Customer Reviews

Millennial Hospitality

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The book, "Millennial Hospitality" by Charles James Hall, otherwise known as Charlie Baker in the text, reflects upon his tour of duty at Nellis AFB during the 60s. Although Mr. Hall has many stories to share about his experiences with aliens when he was performing his job as a weather observer, he tends to overuse the convention of dialog and draws out his conversations with a repetitive style that almost annoys the reader. For instance, the chapter "Doxology" could have been completely omitted which would have spared the reader some of this. Mr. Hall also takes every opportunity to convey to his audience that he is a very special man. Perhaps a tad more restraint could have been employed regarding the validity of his own merits. Mr. Hall would have his audience believing that he is the brightest, bravest, most special, and the most level headed man that ever served in the entire history of the US Air Force. Granted, some of his exploits did take a lot of nerve, but he over did his own self-praises by having other people say how amazing he is at every opportunity.

On the bright side, Mr. Hall's experiences with alien life forms are both informative and interesting. He relates several episodes with good ability and there are many stretches in the book that read very well. I especially liked the part concerning the interview with the "neurosurgeon" (336).

It was helpful for me to locate a map of Nellis AFB to get a better idea of the various ranges Charlie worked between as a weather observer. I would have liked to see something like that included in the content of the book. It would have enhanced the text to get an idea of the distances between the different ranges, where much of the alien contact took place. Of special interest to this reader, was the similarity between the writings observed from inside one of the alien scout ships and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Overall, I liked the book, but it could have been written with more cleverness and with less filler words in the form of repetitive dialog.

If true, this may be the most amazing story yet told on the subject of Human-ET interaction. There is no mysticism, life affirming-revelations for the Human race, or solutions offered to our worldly problems; just an objective summary of events in which the Tall White aliens turn out to be disarmingly like ourselves, but even more quick to temper and to exact retribution then we are. They may be more rational and clear-thinking than ourselves to have survived long enough to become interstellar travellers, but they cannot be described as being overwhelmingly friendly and benign. How refreshing!

In all 3 books of the Trilogy, I feel the author is telling the story exactly as it is. The previous reviewer makes no comment on the possible significance of the story, but comments only on the style.

If this story is confirmed, then it is of fundamental importance in our understanding of the motivations of the major powers in dealing with (and witholding evidence of?) ETs. I find it of great significance that most of the major revelations of recent years have come not from starry-eyed truth-seekers, but have instead originated from ex-military personnel who got involved from duty rather than choice.

Read all three books, and form your own opinion!

True or not so true, this book was a page turner. I couldn't put this book down! I was fascinated with Charlie and his experiences. As I flipped the pages I couldn't help but think Steven Spielberg should be making this into a feature film! I don't wish to give the story away, but the only criticism I had was that I couldn't believe - after almost 4 months on the range, while letting go of weather balloons and seeing 7 foot white fluorescent creatures floating in the distance - that Charlie didn't believe in the experiences of the previous weathermen and that he was still so critical. I first became interested in this story after listening to Art Bell and George Norry on Coast-to-Coast AM (http://www.coasttocoastam.com) - home of the weird, the strange and the outright unbelievable! Good job Charlie!

It is very obvious that some reviewers of this book are avid readers... and thereby spoiled by professional storytellers. Charles Hall is simply telling his story from a first hand account. Anyone who has ever done any interviewing, counseling or professional listening of any type can appreciate his account over a slick, edited and professionally composed story any day. It is told as if he were sitting in front of you recounting the story. Complete with repeating details, one sided self-aggrandized appraisals and over attention to certain details that allow professionals, well aware of how the mind works, to appreciate the subtle undertones and clues that "Charlie" is subconsciously trying to point us to. He is only a bad storyteller to those that do not have the "ears to hear".

To answer a few points of criticism... Yes, "Charlie" describes himself in grandiose fashion. But are you aware of what the mental attitude was that was programmed into young airman in 1960's bootcamp? What the pervasive male ego-centered, can-do, achieve-all-at-any-cost attitude was in the 60's military? Charlie's story is merely reflecting that. A mind that was brainwashed and programmed on HOW to think, just by simply going into the military, let alone one that was totally confounded by his experiences.

