Paul Andrews, an entrepreneur of the unexplained who helped found a convention where U.F.O. believers could discuss extraterrestrial encounters, attend lectures on interstellar science and don night-vision goggles to search for alien vehicles in the starlit sky, died on June 30 at his home in Walnut Creek, Calif. He was 77.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Abigail Lewis, who did not provide a cause.
A believer in the paranormal since childhood, when he recalled witnessing beings of light visiting his sister, Mr. Andrews introduced Contact in the Desert in 2013 at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center in Southern California, not far from Palm Springs, in an area popular with saucer pilgrims.
The annual event, which became known as the Woodstock of U.F.O.s, drew thousands of people seeking fellowship, adventure and affirmation.
“You could go there and share your contact experience, your experience with inter-dimensional beings,” Alan Steinfeld, a self-described consciousness explorer and the author of “Making Contact: Preparing for the New Realities of Extraterrestrial Existence,” said in an interview. “It was a really safe environment — probably a little way out for some people, but not for us.”
For around $250 a ticket, the weekend-long convention provided multiple tracks of programming, including sessions on contact experiences, crop circles and government cover-ups (a perennial crowd-pleaser). Night-vision goggles were available to rent for $5.
Speakers included astronauts, scientists and U.F.O. beat reporters like Art Bell, George Noory and Linda Moulton Howe. “These are respected professionals with published papers and books,” Mr. Andrews said in 2016. “We weed out the crazies.”
Contact in the Desert was not his first metaphysical rodeo. In the late 1980s, Mr. Andrews ran the Whole Life Expo, a traveling trade show and symposium for the emerging New Age lifestyle.
Vendors sold massage devices, healing crystals, food dehydrators, meditation aids, juicers, healing algae, Tibetan singing bowls and many, many varieties of incense.
Timothy Leary spoke about tripping out (of course). Uri Geller bent tablespoons with his mind. Other lectures explored universal love, holistic health, lucid dreams, aura reading and past-life regression.
Mr. Andrews shared his near-death experience after a car accident. He saw his spirit hovering over his body, he said, willing itself to return.
“I then knew absolutely I was more than my physical body,” he said in 1994 at the Whole Life Expo in Manhattan, according to The New York Times. “I existed as a spiritual entity.”
Whole Life Expo grew rapidly. By the late 1990s, it was drawing thousands of people at events around the country. When U.F.O.s became a more frequent topic of discussion among attendees, Mr. Andrews began pondering whether to spin off the subject into a new conference.
“There’s nobody really organizing all this information and presenting credible, large live events,” he said in 2016 on the podcast “Truth Be Told Paranormal.” “And so I feel that that’s a way that I can make a difference.”
He started Contact in the Desert with Victoria GeVoian, a vendor at Whole Life Expo who also managed the Joshua Tree Retreat Center.
“Paul created a platform where all of these ideas that were emerging in society could reach the average person’s mind,” Ms. GeVoian said in an interview. “The key thing is he created physical places where people could go to discuss things that maybe they didn’t feel comfortable talking about in their own communities.”
Susannah Crockford, an anthropologist at the University of Exeter who studies spirituality, religion and conspiracy theories, said in an interview that overlapping ideas among the Whole Life and U.F.O. crowds positioned Mr. Andrews to build businesses catering to both.
“These are people who are looking for something other than the mainstream, but who also believe that things are being hidden from them,” she said. “So these events feel almost like a pilgrimage for people. They really feel like they’re coming home.”
Paul Howard Andrews was born on Nov. 15, 1948, in Elizabeth, N.J. His father, Howard Andrews, was an executive at a linoleum company. His mother, Erma (Wicks) Andrews, was a kindergarten teacher.
One night when Paul was 4, he went into his sister’s bedroom and discovered that she had visitors.
“There were some kind of luminous beings of light in there — obviously not human, you know, communicating with her in a nonverbal way,” he said on the “Truth Be Told Paranormal” podcast. “I thought it was part of a fairy tale.”
Apparently, it was not.
“We spent a little bit of time with these beings,” he said. “They were mainly interested in my sister, and then they left, and I went back to bed.”
The visitors returned several times, he said, each time departing the same way: “They left through the wall. They didn’t climb through a window or anything like that.”
When his sister told their parents about these episodes, their mother was dismissive, but their father was sympathetic and wanted to hear more. Later, Paul learned from a relative that his father had once experienced something similar.
“And so I’ve come to believe that this phenomenon, this visitation phenomenon, runs along family lines,” he said.
Mr. Andrews studied at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and after graduating in 1972, he attended workshops led by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the psychiatrist known for her research on dying and grief, and who studied life-after-death experiences as well. He also connected with Robert Monroe, the radio broadcaster who wrote “Journeys Out of the Body” (1971).
In 1976, Mr. Andrews moved to California, where he sold a guided meditation machine developed by Mr. Monroe, as well as the Brain Tuner, a cranial electrotherapy stimulation device designed by the inventor Robert Beck.
He also spoke at health and spirituality events.
“Paul was really an innovator,” Mr. Steinfeld said. “He wasn’t just making money from this stuff. He was really into these subjects. I think that’s a big part of why he was successful.”
Mr. Andrews married Ms. Lewis, his partner of 36 years, in 2021. She was the publisher and editor of Whole Life Times, a holistic health magazine, for 24 years.
In addition to her, he is survived by their daughter, Caitlyn Valle, and two grandchildren.
Contact in the Desert was sold to new owners in 2023. At the most recent event, held in May, the lectures covered topics like “Extraterrestrials and Our Multidimensional Nonlocal Reality,” “The Disappearances: Why They Are Happening and What It Means” and “The Telepathy Code Unlocked: Are Encounters with Non-Human Intelligence Preparing Humanity for a New Language?”
“Most people coming to our show,” Mr. Andrews told Coachella Magazine in 2018, “really just want the truth.”
