bought the book and found it to be a most unusual contactee story purported to be the truth. As there were no reviews nor any comments of this work in the American UFO magazines I began to suspect the whole story to be fiction, especially since a letter to the author remained unanswered. "Date with the Gods" is basically the autobiography of Mr. Silva, a publicity man for motion picture producers. While on vacation in the Andes mountains in Peru he meets an "extraterrestrial" girl named Rama, who not only becomes his lover but gives him a whole new philosophy and relates the work of her people on earth. She claims to be from Ganymede, one of the moons of Jupiter. After several UFO-experiences, among them a ride in one of the saucers, Mr. Silva is convinced of the basic validity of Rama´s message and he is asked to write a book about his experiences.

I was intrigued by this story, it was written in a ruffer tone and with lots of humour, a not so common quality in contactee literature. But still there was the false prophecies (California to be destroyed in 1982) and some Christian clapstrap (144.000 being saved by saucers when Armageddon strikes) thrown into a basically interesting contactee story. I read the book several times and left it at that as no one seemed to have any further information on the author. Shirley MacLaine´s latest book "Out on a limb"(2) is possibly a confirmation of the Silva contact. Among several other interesting adventures Ms. MacLaine relates a trip to the Andes mountains of Peru together with her American friend David. They visit the same mineral wells, not far from the city of Huancayo as described in "Date with the Gods".

While vacationing in the mountains David reveals that this is the place where he on several occasions has met his extraterrestrial lover and teacher "Mayan". A petite woman with long , thick, black hair and dark slanted eyes who claims her home planet is in the Pleiades. This parallels almost exactly the story in "Date with the Gods", except Rama claimed to come from Ganymede... Ms. MacLaine doesn´t really know what to think of her friends story but notice that just about every native in the district have seen the flying discs. I drew attention to this parallel with the hope that some of our American colleagues can unravel more details for these interesting cases.

1. Charles A. Silva: Date with the Gods. Coleman Graphics, Long Island, New York, 1977.

2. Shirley MacLaine: Out on a limb. Bantam Books, New York, 1983. Also in Swedish as "Ut på yttersta grenen", 1983.

Håkan Blomqvist

(Publicerad i AFU Newsletter nr. 26, maj-dec 1983)