Southern Africa Unexplained

Case · UFO Afrinews No 4, March 1991

The 'Crem Alphabet from Reticuli': Fact, Fiction or Fantasy?

1989 · Pretoria (document signed 'Captain James Van Greunen, SAAF Intelligence, Pretoria'), South Africa

What was reported

Maria Sullivan, formerly assistant to Dutch philologist Professor Marius Valkhoff at Wits, examines the two-page 'Crem Alphabet from Reticuli' that van Greunen claimed was copied aboard the craft supposedly shot down by a SAAF laser cannon over Botswana in May 1989, signed as a SAAF Intelligence captain and dated August or October 1989. The 'dialect' has 132 characters, each a three-letter English sound such as AKA or REF. Applying Valkhoff's tests of consistency, logic and repeat pattern, she finds three long 'translated' sentences in which no symbol recurs, unrelated shapes for characters sharing a K or S sound, and a 'BES' character of absurd complexity beside a simple 'BOT'. The translations, announcing an exodus to Earth, the drying of the seas and enslavement of humanity under a leader 'Akron', read like juvenile space opera. She dismisses the whole thing as fabrication.

What Hind made of it

Sullivan can only dismiss the alphabet and its translated sentences as a complete fabrication; she calls the van Greunen saga one of the most impudently successful confidence tricks in recent ufology, and wonders whether 'Akron' is a misspelling of Elizabeth Klarer's Akon.

Explanation offered
Fabricated by James van Greunen; a civilisation crossing interstellar distances would have evolved simpler writing, not more cumbersome

In their words

  • He is either a genius --- or an Alien!

    Maria Sullivan, spread 16

  • Godzilla couldn't have put it better!!

    Maria Sullivan, spread 17

  • one of the most impudently successful confidence tricks in recent ufological history.

    Maria Sullivan, spread 17

Cross references

  • Case No 21 (Botswana crash)
  • Afrinews No 3, page 7, item (c)
  • Elizabeth Klarer's Akon
  • Correction footnote, p.28

Connected

  • Whose Face Wore the Smile?Case fileNamed person

    Elizabeth Klarer: Dave H. confided only in his wife and Klarer; Maria Sullivan wonders if van Greunen's 'Akron' is Klarer's Akon. Klarer is also named in 08-06-1 and cross-referenced in 15-17-1.

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 4 (March 1991), spread 15-17

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