Joseph Burkes MD 2026
INTRODUCTION: In 2007 I was told the following account that reportedly occurred that year. Because of the sensitive nature of the encounter, I have not described it publicly until now. Given what appears to be increasing openness by US Executive Branch on the topic of UAP and the fact that nearly 20 years have passed, I share it on social media.
CONTACT EVENTS: “Edwardo” (pseudonym) a Latino contact activist working with the network now known as Rahma had a UFO encounter with a team that he had personally organized. It occurred on the slopes of Mount Shasta. In response to their telepathic request for an encounter, a saucer shaped craft was attracted to their fieldwork site. A telepathic communication reportedly specified that the mostly young people in the group were not suitable for experiencing a landing and boarding. Instead, Edwardo and a mother of a ten-year-old, “Maria” were selected. They remained on site after the young people headed home. The thirty foot in diameter saucer reportedly returned and was prepared to land. At this point a telepathic message was received indicating that although the couple was permitted to depart in the craft, there was no assurance that they would be returned. This was unacceptable to Maria and the saucer flew off.
After dropping Maria off at home in San Francisco at approximately 3AM in the morning, Edwardo was driving at high speed south on US 280. He reportedly heard a robotic telepathic voice stating, “Get off the Road!” He chose to ignore the warning and reportedly argued with the voice in his head and demanded an explanation. He again reported hearing the command, “Get off the road!” A few moments later his old sedan entered a wall of fog so thick that he had zero visibility and the reflected light of his headlights blinded him.
Eduardo said that he took his foot off the gas and was hoping to gradually slow down and pull off onto the shoulder. Suddenly he heard a rush of air and the old springs in the backseat creaked as they were compressed. Someone or something was now in the backseat. Unable to safely take his eyes off the road and turn around, he could only glance in the rearview mirror. There he saw the dark shape of a person. His impression that this being was not human. As the vehicle continued to slow down in dense fog, Edwardo reportedly heard another sudden whooshing sound, now to his right. The passenger seat now contained a being that was very tall, approximately seven-feet in height. It was wearing a helmet and dressed in coveralls. The being was curled into fetal position, head bent down but still touching the roof; its legs were flexed in a cramped position.
Eduardo stated that his car gradually decelerated in dense fog. He reportedly wanted to take a good look at the beings in his car, but trying to avoid an accident he kept looking forward. After an indetermined amount of time, probably less than a minute, he heard the springs in the back seat decompress and in a sudden rush of air both beings vanished.
DISCUSSION:
When presenting an astounding account such as this, one naturally asks about the credibility of the witness. In my judgment “Eduardo” was a totally reliable volunteer contact worker with whom I very much wanted to do fieldwork in 2007, especially after I heard this account. Unfortunate circumstances involving what could have been a fatal car accident sadly prevented me from working with Eduardo. The incident involved a telepathic override that my driver received when we were driving up. a mountain road looking for a place to do contact work with Eduardo (This is described in my detailed report at:
A Brief History of the Rama Contact Network Rama
I first heard of Eduardo in the 1990s, when a member of my Los Angeles CE-5 team, 747 United pilot Captain Joe Vallejo, started doing fieldwork with the Latino contact network then called “Rama.” It was founded in 1974 in Lima Peru around the contact experiences of a university student named Sixto Paz Wells. Mission Rama (Its original name) used automatic writing to communicate with UFO associated non-human intelligences. Psi capable activists who received accurate information in this manner were called “antennas.” When three antennas working separately received the same message, it was deemed accurate and this communication was used to set the time and place for encounters with what the Rama people believed were “ET” spacecraft.
The remarkable success of Mission Rama in facilitating “encuentros programados” (Spanish for programmed encounters) allowed their network to spread across Latin America. By 1993 when I met one of their regional leaders in San Francisco, a retired Peruvian dental surgeon named Fernando Limaco, it was estimated that the “Mission” had facilitated over 25,000 individual encounters with “los extraterrestres” (ETs).
