The Origins of the Steiger/Star People Questionnaire

In 1972, after I had completed my lecture at a major midwestern university, something caused me to glance over the heads of those still clustered around the edge of the stage. I noticed a woman who sat alone in a row of seats in the center section. She seemed to be waiting for something or someone. Then I saw the man seated in a row on the right side of the auditorium. He smiled. I nodded in his direction.

The two remained seated until the last members of the audience had shaken my hand and said their final farewells. Then (while neither of the two seemed particularly aware of the other) they stood and began to move toward me as I gathered my notes from the podium.

As they drew nearer, I perceived a man and a woman of about my age (at that time, mid-thirties), very pleasant in appearance, and somehow transmitting an aura of great friendliness. It seemed as though I recognized them, but my memory could not precisely place their names or what the circumstances of our prior meetings had been.

Then they stood before me, and I was compelled to stare into their eyes. They turned to look closely at one another, then returned their full attention to me. I think it was at that point that all three of us felt our eyes brim with tears.

"We ... we are recognizing each other," the woman said softly.

"Something like that seems to be occurring," I admitted.

"It is so beautiful," the man whispered. "So beautiful to come together again."

I had become very cautious over the years about being led into any of the games that people played at psychic and metaphysical gatherings. It was not uncommonplace for a man or a woman to rush up to a speaker at such conferences and seminars and challenge: "Do you remember me?" Invariably the question has to do with past life recollection and not Miss Murphy’s geometry class back in your sophomore year in high school. When the speaker did not recall a life together in Medieval Italy or Ancient, China, the challenger walked smugly away, convinced of his/her superior powers of metaphysical recall.

But this was different.

I was, somehow, being touched in a very special way. Strange, but profoundly familiar, images were flashing spasmodically from somewhere deep within me.

What was happening here?

The man and the woman introduced themselves to me, then to each other. She was a social worker. He was a psychologist. We shook hands, then walked to a nearby all-night coffee shop.

We talked for hours. Words poured unchecked from each of us.

We were delighted, rather than astonished, to discover that, in spite of having been reared in different parts of the country, different ethnic groups, different religions, and so forth, we had somehow managed to have nearly identical childhoods.

Certain profound experiences had occurred to us at the same ages, and we found ourselves sharing the full and true nature of those experiences without hesitation. Each of us seemed to know that confidences could be totally shared without fear of censure, mockery, or doubt.

We even discovered that we had certain physical anomalies in common, such as an extra vertebra, an unusual blood type, sensitivity to light, unusually keen hearing and smell, and unusually low normal body temperature.

But most important, beyond the extraordinary similarity of attitudes, opinions, and philosophies, was the confession that at a very early age we had each experienced contact with an intelligence outside of ourselves with whom we had maintained a regular or semi-regular communication. And, in addition to that personal guidance, we each had an overwhelming sense of mission set against a timetable that screamed for urgency in its commitment.

When we at last said our farewells, fully confident that we would somehow always be "in touch," I went back to my hotel room knowing that I had a great deal to sort out in my mind. Thoughts and memories were shouting against each other for immediate attention.

Ever since I was a child, I have felt as though I were really a stranger here on Earth. Whenever it was my turn to request a hymn in daily religion class, I always asked for "Heaven Is My Home."

I'm but a stranger here--Heaven is my home.

Earth is a desert drear--Heaven is my home.

Danger and sorrow stand, 'round me on every hand;

Heaven is my Fatherland, Heaven is my home.

There were other verses, but it was these simple lyrics that carried the greatest impact for me. I had always felt that I was an observer, rather than a participant, of this alien land in which I found myself. I never really felt estranged from the children around me, but I often experienced the notion that they were like a family of cousins whom I was visiting for a time before I returned home. Thank God, I had such warm and loving parents and a wonderful sister to make the sojourn bearable.

I suppose that psychiatrists and others who feel that they have some reasonable experience in charting the labyrinths of the human psyche might regard such thoughts as suggestive of one possessed of the creative spirit and its attendant neuroses. But I divulge the above thoughts in a desire to share, rather than as a literary stripping of my inner-self for careless examination.

Although I have some rather pronounced memories of a tall man and woman, both dressed in black, who stood looking down at me in my bed at night when I was very young, my first fully recalled contact with an extraterrestrial or multidimensional being took place when I was a child of five.

For several minutes, I was able to study him as he seemed intent upon eavesdropping on my parents in the kitchen of our Iowa farm home. I shall never forget the anticipatory tickle in the pit of my stomach when he turned slowly to look directly at me. I was able to perceive clearly his astonishingly large eyes, slightly slanted in a peculiar manner. To my childish assessment, he seemed the very personification of the woodland elf, and he appeared to give me a smile that, in retrospect, seemed conspiratorial, as if we were sharing a secret that was profound in its simplicity.

This multidimensional encounter and a near-death-experience at age eleven were quite likely responsible for setting me on my mission at a very early age.