Next, have many of you ever experienced "sheer terror"? Ever been exposed to someone that has? Know what it is like to be up close and personal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? If not, then you likely know little of how the mind finds ways to protect itself; denial, pretense, distraction, avoidance, obsession with trivial detail... This story has classical earmarks of a person who REALLY experienced something horrific, something difficult to come to real terms with years or even decades later. Now, I am not saying that I believe this story is absolute truth in every detail... But I would be hard pressed to dismiss more than a fact here or reconstruction there as fabricated. If the man had been run over by an elephant at the zoo, his efforts to come to terms with it would include stories about pachyderms... Many stories, perhaps confusing stories, but the central theme would be elephants and he'd accurately describe what it might be like to face the underside of an elephant. The man saw aliens, or at the very least what appeared to him to be aliens... of that I am convinced.

And besides, from a literary point of view... did you READ the whole story? At the very end with him and Smokey... "vegetable courage", and only getting it together to help his friend... The man KNOWS and ADMITS all through the book, albeit oftentimes indirectly, that he was scared out of his wits. It is everyone ELSE in the story that thought so highly of him... He tries to deny it over and over. It isn't an indirect way of 'bragging', it's an indirect way of admitting he was not worthy of such praise! The fact that it sounds so exaggerated is an indicator! They likely didn't praise him quite that much... it just FELT like it to HIM; reminding him of how he secretly felt the contrary inside. Something that sufferers of PTSD will do... They are embarrassed that they didn't do more, yet observers may think they are heroic for just surviving. It is something called "survivor's guilt", look it up.

Terror can do strange things to people... to the mind. It creates a tunnel vision effect. When there is something so outside the ability to comprehend, we have the ability to just push it from our minds... Even when it is right in front of us, we will focus on some small thing that we CAN understand and delete all else from our consciousness... like standing there 'stacking crackers'.

To those who have not read this book, I hope my words will help. My advice is to read the book as if you were sitting and talking with the man over drinks, or some similar situation. You'll have to fill in the parts where he is visibly shaken recounting details; details that he's told you before... or too much detail showing obsession with something he can't quite express directly. And no, you can't take it all verbatim, no more than you would believe every word your Uncle Harry tells you in his long stories... Or that you can explain why witnesses remember the same car accident differently. The mind's perspective has to be taken into account; rarely can a human being recall the complete unadulterated truth.

If you are looking for a book to explain the UFO phenomenon to you, tell you who they are and why they are here in plain simple words, this is not your book. But if you've read all those and had your fill, and you want to read a first hand account of a multiple contact scenario with all the imperfections that come with such 'traumatized' and 'from memory' re-telling, then THIS is your book!

Millennial Hospitality, by Charles James Hall, is it first in a trilogy of books, the others being Millennial Hospitality II: The World We Knew and Millennial Hospitality III: The Road Home. As with most trilogies you have to read the whole series in order to fully appreciate them.

I purchased this set of books a result of an interview I heard on the Coast to Coast AM radio program several years ago. The host of the program, Art Bell interviewed Paola Harris, author of the book "Connecting the Dots". Ms. Harris introduced Charles James Hall and his series of books. Mr. Hall presented his books as factual, and as documenting his contact with tall white aliens while stationed at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. I have a tape recording of the program and have listened to it several times, so I'm confident that I am correct about his claims that these books were true accounts.

The first book in the series states on the opening pages, that the book is a fictional account based on the author's actual experiences while serving in the United States Air Force. I was disappointed to note that the opening pagers of the second and third books are vaguer and indicate that the books are fiction. Obviously there is conflicting information here, and most certainly the books have no basis in fact.

All that being said, what a read they are!

If there is even a smidgen of truth at all in these books, they relate one of the most unsettling series of alien encounters that I have ever read. While Charles James Hall as a writer, is certainly not the J. K. Rowling of UFOlogy, his character Charlie Baker has to be the Harry Potter of the UFO aficionados. I couldn't put these books down.

