Billy Meier is a Swiss man who claims that since childhood he has been in contact with extraterrestrial beings, and who is among the most discussed contactees in UFO research. According to Michael Horn, an American who has represented Meier’s material for decades and has made about 22 trips to Switzerland to meet him1, Meier’s documented output dates back to 1946, when he was around nine years old and had already begun publishing and disseminating information2; he has since published tens of thousands of pages of contact notes3, more than 60 books of which around a dozen are translated into English4, and is claimed to have taken approximately 1,200 UFO photographs, eight surviving films and a video5. Horn said Meier’s contact material describes him as having met, from age five, beings from another star system who tutored him6, beginning with a teacher named Sfath, said to have been around 900 years old and to have tutored him until about age 167. After Sfath’s death, Horn said Meier began hearing a woman’s voice, marking the start of his contact with Asket, his second alleged contact person8, who according to Horn gave Meier prophecies as early as 1953, including the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy9. In 1987, Horn said, Meier was given what are called the Henoch Prophecies, comprising around 300 specific predictions10.
Meier’s material has drawn attention from photo analysts as well as UFO investigators. Wendelle Stevens, a retired lieutenant colonel of the United States Air Force, organised an investigation of Meier’s photographs11, in which all participating scientists signed non-disclosure agreements12. Jim Dilettoso took four purportedly legitimate photographs and two control images to Bob Nathan at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory13, and around 1980 he and Stevens brought the same set to Michael Malin’s laboratory at Arizona State University14, where Malin digitised the images and carried out preliminary analysis, continuing his study over the following weeks15. Malin, then an associate professor at Arizona State University, later told Dilettoso he had spent considerable time examining the photographs and found no evidence of superimposition, which he termed “dubbing”16; he gave Stevens and Dilettoso no written report, as none had been requested, and the pair never retrieved or erased the digitised images from his system17. Malin told author Gary Kinder that he had found no evidence of a hoax, though he was not convinced the objects were extraterrestrial spacecraft18, and reserved judgement on the more spectacular aspects of Meier’s story19. Separately, Michael Horn said investigators including Wendell Stevens had a model of one of the craft built at MGM studios in Hollywood to test whether Meier was hoaxing his photographs20.
Meier’s earliest surviving photographic evidence dates to a period of travel. According to Michael Horn, in 1964 Meier was a vagabond wandering around India with a knapsack21 and was interviewed by a journalist at a prominent Indian newspaper who looked through an album containing 80 UFO photographs22; Horn said Meier had taken these photographs with an early Kodak box camera, of relatively primitive 1940s technology23. Horn also described Meier turning over metal samples and sound recordings for analysis, with the recordings made in a field before 15 to 20 eyewitnesses24. Later, in the Zurich Highlands, Meier’s household life was reportedly turbulent: Horn said Meier and his first wife had an acrimonious relationship and were married for 30 years before divorcing25. The couple’s three adult children were named Atlantis, Atlant and Gilgamesha, according to Horn26, with Atlantis - one of Meier’s two natural sons - later featured in the film The Silent Revolution of Truth27. As a teenager, Horn said, Meier ran away from Switzerland to avoid being placed in a juvenile detention centre28, subsequently joining the French Foreign Legion for a period before choosing to return to Switzerland29. Meier’s wider written material began circulating in Europe from 1975, before English translation30.
Among the events Horn recounted is a visit Meier is said to have made with Asket to the Great Pyramid of Giza, where Asket reportedly knew of an entrance leading deep underground31; inside, Meier is said to have seen what appeared to be relics resembling instruments of the crucifixion, which Asket told him had been fabricated by a group Horn called the Befath rather than being genuine32. Horn linked this group to a broader campaign against Meier, saying the Befath recognised Meier - through his meetings with the Pleiaren - as an obstacle to their agenda and engineered attacks on his life33, with threats and attempts on Meier’s life totalling 28 by the time of the interview34. Horn also said that eight of Meier’s films survive, with others having disappeared and understood to have been stolen35. Meier is further said to have published information concerning intelligences beneath the Great Pyramid of Giza in 195336.
A separate strand of Meier’s material concerns the Talmud of Jmmanuel (TJ). According to Horn, Meier - together with a Greek Orthodox priest named Isa Rashid - dug into a hillside near Jerusalem that proved to be an ancient tomb37, where the two found resin-encrusted, animal-skin-wrapped scrolls written in Aramaic38. As Meier could not read the language, he asked Rashid to translate the scrolls and send him the result39. Rashid and his family were later killed in Baghdad, ostensibly by the Israeli Secret Service (Mossad), according to Horn40, and Meier subsequently found that Rashid had altered parts of the translated text to fit his own religious beliefs41. Horn placed the resulting document, and Meier himself, within a lineage he described as running from Enoch, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jmmanuel and Muhammad, with Meier as the seventh and final figure to deliver such messages42; the material identifies the man crucified and conventionally known as Jesus Christ as Jmmanuel43.
Horn also described the philosophical framework attributed to Meier. He said Meier, after decades, stated that “spiritual teaching” was an incorrect term for what he called the creation energy teaching (Geisteslehre), a body of knowledge the Pleiaren access at levels humans do not and which Meier did not create44. Within that framework, Horn reported, Meier held that the meaning of life is the evolution of consciousness45. Horn cited a 1976 Meier prophecy, sourced from what he called a higher creation-energy level, foretelling the emergence of seven-foot-tall giants in Peru46, an event Horn said occurred approximately 47 years after the prophecy’s publication47. Elsewhere, Horn recounted that in 1982 Meier gave a radio interview on a Swiss radio station network, before a later accident that caused Meier a brain injury48. Horn said that Meier declined an offer from the Pleiaren of a replacement arm, citing the risk of a military kidnapping and dissection49. Beyond Horn’s own commentary, others in the UFO field have described the case as one of the field’s most contentious - podcast host Chris Ramsay named Meier alongside Bob Lazar as one of the two names most likely to provoke feuding among researchers50, and Ramsay separately noted that the “I Want to Believe” poster appearing throughout the television series The X-Files is a cropped version of one of Meier’s photographs51.