In this article the Australian Close Encounter Resource Network (ACERN) open its files on research into 'the New Humans', Homo noeticus, 'the Star Children', or 'the new kids on the block', and compares that Australian evidence with the latest research from America and the United Kingdom.

There is a quote from the last chapter of the book The Aliens and the Scalpel (1999) by surgeon Dr Roger Leir who writes, "I believe that any mother that looks at her recently-born child in comparison with children born twenty years ago, will testify that there is a tremendous difference.

Some look upon the differences in the 'new humans' and say the reasons for this have to do with better prenatal care etc. In my opinion this supposition is nonsense, and in light of my more recent studies and exposure to the alien abduction phenomenon, I have come to the conclusion that the rapid advancement of the human species is due to alien intervention in our bodies and minds. UFO researcher Bob Dean has spoken many times of the development of a new humanity called Homo noeticus. This is a term coined by noted author John White who has been doing research into parapsychology and noetics (the study of consciousness) for many years" (Leir, p.191). Some of the unusual qualities Leir is referring to are:

"The question is why? I suggest the answer involves alien manipulation of human genetics" (Leir, p.192). More research will obviously be needed to conform these claims before the scientific and medical world will accept them. We first need to establish whether more gifted children than normal are being born and what their range of abilities are, and then we would need to eliminate other causes for such abilities such as better nutrition and parenting. Unfortunately, proving that an increased incidence of genius-level children is the result of alien intervention is made even more difficult in a society that denies that UFOs, aliens, and paranormal abilities even exist.

Another respected researcher, Colin Wilson, in his book Alien Dawn (1998, p.309) writes, "Not long before Andrija Puharich's death, I was asked to write an article about him, and rang his home in America. When I asked him about what he was working on, he told me he was working on the study of supernormal children. 'You wouldn't believe how many of these kids are out there. They seem to be on genius level. I know dozens, and there are probably thousands'." Wilson ends his book by writing, "And this, I suspect is the beginning of the change that the UFOs are working on" (p.309).

Richard Boylan, psychologist, clinical hypnotherapist, and secretary of the Academy of Clinical Close Encounter Therapists (ACCET) in America, not only acknowledges the evidence for Homo noeticus, but has a name for them. He calls them 'Star Kids'. He believes they exist in sufficient numbers to run workshops for both them and their parents. These workshops are called 'Helping Children Explore their ET Encounters' and are designed for those: "special children, and their parents, who have been touched by a heritage from the Stars.

They often seem like little adults in children's bodies. They often have a gaze, a knowingness that belies their years. Telepathic down-loading, often during the night, in what are made to seem like 'dreams' increases the range and perspective in which these children operate. The children seem at home with complex devices, which their parents struggle to master. Some of these children are what I call Star Kids. Defined as a child with both human and extraterrestrial origin.

The extraterrestrial contribution to the child's make-up may come from reproductive material, from genetic engineering, from biomedical technology, and telepathic consciousness linking, as well as from directed incarnation of an ET into a human body" (Boylan, 1999). He continues: "The child is conceived from parents who are themselves 'experiencers'. And the genetic material is in part extraterrestrial, or they have at least had their human genome altered by ET bio-engineering to bring out abilities beyond the average.

These children are either much brighter, more cosmically minded, more psychic, or all three, than their human peers. Some invariably remember a previous life in which they have lived with their ET family. I have found they have volunteered for a round of incarnation as a human on Earth, particularly at this pivotal time.

These kids are often confused at first by the primitiveness of Earth, their dense physical bodies, and often witless thinking and behaviour of their age mates, not to mention the adults they observe. These children really unnerve their parents when they talk about where they came from, or their 'real' ET parents 'up there!' When these children make profound observations about human foibles, more than one parent has shaken her head and asked herself, 'What kind of child have I had?' " (Boylan, 1999). ACCET offers these workshops to address such perplexity and outline a path of understanding about these children.

The workshops provide an environment where the children have freedom to use their advanced abilities such as telepathy, precognition, telekinesis, penetrating intuition, aura reading, and the close connection with their ET guardians without the ridicule and negative peer pressure they would face in ordinary schools.