The author walks you through months of his experiences as Charlie Baker, a weather observer launching weather balloons on several bombing ranges in the remote deserts of Nellis Air Force Base. Through winter freeze and sweltering summer heat he describes his experiences in agonizing detail, each involving encounters with "Range Four Harry" and other fluorescent alien beings who arrange themselves in a shape resembling a horse and float around the desert terrifying his peers. He meets males, females, and children, is protected by "the teacher", chased, shot at, and shot by the seven foot tall aliens while humans in Air Force Uniforms - apparently officers - observe. The aliens follow him into Las Vegas and from casino to casino. He sneaks into an alien space craft hanger gets away with it; tells you he is the smartest, bravest guy in the Air Force, and keeps the tall tails coming one after the other, each one better than the last, through all three volumes.

Read the books and make up your own mind, you'll be entertained in the worst case and captivated at best.

I really enjoyed all three volumes - they were page turners for me. I was also amused how many times the author described how the tall whites told him he was the 'bravest' and 'most intelligent' human because it reminded me of how we praise our own 'pets' (such as saying "good dog" etc.).
I would not be all that surprised if his experiences turned out to be true, because after all, truth is stranger than fiction.

Although some of the less-than-gushing Amazon reviews of Millennial Hospitality kept me dancing around a purchase for months, discretion finally surrendered to rabid curiousity. I'm happy to report that my investment was well-rewarded. Mr. Hall is no T.E Lawrence, and that's a good thing. His writing style is refreshingly naive. Seek elsewhere for High Art, this is a fictionalized, grunt's-eye-view of an exceptionally bizarre footnote to military history. The reader is forced to experience it solely through the emotions of the story's rather vulnerable main character. Yes, Charlie "Baker" seems to need to thump his chest with great frequency but, last time I checked, that's what soldiers do. The fact that the trilogy is said to be autobiographical only adds to it's Twilight Zone strangeness. If you crave the kind of dusty exotica usually unearthed at flea markets and in the musty corners of antique bookshops, look no further than Charles James Hall's Millennial Hospitality.

I was intensely interested in reading about the Tall Whites...and in the beginning Hall did get me into how it all began with him in the desert. But after so many reminders throughout the book of how accomplished the author was and how intelligent the Tall Whites thought he was compared to the other humans, it does make me wonder if this book is more of a personal diary really meant to be read by himself.

The most discouraging of all was after saving an alien child from getting lost, telepathically communicating with various Tall Whites, playing "toss the woodboard" with a Tall White woman, and even seeing the general with them, he still told himself he was hallucinating! I kept wondering, when is he going to wake up and just accept the whole darn thing? That whole book was all about denial denial denial. It just got tiring to keep reading about his doubts about the whole thing, when he could have spent the time getting more info from them and questioning them about their lives, habits, and views. Because that is why I bothered ordering the book.

I'm not sure I'm going to get the other books. I actually enjoyed Hall's writing despite the content. It was candid and earnest, even if much of the content was about how much praise he garnered from his military accomplishments and not about the aliens. I was wanting a lot more info and detail about the aliens themselves, not about how much the author didn't want to believe what was happening. What drove me crazy was whenever other people shared their encounters and asked him if he did, he'd become defensive and ask, "What alien? What are you talking about?" Just made NO SENSE to me when everyone around him talked about it. Just didn't know why he was so scared to admit what everyone else was admitting. Did he think he'd get arrested? Just made no sense to me.

If I kept seeing a UFO in my backyard for the 50th time, I would not keep telling myself I'm dreaming. I'd start becoming curious. Charles Hall was just NOT curious!

This is the first of the series (of four) of Charles Hall's rather controversial books reporting his experiences as an airman-weather observer in the USAF at Nellis AFB in Nevada in the early 1960s, and his alleged dealings with "Tall White" extraterrestrials who reportedly had a base there in a large area of desert sealed off by the US Government.

By adopting the pseudonym "Charlie Baker" and writing in the third person the author gets round the legal issue of claiming the account to be literally true, and there may be good reasons for this. However, the author implies that the written account is factual and in interviews claims this long, complex and detailed story about the Tall Whites and their interactions with senior USAF generals to be true.