Eduardo Was a Refugee from Latin America
Eduardo reached adulthood in his homeland during a time of civil war. Forced to join one of the warring factions in the 1980s, he subsequently deserted and fled to the United States where he worked in a service industry and subsequently started a family. In the 1990s when Captain Vallejo and I made contact with the Rama network, Mario was heavily involved in the spiritual aspect of the Rama. All the top activists were strict vegans. Leading up to fieldwork, volunteer Rama contact workers spent weekends together in prayer and meditation, fasting, or consuming only fruits and vegetable soups. All these preparations were done exclusively in Spanish. It was their belief that such cleansing practices facilitated contact and communication with spiritually enlightened extraterrestrials who they considered to be “hermanos mayores” (Spanish for older brothers).
Security for Rama’s Contact Work Was a Concern
Eduardo according to Captain Vallejo was active in Rama during the 199Os at a Rama site called “Shasta.” This designation was for Shasta County and not Mount Shasta located in Siskiyou County, over 25 miles away from the Rama fieldwork site. I got the impression that using the name “Shasta” was a deliberate choice. I strongly suspected this was part of Dr. Fernando Limaco’s effort to maintain confidentiality and site security. Captain Vallejo repeatedly told me that Fernando, never liked to talk about their contact work on the phone. Directions to get to the property that Rama activists owned in Shasta County were never written down, or emailed. Instead, participants in their “encuentros” (encounters) were selected by personal invitation only and had to be guided to the fieldwork site by trusted members of the group.
During the 1970s in Peru, Rama activists reported repeatedly entering what they believed were interdimensional portals called “Xendras” that allegedly serves as teleportation devices. Captain Vallejo in August of 1994 described to me an electrifying experience when the Rama people opened up just such a portal in Shasta.
Rama Opened a Dimensional Portal in Northern California
A group of approximately 50 Latino contact workers were present that night. Most of them drove up from the San Francisco Bay area where the bulk of Rama people came from. According to Captain Vallejo while chanting “Om”, a purple orb appeared in the field adjacent to the group. It hovered perfectly still about eight feet above the ground. This purple light then extended downward forming a doorway like structure.
In groups of seven, the Rama people were permitted to enter the portal and experience a Xendra. Joe’s team was the last group to go in. He said that the space within the portal felt “cramped like being in an elevator.” He noted a distortion of sound, and as they chanted inside the tight space with ill-defined dimensions, it sounded like they were “speaking under water.” Since the group of fifty had been chanting “Om” for over an hour, the participants outside were clearly becoming fatigued. As volume of the chanting decreased, the team inside the Xendra noticed that the walls seem to be collapsing around them. Joe told me that he didn’t want to find out what would happen if the Xendra closed with his group inside. The others in the portal apparently felt the same way and they all chanted “Om” more forcefully. To their relief the Xendra stayed open, the walls reconstituted and the space felt less cramped. Joe’s group was then able to exit safely.
When I heard this account, I realized that the US Executive Branch Intelligence Services would understandably take a great interest in the activities of the Rama people. At first when Joe started flying up to the Bay Area on weekends to meditate, pray and fast with his hosts, he thought their practices were a bit extreme. They were in sharp contrast to the less stringent contact protocols that we employed as part of the Dr. Greer’s CE-5 Initiative. Joe even used the expression “cult like” to describe their rigorous preparations.
I Thought Rigorous Spiritual Practices Might Have Served a Security Function
Cognizant of how US counterintelligence might want to penetrate Rama, I had a different interpretation of the Rama protocols. I suggested that they might not only serve to “raise the spiritual vibration” of contact teams, but also could be a way of spending many hours with new recruits, one of whom on a rare occasion might be an intelligence operative. I somewhat naively assumed that counterintelligence types would break down from the “spiritual torture” of prayer, fasting and meditation. Joe and I had a good laugh on this topic and he suggested that Rama’s protocols perhaps functioned like “a poor man’s security check” to root out any want-to-be infiltrator.