In the opinion of the skeptic or the materialist, the whole matter of otherworldly beings no doubt smacks of fairy tales which encourage dramatized regressive behavior. But those men and women who have come face-to-face with such beings know that these guiding entities are far more firm and. purposeful than whimsy or fantasy.

Yet even with this awareness, the first time that a hooded master appeared before me in solid form, I did not welcome him at all in the way that I should have. I tried to hit him in the face.

The materialized entity was so solid in appearance, so unmistakably there, that I reacted in a very primitive manner. I thought that a prowler was in the house, and I cocked back my fist to give the intruder all that I had.

The blow was never delivered. Every ounce of my strength was instantly drained from me. I crumpled and folded like a toy balloon which has had the air totally released from within its elastic structure.

Then a voice, deep, sepulchral, yet comforting, said: "Don't be afraid. We will not hurt you."

The "we" has always puzzled me, for I was aware of only one entity before me.

I know that I received deep and meaningful instruction that night. I know this, even though I have no conscious memory beyond the reassurance that I would not be harmed. One of the most tangible results of that particular visitation is the book, Revelation: The Divine Fire.

Divine Fire was an important work in my own spiritual growth, and it has been a book that many men and women have told me was instrumental in altering their lives in a positive way. It is a book that seems to contain an extra charge of spiritual energy that has made connection with many people.

The questionnaire which I began distributing in 1967-‘68 was originally created in an attempt to establish a pattern profile of paranormally talented individuals, contemporary mystics, and/or spiritually inspired men and women. After the meeting with my two fellow “strangers in a strange land” in 1972, I began to include aspects which might identity those whom I had come to call “Star People,” after the Chippewa legend of star husbands and wives who had come from the stars and interacted with tribal members. Few of the Star People I interviewed had all of the characteristics listed below, but all of them had a good number of the following elements:

Compelling eyes

Personal charisma

Lower than normal body temperature

Unusual blood type-or even a combination of blood types

Transitional vertebrae, extra vertebrae, or fused vertebrae

Extra ribs

Hypersensitivity to electricity, electromagnetic fields

Lower than normal blood pressure

Chronic sinusitis

Thrive on little sleep and do their best work at night

Was an unexpected child

Sense that their true ancestors came from another world, another dimension, another level of consciousness, and yearn for their real home "beyond the stars"

Feel a great urgency, a short time to complete important goals, a special mission

Experience a buzzing or a clicking sound or a high-pitched mechanical whine in the ears prior to, or during, some psychic event or warning of danger

Had unseen companions as a child

Had a dramatic experience around the age of five which often took the form of a white light and/or a visitation by human-appearing beings who gave information, guidance, or comfort

Have since maintained a continuing contact with beings which they consider to be angels, masters, elves, spiritual teachers or openly declared UFO intelligences

Had a serious accident, illness, traumatic experience or near-death experience around the age of eleven or twelve which encouraged them to turn inward.

In 1987, I combined elements in this questionnaire with the research of Sherry Hansen, who had developed a similar questionnaire in 1970 as a counselor at the State University of New York at Stonybrook. We had both found that our interviewees were very often the “helpers” in society, and we found such individuals in all ethnic groups, all social strata, all occupations and professions.

In 1993, Sherry and I fashioned the questionnaire that you now perceive on our website, www.bradandsherry.com . Over 90% of the approximately 30,000 individuals who have returned the questionnaire report having experienced a sense of "oneness with the universe." A remarkable 86% claim some kind of contact with other-worldly or other-dimensional beings. The greatest single commonality is a desire to be of service to the planet and to all of its creatures, great and small.

Right now, all over the world, certain men and women appear to be responding to some remarkable internal stimulus, as if some time-release capsules are going off inside their hearts, brains, and psyches. They are having peculiar memories surface which remind them that their true ancestral home is a very distant, a very alien, "somewhere else."

These awakening Star Seeds are remembering that they came to Earth to perform a specific mission. And they are coming awake to the all-consuming conviction that they must do something to help humankind through some very difficult times which lie ahead for all citizens of the planet. They envision that those who dwell on Earth will have to endure terrible cataclysms, vulcanisms, geological changes, the collapse of social structures, the toppling of political establishments, maybe even the reversal of the planet's electromagnetic field, the shifting of its magnetic poles, and the irreversible effects of global warming.

Interestingly, the great majority of “aliens” are professionals who work in the "helping" vocations of our society. They are psychologists, social workers, nurses, medical doctors, chiropractors, school teachers, college professors, journalists, clergymen and clergywomen, police officers, and psychic counselors.

These extraterrestrials have been undetected for years, because they are by no means science-fiction monsters or little green persons. They are normal-appearing men and women within the species Homo sapiens. And they seem to have channelled their unique awareness and their special abilities into positive forces for structuring their lives--and the lives of those around them--in exceptionally productive ways.

As some internal triggering mechanism alerts them that it is now time to declare themselves and to prepare the planet for a fast-approaching period of transition and transformation, these men and women are quietly receptive to the knowledge that they have something extra which their Earth cousins seem to lack. The aliens among us know that they appear to have within them the seed left by the "Sons of God," who visited this planet in ancient times.