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Your Paracast Newsletter — August 20, 2017


Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
August 20, 2017
www.theparacast.com


A Possible Early UFO Abduction Case Explored on The Paracast

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This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris are joined by veteran UFO researcher Jerome Clark to interview David Booher, author of “No Return: The Gerry Irwin Story, UFO Abduction or Covert Operation?” The book includes a foreword from Jacques Vallee. In 1959, two years before the Betty and Barney Hill UFO abduction, a young soldier had a mysterious experience on a lonesome road in Utah, where the arrival of a blazing object was followed by a 24-hour blackout. Just what did happen to Irwin? As Booher details this incredible experience and its possible implications, Clark provides the historical perspective and asks compelling questions to help flesh out this amazing tale and how it impacted Irwin’s life.

Chris O’Brien’s Blog: Our Strange Planet

Tim Beckley’s Site: Conspiracy Journal - Unfair and Unbalanced!

After The Paracast -- Available exclusively to Paracast+ subscribers on August 20: Tim Beckley joins guest cohost J. Randall Murphy to discuss the UFO club follies as Gene explains what happened when the late UFO jokester, Jim Moseley, attempted to join one of the early organizations, NICAP. Tim explains when he and colleagues, Jim and cohort Gray Barker, were tossed out when attempting to enter — or crash — an alleged secret APRO meeting. He moves on his study of sci-fi author Philip K. Dick and synchronicity, and the unfavorable reactions when paranormal and sci-fi fans mix. When Tim recounts two episodes of possible synchronicity in his own life, he comes up against Randall’s skepticism.

Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums. Check out our new YouTube channel at: The Official Paracast Channel

Another Look at UFO Club Follies
By Gene Steinberg

During a simply fascinating and entertaining episode of The Paracast, I sat back and listened to my old friends, Jerome Clark and Allen Greenfield, engage in a spirited debate. It was so enjoyable that I had them return for further discussions on After The Paracast.

Now these debates were always friendly. There wasn’t a hint of malice or hate. It was just two people who happen to disagree about some things.

They are, however, individuals, not representatives of any UFO research organization, nor are they necessarily typical of debaters. As you know, things can sometimes become extremely personal and inflammatory.

And when people get together to form some sort of club, things can sometimes get way out of hand. Some of it might be due to egos and personality conflicts. Sometimes it’s a power play, a matter of politics where one or more people want to achieve a higher status at the expense of others.

It’s not always pretty!

I confronted a little of that with my first UFO group back in the early 1960s. As you know, I first met some of my closest friends as pen pals, through the pages of the Saucer Club News section of Ray Palmer’s Flying Saucers magazine. There was nothing like it, before or since.

In those years, I lived with my parents in a two bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, New York. One of my fellow travelers, Alan Katz, lived across the Hudson River in New Jersey, and thus I visited him one day to cement a deal to merge our little saucer clubs. The goal was to quickly boost the tiny memberships so they wouldn’t seem so tiny. Make that less tiny.

We spent a pleasant afternoon, I thought, and I arrived home pleased at the success of our deal.

It didn’t take long for things to fall apart. I don’t even know what actually happened, except to discover one day that our little arrangement was over. My supposed friend had decided to go his own way, but he did it in a decidedly nasty fashion. He posted an item in Saucer Club News proclaiming his freedom, his desire to exploit his alleged newfound independence.

Not long thereafter, Alan mostly vanished from the UFO field. I heard nothing further about him, and so I just went about my business.

At 18 years of age, I got my first real job, as Managing Editor of Jim Moseley’s Saucer News. I went to school early in the day, and, when classes were over, I took the subway to Jim’s small Fifth Avenue office.

Now Jim was an expert at managing feuds with other magazines and UFO groups. Early on, he got on the wrong side of Richard Hall, then the temperamental office manager at NICAP.

One day, Jim telephoned Hall and asked about a matter, only to suddenly be confronted with the accusation that he was recording the conversation.

The conversion went downhill from there.

Now Jim was the ultimate luddite. He never owned a tape recorder. He never put an answering machine on his telephone and, in fact, when phone companies offered digital voicemail systems, he never bothered to add the feature even though it was relatively cheap. Jim never even owned a personal computer, and, through the end of his life, did all his writing via ballpoint pen or with a Smith Corona electronic typewriter.

Indeed, after typewriters went out of fashion, Jim would buy several, to have spares in case he wore one out. He also stocked up on ribbons.

So the possibility that Jim would ever record someone’s conversation was downright absurd.

Now in addition to my run-in with that young UFO club leader, I had inadvertently found myself on the bad side of Coral Lorenzen, head of APRO. How it happened surprised me, because I was a loyal member of the group. But when I published a summary of a story she wrote up for Fate magazine, on the classic Socorro, NM sighing, she wrote me and complained.

According to her, I had no right to summarize that report. But what about fair use I asked?

Her patronizing response sarcastically remarked on my youthful indiscretion. I told her, in turn, that I would have none of it, and that was it!

Well, except for an incident over a decade letter when I met her and her husband, Jim, at a UFO convention. When she saw my name tag, she immediately reminded me of that long forgotten episode.

I’ve talked to others who have had absolutely wonderful experiences with the Lorenzens, recalling the care with which they approached their work, the respect they showed to the people who worked with them at APRO, and especially the witnesses to the UFO encounters that they investigated.

Maybe it was just a case of oil and water. It hardly matters anymore.

My encounters with Hall also had their moments. On one occasion, coming home from a visit with a fellow UFO writer, I stopped in at NICAP headquarters and offered my services as a volunteer. They sat me down before a typewriter, and I spent several hours writing summaries of UFO sightings that evidently were included in some form in a large compendium of cases, “The UFO Evidence.”

I was glad to have helped. But the second time I showed up at NICAP, things had changed for the worse. This time I was accompanied by Allen Greenfield, Rick Hilberg, and a friend from Brooklyn, Marty Salkind. Well, when Hall saw me, he shook a finger at me and sternly announced that I wasn’t welcome there.

Did something happen between the first and second visits? The best I can tell, it was because I was now working at Saucer News, and Hall might have felt I was a spy for the enemy, or something. A big flap erupted from that unpleasant encounter.

Back at the hotel, we put our heads together and decided to call Ray Palmer about it. Allen, Rick and I had visited him some months earlier and he, in turn, wrote an article for Flying Saucers that poked fun at the NICAP acronym in its title, “No Investigations Can Actually Proceed.” Jim launched a campaign to convince NICAP to fire Hall. The half-serious motto was “Hall Must Fall!”

A decade later, I met Hall at the same UFO convention where I had that unfortunate encounter with Ms. Lorenzen. Well, he smiled, shook my hand, and let bygones be bygones.

Now during NICAP’s heyday, when Hall was running the office, they wouldn’t even let Jim become a member after that nasty phone call. When he applied, his application was rejected, his check returned. Jim’s solution was to use a friend’s name and address. My NICAP membership, however, remained intact. They never rejected my payments, or maybe I wasn’t important enough for them to notice.

So when I hear about the recent controversies and resignations from MUFON, an organization that got its start way back in 1969, I am not surprised.

Just as the prevailing theories about the origin of UFOs haven’t changed all that much over the years, the way UFO groups behave isn’t altogether different.

I would have hoped for better. But I have come to understand why comedian Groucho Marx once remarked that he’d never join a club that would have him as a member.

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