In 2004 I had my first opportunity to do field work with Rama at the Shasta site. There I finally got to meet Eduardo in person. He was a heavy-set guy in his forties. Joe was good friends with Eduardo and many of the other seasoned contact activists. Despite my being the only Anglo there, I was made to feel very welcomed. I also had an opportunity to learn how far off base I was in my notion that the Rama protocols could be used as a “security check.”
A Counterintelligence Operative Made a Confession with a Special Request
As the story went, there had been an infiltrator, but he wasn’t the beer drinking macho man that I had somewhat foolishly envisioned. She was a mature woman, fluent in Spanish who may have had an academic background. This individual had reportedly been active with Rama for several months after which she dropped out. About a year later she returned with a special request. She revealed that she had been working for a US intelligence organization and that she regretted what she had done. She was reportedly very ill with a life-threatening diagnosis and asked for the Rama people to pray for her to be healed. They accepted her apology and included her in their prayers. Allegedly her condition subsequently improved.
How I learned About the Offer to Board and the Teleportation Incident
Captain Vallejo continued working with Rama after he retired from United Airlines as a 747 pilot in 2005. I accompanied him to do fieldwork in Shasta County in 2004, 2006 and 2008. I met Eduardo during those trips and he appeared at a MUFON meeting I spoke at in San Jose in 2007. There I met his wife and teenage daughters that had accompanied him to see “el médico norteamericano” (North American doctor) who had done Rama fieldwork with their father. At that MUFON meeting I learned about what happened at Mount Shasta when he was offered the chance to have an onboard experience. As described above, the other individual selected was compelled to decline because no assurance was given that they would be returned.
Surveillance and Harassment
At that meeting Eduardo also told me about some of the harassment he was enduring. He assumed it was related to his volunteer work with Rama. Several time while driving on the highway at high speed, cars had attempted to push him off the roadway. On more than one occasion different civilian vehicles had driven alongside him in traffic. The driver then pointed his hand in the shape of pistol, aimed and “fired” at him. Eduardo didn’t mention black helicopters flying over his home (a common complaint among high level contactees), but if I recall correctly, he reported that large black sedans suspiciously parked across the street from his home. This reported combination of surveillance and harassment has been the main reason why I have not published this account for nearly two decades.
I believe it is important to acknowledge that Eduardo’s group at Mount Shasta operated separately from the main Rama group whose property was located southwest from that dormant volcano. By handpicking the team, Eduardo could personally prepare them for high level fieldwork and avoid the security concerns involving Fernando’s group that often had between fifty and one hundred participants.
As mentioned previously, in 2007 Eduardo’s team succeeded in attracting a saucer shaped craft that hovered near them. It was reportedly less than 100 feet off the ground. When the craft arrived, however, the group of mainly young people couldn’t control their emotions. They reportedly went wild, shouting, waving their arms and running around. Only the older more mature members of the group, Eduardo and a mother of a ten-year-old were deemed appropriate for boarding. The crew of the saucer informed Eduardo telepathically that the craft would drop out of view, but remain in the area till the younger members of the team had departed. As described previously, when the saucer returned, Eduardo’s co-worker refused the offer to board because no assurance that they would be allowed to return was given. This was unacceptable to her. Eduardo told me that he would have gladly boarded.
It is significant to note the advice I received in 1992 when I became a Working Group Coordinator for Dr. Steven Greer’s Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind Initiative. The Director of the Center for the Study of ET Intelligence informed our teams that if boarding privileges of an “ET” craft were offered, there would be no assurances that we would be returned. Over the years when I was actively involved in fieldwork, pondered the meaning of the Director’s counsel concerning boarding. The best explanation I came up with was that it was a kind of test of our trust in UFO Intelligences. If we truly believed that our contact efforts were an expression of brotherhood and sisterhood made large, if we could experience unqualified love and solidarity with the non-human intelligences that we were interacting with, then we would not need to set conditions for our return. I discuss this question further in the link below for “Human Initiated Contact Events, (HICE), and “Boarding Privileges.”
