Aliens Among Us by Ruth Montgomery is actually a sequel to Strangers Among Us which described how alien beings are able to visit the earth as"walk-ins" who temporarily take over the bodies of humans by exchanging souls with them. The human soul then visits the alien's planet, some other planet or the alien's spacecraft while the alien can observe and interact with humanity. Aliens Among Us is a collection of first hand accounts by people who experienced becoming a "walk-in" and commentary from Ms. Montgomery's spirit guides whom she channels through a process known as automatic writing. Ms. Montgomery's "space friends," as she calls them, are here to help us get through the upcoming shift in the axis of the earth which is what destroyed the ancient kingdoms of Mu and Atlantis.

It's difficult to figure out how to critique a book like this. While it would be fairly easy to take snarky pot-shots at it, and that could easily produce more than a few laughs, readers who take works like Aliens Among Us seriously would remain unmoved and skeptics, like myself, would soon become bored. I'm not out to make fun of anyone here. If I produce laughter, I didn't mean it.

If you can believe an account of alien encounters based solely on the words of an eye-witness then Aliens Among Us may be of use to you. Myself, I need footnotes before I can take any work of non-fiction seriously; I want a full accounting of all sources. Ms. Montgomery provides neither footnotes nor bibliography, nor does she include reproductions of the paintings and photographs she refers to as evidence. She asks her spirit guides if something is true and their confirmation is good enough for her. You either believe she is as good as her word as are her spirit guides or you don't. She does provide a list of addresses, so if you want to you can contact the witnesses in Aliens Among Us directly, I suppose, assuming they are still alive. Ms. Montgomery died in 2001.

So why bother reading the book at all? I signed up for the Dewey Decimal Challenge and needed something in the 00's for one and I've been curious about this genre for some time. A search for "alien encounters" at Amazon.com produced over 3,400 titles; I'd say that qualifies as a genre. Searching for Ruth Montgomery listed over 800 books including one that she's written from beyond the grave, I assume through someone else's automatic writing. Other than satisfying my own curiosity, I can't think of another reason for a skeptic to read Aliens Among Us. I suspect, even believers would be better off reading the first book, Strangers Among Us based solely on the general belief that the first book is usually the best one.

What I do find interesting is how a group of people, working together some of the time and on their own some of the time, can collectively come up with such a complicated mythos. Ms. Montgomery's spirit guides and the "walk-ins" others experience are all playing by basically the same rule book. Together they create a fantasy world as fully imagined as any you'll find in the fantasy genre. You may be thinking to yourself, that's how religions get started isn't it. You may be right.

CORRECTION: In a previous post I wrote the Ms. Montgomery predicted the axis of the earth will shift around 2012 and that all of North America, except Florida and the coast of California would be lost. This is not so. That's actually the punchline to a favorite joke of mine, but Ms. Montgomery predicted that most of North America would be fine after the shift in the earth's axis except for coastal California and Florida. Either way, the decline in my property value will no longer be much of an issue. ( )