The workshops also have a component to give parents guidance on how to help their Star Kids be all they can be. I wrote a letter to Richard Boylan inquiring about the Star Kids and a possible link to Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), because several of my clients with contact experiences have had some of their children diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. He replied that, "Some seem to think there is an ADD or ADHD disorder in Star Kids. What I think is the case is that Star Kids are crushingly bored by regular school and other pedestrian information presentations, and seem distracted with wandering attention as a result of their boredom ('How slow the teaching goes, I can't pay attention to something presented that slowly, that simply, with that much repetition'). I think it is worthy of comment that as little as twenty years ago the ADD syndrome was unknown."

From books written by 'contact experiencers', we hear that many can recall having been taught in spaceships, or special ET night schools. Author and experiencer Whitely Strieber wrote about attending such a school as a child in his book The Secret School (1997). Many of the people that complete my encounter experiences questionnaire mention having information and knowledge that they had not consciously learnt. This may be in the form of general information, ecological awareness, or sensitive, secret information. It may be precognitive knowledge, even mathematical formulae, physics, and spiritual concepts.

These individuals are often very confused about what to do with the information, as well as being bewildered about how they just know this stuff. It is often beyond anything they may have learnt at school or educational establishments. It is also interesting that it is not necessarily only down-loaded to our academics or scientists, although that happens too, but to many people from all walks of life, like the farmer who suddenly becomes knowledgeable about complicated mathematics or quantum physics; or the builder who finds he has information on anti-gravity devices. Added to this are experiencers who suddenly start to speak a language or languages that they say feel more comfortable to speak than their primary language, such as English. They also find they have a desire to write in an unusual language or script and feel compelled to draw unusual symbols or pictures.

Homo noeticus or Star Kids are being recognised in America, but what is the evidence in Australia to support the existence of these 'new kids on the block', which is my name for them? From my research I have become increasingly convinced that there is growing evidence to support the hypothesis that they do exist. For example, a young mother struggling to come to terms with her own contact experiences said her main concern in writing to me was not for herself, but for her young son. "I am seeking someone to listen and understand", she wrote. "Believe me I am not filling his head with stuff, rather it is him telling me things. My little boy is four and a half years old, and yes, he does have a vivid imagination. But he does and says things that there is no way he would have picked up anywhere else.

He knows what I am thinking, finishes my sentences for me, and feels pain when I do. Lately he has been talking about 'baddies' that steal him. He's worrying the hell out of me. I try to make light of it and support him at the same time. He insists it's true. He is very blasé about it, and also says he will introduce them to me one day. 'Some aliens look like us', he said. 'There are blue ones too.' Today, he was unwell and I kept him at home. He was chattering about his 'ghosts' in the bedroom which were like teletubbies. He said they float, not walk, and they talk to him all the time. He has the knack of answering my questions before I ask them, and this morning he told me what he wanted for lunch, which was exactly what I was going to suggest. I find this happens so much that it becomes the norm.

He tells me details of the aliens in such a matter-of-fact way it has actually made it easier for me to cope with the concept." "I still have my doubts about their intentions, but can see he is unharmed and somehow accepts it as part of everyday life. He doesn't seem traumatised and if he says those ones are scary (meaning the Greys, I think), he doesn't appear to worry too much and understands that they are scary looking, not evil. He says that they come through the walls and can become invisible when need be.

They visit him apparently to teach him things, more than he learns at school." "For a child to say they only come out at night, come through walls, float not walk, become invisible, but are still around, astounds me. It is something that, as an adult, I am just reading about as the characteristics of ETs. He once was sick with flu and said to me, 'I didn't want to go in the spaceship'. I asked when this happened and he said, 'Last night I went with you mummy, I didn't want to go'. I asked if the 'ghosts' took us and if it was the small ones, and he nodded." 'They are fantastic you know mummy, really great, you should meet them. Maybe I will show you them one day.' He said he had an 'aliens' dream.

They made him 'big', and daddy and I were there. We didn't stop them. Why? He said he was bigger, not taller, and that he liked going through the walls. He mentioned the tall dark aliens grabbing him and hurting him. They hurt his shoulders when they grabbed him and were doing something in his tummy, they also stuck their fingers in his ears. His third-eye area hurts today (referring to the space in the middle of the forehead, believed to be the centre for clairvoyance, clairaudience, and psychic abilities).

