Gloria Lee
Encyclopedia
Oahspe
Oahspe: A New Bible is a book published in 1882, purporting to contain "new revelations" from "...the Embassadors of the angel hosts of heaven prepared and revealed unto man in the name of Jehovih..." It was written by an American dentist, John Ballou Newbrough , who reported it to have been...
who became part of the 1950s contactee movement in 1953.
Lee claimed to be in telepathic communication with an entity known as JW, who lived on the planet Jupiter
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...
, and began to assemble a book of his spiritual teachings as dictated to her. At his direction she founded the Cosmon Research Foundation for the purpose of publication and study of JW's superhuman wisdom, much of which bore some resemblance to the 1882 teachings of Oahspe
Oahspe
Oahspe: A New Bible is a book published in 1882, purporting to contain "new revelations" from "...the Embassadors of the angel hosts of heaven prepared and revealed unto man in the name of Jehovih..." It was written by an American dentist, John Ballou Newbrough , who reported it to have been...
.
Membership in Gloria Lee's organization rose sharply after advertisements were regularly carried in Ray Palmer
Raymond A. Palmer
Raymond Arthur Palmer was the influential editor of Amazing Stories from 1938 through 1949, when he left publisher Ziff-Davis to publish and edit Fate Magazine, and eventually many other magazines and books through his own publishing houses, including Amherst Press and Palmer Publications...
's monthly occult magazine Fate. She also hit the contactee lecture circuit and attracted considerable public attention. During her lectures, Lee sold copies of her book of revelations, Why We Are Here! (1959). The year of her death, a second "JW" book was published, The Changing Conditions of Your Planet (1962).
Lee developed a plan for world peace and a space station design and took them to Washington DC in late 1962 in an attempted to bring them to the attention of officials.
However, after being rebuffed, she launched a hunger strike
Hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...
or protest fast
Fasting
Fasting is primarily the act of willingly abstaining from some or all food, drink, or both, for a period of time. An absolute fast is normally defined as abstinence from all food and liquid for a defined period, usually a single day , or several days. Other fasts may be only partially restrictive,...
, telling others in the UFO contactee community that she expected to enter a coma resembling death, then "return" with renewed spiritual energy to carry on her "great work". However, the press were not notified of Lee's hunger strike until some time after it had begun, and she attracted no publicity. After approximately 66 days without eating Lee was taken to George Washington University Hospital where she died on December 3, 1962.
After her death, Charles Boyd Gentzel, the founder of Mark-Age, Inc., and his partner Pauline Sharpe (also known as Nada-Yolanda), claimed to be
channelling spirit messages from Lee on behalf of their own UFO-contact cult.
Lee is not the only contactee or would-be contactee to starve herself to death. In November 1982,
LaVerne Landis, a member of the UFO cult Search and Prove, died of starvation while waiting in her car in the northern Minnesota woods for over 40 days for a flying saucer to land, after reportedly being told to wait there during psychic
Psychic
A psychic is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception , or is said by others to have such abilities. It is also used to describe theatrical performers who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading, and hot...
contact with a Space Brother.