"Charlie Baker" sets off neoprene weather balloons in the remote mountain/desert locations and interacts with both tall white alien adults and minors. The aliens come to trust him and insist that if the USAF must do this weather-balloon work at these specific locations, Charlie must be the man who does it and he must work there alone. An agreement is reached about this.

The details about the aliens are interesting, and so quirky and specific that they do somehow have the ring of truth about them. They are family-oriented and have close family bonds, similar to us in appearance but much thinner and more delicate in frame; their skin is paper-thin and almost literally white; their normal lifespan is approximately ten times that of humans but if injured, they take up to ten times as long to heal. They are partly telepathic but have an oral language too which sounds like the squarking of a meadowlark, but a few of them did over time learn English and could be understood by the author. The young adults are fast and athletic and can run at around 30 miles per hour, and the young females in particular can dress up and just about pass as human with the right clothes, wig and sunglasses.

The aliens are reported to be quick to anger, and carry small but lethal weapons no bigger than a pencil. They have individual personalities and different professions/specialities. Their tech is explained in some detail: the different types of drive systems employed in different vessels for different purposes etc. They may originate from or have a strong connection with the planetary system around the star Arcturus. They don't abduct humans but have occasionally injured or killed them, sometimes by accident. Their agreements with the US Government or at least with the USAF involve technology transfers in return for provisioning and secure base facilities.

If you think this all sounds far-fetched then you're not alone. It sure is. However, Hall has been consistent in reporting all this for several years now, and apparently three other people also confirm the essential elements of his story as true (I have not checked this out so can't confirm it).

The style is not that of a good writer: it's repetitive and laborious, and needs a skilled editor who understands the virtues of summary and brevity. The book could have been half or one third its actual length and would have been the better for it, and the other books in the series are basically more of the same.

If true, Hall's accounts are astounding and have huge implications for the hidden history of human-ET interactions. They're difficult to prove, and almost impossible to disprove - but a most interesting tale, nonetheless. This reviewer has had personal correspondence with Charlie Hall but remains unconvinced until such time as more corroborative evidence emerges, and in the meantime retains an open mind.

Charles Hall does interviews and public appearances about his books as real-life experiences, not "fiction." Other reviews on this site don't state that Hall's book is a new category: science FACTion. Whenever a military or intelligence professional writes a book about top secret activities, the standard way of avoiding murder, prosecution, or seizure or profits is to simply say a (literally true) story is just "fiction." That way the author can tell the truth, in detail without having to weather the disinfo or harassment of secretive regime hacks. Listen to Charles Hall's interviews. Read actual, informed alien/ufo websites (the best ones list their sources for you to judge). It's no secret that Millenial Hospitality isn't fiction; it's the only safe way a man like Hall can write about the subject safely.

Hall's best quality is his honesty and basic gentleness, his ability to set ego aside and report on harrowing, real-life experiences so that you can see him from outside and judge him, warts and all. His is an educated, scientific approach that's bold and tenacious. Remember, US military interactions with aliens is a real-life subject that some in the military don't want to admit openly, especially the kinds of activities that Hall tells us about. Meanwhile, a strong faction in the military wants us to know more about the subject because of possible dangers and deception in human-alien interactions that are hidden from the public. During the Cold War, whistleblowers of the sort were often murdered. Now, the lid is off and many ex-officials are talking openly. Good, true stories can be distinguished by their quality, their corroboration, and their internal consistency. Unlike military intelligence or CIA/NSA professionals, military men don't sign secrecy agreements. They can talk. See Col. Phillip Corso's story for a good example of this.

So, those reviews (above) that say Millenial Hospitality is complete fiction are wrong. Independent corroborating Air Force airmen have come forward to verify Hall's story. Those who can't comprehend the reality of his story often have one foot in the 20th century. Hall's book is required reading for any informed awareness of the US government's black budget and reverse-engineered technology sections. Of course Hall puts it under the "fiction" category---that's the only way he could safely tell the literal truth. Read the book and see why.