He also talks about his dream in which 'the pavement is shaking and breaking up'." Such information about possible earth disruptions or global catastrophes is common with experiencers. Elizabeth Robinson (1998) talks about how she copes with her daughter Jessica's contact experiences and how au fait Jessica is with this. For example, in recounting a dual-conscious experience, Elizabeth writes, "Suddenly, what seemed like seconds later, I felt an enormously commanding energy presence in the room.

Feeling slightly dizzy, I sat next to Jessica. She had her head down and was busily writing out the spelling words that I had asked her to write. Then I noticed that Jessica had stopped her work again and raised her head, staring motionless ahead of her. Mummy she began, 'I think the aliens are here.' I realised then that she too was picking up the energy presence. 'How do you know I gently inquired?' 'I just know!' she replied." I have had numerous accounts of young children in recent years that seem to be equally as comfortable with their ET visitors; many times confronting their parents with rather bizarre and challenging information for them to acknowledge.

One five-year-old girl said to her mother "You're not my real parents. They are in fairyland. You are just here to look after me." On another occasion she said to her mother, "I don't really look like this." Her mother asked, "What do you look like?" Her daughter replied, "I am different 'inside'." Her mother replied, "What do you look like inside?" And her daughter said, "I can't tell you. It would frighten you."

ACERN acts as a resource overseas as well as within Australia. I am contacted regularly by a mother with a young teenager, who reside in the UK. She often struggles to support her fifteen-year-old son, especially as his maturity, wisdom and abilities are bewildering for her, and sometimes she even feels well out of her depth in attempting to understand what he tells her. The abilities he displays are still considered to be paranormal. He regularly has conscious out-of-body experiences (OBEs) in which he 'astrally' goes to distant places to perform healing.

He has been having contact experiences since he was a small baby. His mother writes, "My son says it's the ETs who usually choose the parents, not the children. He says the children are genetically altered before they are born. They are given ET DNA."

I had sent her a description of Richard Boylan's Star Children as I wanted to see how the information resonated with her and her son. She said, "The more I read of Mr Boylan's description of the Star Children, the more it fitted my son. He often complains about the bulkiness of his body, saying how limiting it is. He talks way beyond my comprehension and gets annoyed with me for not understanding. As you know, he is usually very tight lipped about his experiences, and I asked him why this is. He explained to me that it is very hard to trust anyone because you never know who they are working for.

I thought this was stretching things a bit far, but he was very serious when he asked me if I thought it was 'strange' that, after hundreds of years of slow progress, we had suddenly come on in leaps and bounds in just the last fifty years. According to him, 'they' (and he includes himself) gave us the knowledge. They showed us how to split the atom and harness nuclear fuel so that we might finally meet them as equals.

However, he says angrily that we turned all this knowledge into power over others less fortunate as, for example, with the atomic bomb. He told me that we were warned that we should only harness eighty percent of nuclear power, as any more is too much for our use and is dangerous. He says that naturally we didn't listen. He spoke angrily because he said that 'they' had made a mistake in teaching us those things. They assumed that we were ready." The mother adds, "Coming back to Mr Boylan's workshop, my son thinks it's a great idea, as he still has painful memories of being treated differently at school and is glad that this man (Richard Boylan) cares enough and is clever enough to recognise these galactic visitors and nurture them to obtain their full potential." Despite regular, conscious OBEs, and the healing performed in this state, this young man, according to his mother, is sometimes exasperated by how little we know, and when his mother wanted to learn a recognised form of spiritual healing, he responded by saying that the method was rather 'primitive' and he could teach her a better way.

I have only briefly told some of the accounts of the new kids on the block, and what seem to be rapid changes apparent in some of our children. This suggest a reprogramming, not only of our genetic make-up, but a deliberate and continuous non-human educational program facilitating a super-awareness with abilities that, up till recently, would have only been seen in a select few. As I continue to research and explore these accounts from parents who have had contact, I become more convinced by the possibility that we are indeed witnessing a rapid evolution of the species on many levels of awareness. If this is indeed the case, then it is vital to recognise it and instigate programs to assist our new kids on the block to integrate and grow healthily and with the correct support, as is being pioneered by ACCET and Richard Boylan. If any parents feel that their children exhibit any of these characteristics they are welcome to contact me.