Mount Shasta's never been a popular celebrity resort town like Jackson Hole, Wyoming, or Park City, Utah - the kind of place where you might bump into somebody famous or a prominent public figure (Bigfoot notwithstanding). This is more of the kind of town where people unwittingly become famous for all the wrong reasons.

And when it comes to Mount Shasta, there is probably nobody who fills that role more brilliantly than a former resident and channeler named Dorothy Martin.

Dorothy Martin's strange journey begins as a bored housewife living in a Chicago, Illinois suburb during the 1950's; she had an abiding interest in theosophy, and had read the works of Godfre Ray King, also known as Guy Ballard, who founded the I AM religion after meeting the Ascended Master Saint Germain on the slopes of Mount Shasta.

Dorothy began experimenting with 'automatic writing' (a form of spirit channeling), and was soon in touch with Space Beings from a planet called 'Clarion', who warned her that an imminent disaster was due to fall upon humanity.
Through her channeled writings, Dorothy attracted an odd group of spiritual seekers around her, and a weird UFO Contactee cult evolved out of it.

Unbeknownst to Dorothy, a couple of scientists seeking to study the kind of fanaticism that pervades religious cults infiltrated her group after a local newspaper published one of her doomsday screeds.

The messages from the Space Beings, who Dorothy began to refer to as the 'Guardians', indicated that the world would end by a flood on December 21st, 1954--but the faithful (meaning anyone gullible enough to believe her) would be lifted up off the planet to safety in an alien mothership.

As the fateful date approached, Dorothy's circle of spiritual seekers were unshaken in their faith of the Space Beings warnings, and had left jobs, college, spouses, and some had even given away money and possessions in advance of their departure aboard the flying saucer.

On December 21st, the group expected that a saucer would land in Dorothy's backyard to pick them all up at four o-clock, just before the world ended.

So they gathered inside her house and waited.

The prophecy was well publicized by the local press, and outside Dorothy's house, a curious crowd of strangers and journalists began arriving to see just what would happen.
The tension must have been palpable as the minutes ticked off. Dorothy had previously channeled a message that everyone was to remove all the metal from their clothing, including buckles, jewelry, buttons, zippers, bobby-pins, and clasps, and so everyone was put through a metal-removal screening process to ensure that they would be ready to board the flying saucer when it landed.

The local press was eagerly interested in information about the groups status throughout the day, and pestered them with repeated phone calls. One of the members was deputized to handle the calls, and always responded with a terse "No comment," and shut off further questioning by hanging up the phone.

Dorothy was described as being in a manic and ecstatic state, dashing from room to room and looking out the windows, scanning the skies. But by 5:30 p.m. no flying saucer had landed, and the mood in the house was beginning to look glum . . . an uneasy silence fell over the crowd of believers. So Dorothy turned on the television and instructed everyone to watch carefully for any secret coded messages that might be being transmitted to them from planet Clarion--but nobody could make anything out.

The question on everyone's mind that nobody wanted to talk about but was unavoidable had to be asked. Why hadn't the aliens landed? Several suggestions were cautiously voiced to explain the failure of the saucer's arrival.

One possibility discussed was that the presence of strangers around the house might have caused the spacemen to veer off. A few other suggestions were floated, but in the end, the most satisfying one that the group came up with was that this afternoon had just been meant as a training "alert", so that when the Clarions finally arrived the group would know the drill and be ready. The Space Beings were testing the group's 'readiness'.

Dorothy, undeterred, channeled another message saying that following the 'alert', at half past midnight, the flying saucer would really appear this time-- it was still on its way to pick up the believers, and it would not wait for anyone who was not ready. So all those who remained excitedly went out into the backyard to hold a vigil, joyous again in anticipation, and spent a cold, bitter, freezing winter night shivering and waiting for the UFO to land.

By 3 a.m., when the spaceship still had not arrived, everyone pretty much retired to bed in disappointment. Dorothy broke down and began crying.

Around 4:45 a.m. another telepathic message was channeled to Dorothy from the Space Beings, in effect, explaining that the 'God of Earth' had decided in the last minute to spare the planet from destruction: "The little group, sitting up all night long, had so much light that God had saved the world from destruction."

And that is the story how the world was saved from an impending apocalypse one wintery night in Chicago on December 21st, 1954.