Otherworldly phenomena the subject LV lecture

Diana Sahagun

Friday, June 26, 1998 | 12:20 p.m.

UFOs, extraterrestrial beings, curious metal samples -- it's not an episode of "The X-Files," but the beliefs of a man who says he and his close friend have witnessed these events and more.

The reported findings are the subject of a lecture by Guido Moosbrugger, who will be speaking at 1 p.m. Sunday at the Best Western Heritage Inn.

Moosbrugger, 73, is a founding member of the Free Community of Interests in Fringe and Spiritual Sciences and Ufological Studies. The organization was formed in 1977 by friends of Swiss citizen Eduard Albert "Billy" Meier, who says he has made contact with UFOs since 1975.

Moosbrugger is a good friend of Meier, being one of the few people Meier took along to witness and photograph several alleged nighttime spacecraft sightings.

While the subject of UFOs may be scoffed at by others, this core of followers holds firm to their beliefs.

"The reason more people do not believe is because the media has made us look like kooks," Mike Whelan, a member of the organization since 1992, said. "The government has attached bad stigmas to people who believe in UFOs."

Whelan, a Los Angeles salesman, has followed the beliefs of Moosbrugger and Meier by reading their books and visiting them in Switzerland.

"Their books speak the truth because compared to other UFO sightings, they have the most scientific information and data," he said.

Some of the organization's ideas center around the belief in beings who come from the Pleiades, a star cluster in the Taurus section of the sky about 500 light years from Earth.

Moosbrugger also will comment on the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, where the original book of Matthew was believed to have been found by Meier in 1963. He will lecture on the book and show spacecraft slides at 7 p.m. Monday at Border Books & Cafe Espresso, 2190 N. Rainbow Blvd.