In 2007 learning of Eduardo’s offer to board an “ET craft” fired my ambition. I was working with a contact activist that I call “Janie Krieger” in the San Jose area. We decided to look for a local site in the foothills of the Coastal Range to do fieldwork with Eduardo. We had heard that there was a seldom used county park up a mountain road that might be a good location.
One afternoon in June of 2007, we drove up a narrow two-lane road towards the park. On right side was a steep hillside with no shoulder. On the other side of the pavement was a ravine. As Janie and I climbed up the mountain in her VW Bug, I became increasingly apprehensive. The road was devoid of traffic but treacherous with sharp blind curves that obscured the path ahead. Suddenly Janie said that we have to get off of the road. She stated, “I just got the message that we have to pull off the road.” I agreed because I too was feeling a sense of danger but had received no clear message as she had. As I wrote in the report linked previously, “But what were we supposed to do? On one side of the road was a hundred-foot drop into the ravine. On the other side was the wall of the mountain with no pullouts or highway shoulder in sight… Fortunately, on one of the straight portions of the road we found a narrow shoulder. If we parked with one side of the Bug almost touching the rock face, we were mostly off the road. I got out of the car from the driver’s side because she had parked flush against the hillside. We then pressed ourselves against the wall of rock and waited.”
“In less than two minutes, we suddenly heard the roar of car engines. Around the curve there suddenly appeared two muscular sedans with thick tires designed for racing. I was shocked. The young male drivers were actually racing neck to neck down the narrow mountain road and they were taking up both lanes!.. Janie and I looked at each other in disbelief. If she had not received the warning to get off the road immediately, we probably would have been killed. With the ravine on one side and the rock face on the other, there was no place for us to go. Her tiny VW Bug would have been crushed and likely flung into the ravine like a child’s toy.”
When I returned home and told my wife what had happened, she made me promise that I would not expose myself to such a dangerous situation again. For the next six months I focused on finishing up my internal medicine career. I was to do fieldwork one more time with Fernando’s group at Shasta in 2008, but I lost track of Edwardo. It is curious to note that both “Eduardo” and “Janie” both received the identical telepathic message, ”to get off the road!”, albeit under very different circumstances.
In 2014, I received permission from Dr. Limaco to use his real name in my reports. Prior to that I had called him “Dr. Ricardo.” By that time the Rama group had new leadership as the next of generation of contact activists took over fieldwork, mostly on the slopes of Mount Shasta. UFO researcher Grant Cameron has written two books about doing volunteer contact work with Rahma, UFOs and Encounters with the Non-Ordinary at Mount Shasta and The Portals and UFOs of Mount Shasta.
Link for “Human Initiated Contact Events, (HICE), and “Boarding Privileges.” https://contactunderground.org/2022/06/26/human-initiated-contact-events-hice-and-boarding-privileges/.
LINKS TO ADDITIONAL POSTINGS ON MISSION RAMA
The article linked below is a detailed description of the origins of Mission Rama, a spiritually based Peruvian network of volunteer contact workers. They reported experiencing direct face to face encounters with what they believed were friendly extraterrestrial beings.
Senior Rama activist retired dental surgeon Fernando Limaco describes how he and four other volunteer contact workers marched into the Peruvian rainforest to rendezvous with friendly “ETs” in a remote region called Paititi.
United Airlines Captain Joe Vallejo describes how Rama activists opened a dimensional portal at a California UFO contact site in 1994.
Teams of volunteer UFO contact workers have been engaging flying saucers for over five decades. In this report, I describe how the Peru based Rama network and the North American CE-5 activists first met in the 1990s. I discuss how spiritually based preparations for contact work might serve as “a poor person’s security check.”
How do the contact protocols of Rahma and CSETI differ? Which is more effective? “Pieces on a cosmic chest board: the contact protocols of two contact networks briefly compared.
Contact Underground 