• NEW! LOWEST RATES EVER -- SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE VERY BEST PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! Welcome to The Paracast+, eight years young! For a low subscription fee, you can download the ad-free version of The Paracast and the exclusive, member-only, After The Paracast bonus podcast, featuring color commentary, exclusive interviews, the continuation of interviews that began on the main episode of The Paracast. We also offer lifetime memberships! Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! You can sign up right here!

    Subscribe to The Paracast Newsletter!

Books That Got You Started

Forums New posts
jkoci

jkoci

Watcher of the Skies
I was just wondering how many out there can remember any of the books that got you originally interested in the UFO topic. For me I can remember reading two when I was in middle/high school. One was Incident at Exeter and the other was Chariots of the Gods. I seem to remember sitting in the hall outside my Biology classroom in high school reading the later when my teacher saw the book and asked me why I was reading such nonsense. I don't recall my response.
 
The first book I can remember reading about the paranormal that wasn't fiction was a copy of TIME/LIFE's "Mysteries of the the Unexplained" in the school library. There were two in fact, one on ghosts and one on UFOs and Aliens. I believe I was 10 or 11 at the time.
 
This is back in the late 70's and early to mid 80's as when I became more and more interested in UFO's and the Paranormal.

Bud Hopkins' books
Spaceships of Ezekiel
Chariots of The Gods
Hanz Holzer books
Omni Magazine
TV shows and documentaries: (In Search of and Carl Sagan's shows)
 
The books that got me started were Ostrander and Schoeders book, ( 1st edition) Psychic Discoveries behind the Iron Curtain, even did a book report on it as a junior in high school. The others were, Zen and the Art of Archery, The Third Eye, Hanz Holder's ghost / haunting books. My grandfather was a Mason so some esoteric stuff was around the house.

My team mates and friends would talk about this stuff constantly. I think most of this started around 6th or 7th grade for me.

Laurence
 
Not a book but an article about the Roswell incident, living in NM I found it interesting enough to keep me looking for more info..
 
I bought a book from a catalogue at junior school, got me interested. Also, at an early age, I got hold of Unexplained magazine. Some people might remember this. The first edition came with a flexidisc of voices of the dead. Freaked me out for years.
 
I can't point to one book, but I remember (sadly) my Omni Magazine subsciption when I was a kid. I will say though that the biggest influence was via television: "In Search of" ... and Carl Sagan's Cosmos. That and a healthy (or not so healthy) dose of imagination.
 
TClaeys said:
I can't point to one book, but I remember (sadly) my Omni Magazine subsciption when I was a kid. I will say though that the biggest influence was via television: "In Search of" ... and Carl Sagan's Cosmos. That and a healthy (or not so healthy) dose of imagination.
Click to expand...

Yep, that would be me as well. I happen to remember a special issue of Omni that dealt with the UFO phenomenon. I remember an article about Bob Lazar and an interviews with Bob Dean.
The thing that really got me started was I dated a guy whose uncle was an astronaut who apparently seen some things. I never found out what, because they promised not to talk about it outside of the family, but the guy had about 10-20 UFO books. This guy was pretty matter of fact, so I doubt if he would have developed an interest in the subject if it hadn't been for his uncle.
 
Shortly after my own sightings in the late '70's, that put me into ufology, I somehow, (can't remember) got my hands on Bruce Cathie's 'Harmonic 33'. It was a bit over my head, but I made myself read and try to understand it. All through school, I was like a potted plant, but after my flapwave experiences, this vorascious desire to read and learn, came over me.
 
My brother was crazy into UFO's when I was a kid. He was 8 years older than me so he's amassed several books on the topic. I'd read them when he wasn't home because we weren't allowed to touch his stuff.
 
My school library also had several books about UFOs that I gravitated towards. The photographs, diagrams, and stories included in those books really captured my imagination.

My dad and I also liked to stay up late to catch cheesy old sci-fi movies together: I'd usually fall asleep a few minutes after they started. And although it only lasted a short time, we loved the old Project UFO TV show. I hadn't thought about it in years, but that was another big influence on my impressionable young mind.

<object width="445" height="364"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/4lXeKqQH0O4&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/4lXeKqQH0O4&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364"></embed></object>​
 
For me it was Edwards' old Flying Saucers Serious Business. It has flaws but what doesn't, and it mentioned Roswell over a decade before Marcel came out with his story.
 
"Above Top Secret" by Tim Good in 1987, after hearing him in a radio interview.

Later "Secret Life" by Dave Jacobs opened up my mind somewhat; that all this abduction stuff so frequently lampooned and dismissed in TV documentaries pushing the debunker-agenda might be off target, and that the phenomenon might be real after all. Reason was, in his book Jacobs was describing my life, in intimate fine detail, and he didn't even know me.
 
I wish I could remember what the first UFO book I read was but I can't. But the probability is high that it was something by Kevin Randle or Jenny Randles because I've got quite a few by each of them. I went from no knowledge or interest in this subject to utterly spamming my bookshelves with UFO material practically overnight. My interest started around 20 years ago so a lot of my books are from around that time frame, early-mid nineties and down. I've got about 200 of them and I'd say 3/4ths were bought in the first 3-4 years. I still pick one up once in a blue moon but it's nothing like it use to be where I'd often go to Borders or Walden Books and get 5-6 at a time. I was so hooked I even sprung around $250 for Jerome Clark's UFO Encyclopedias (3 volumes in the first edition and they were $70-$80 a piece or something like that!). No way I could afford something like that now.

Despite being green when I bought the majority of these I think my choices were quite good. I had decent instincts for smelling out the junk books (And I had no internet or PC in those days. I didn't become an internet nerd until around my late twenties. And I had no ties to UFO orgs or anyone interested in the subject. I was judging everything solely on my own instincts) But I did end up buying a few by Ed Walters and I'm now convinced he's a hoaxer. I've actually thrown two books in the garbage can: Cosmic Voyage by Courtney Brown and something by some character by the name of Ruth Montgomery. Both looked highly questionable but they were in the bargain bin for almost nothing so I thought, "What the hell?" Montgomery's hit the trash the same day I bought it when I started reading it and just a few pages in she tried assuring me that Benjamin Franklin had been a "walk-in." I held onto Brown's for a little bit solely because it was a hardcover despite knowing it was absurd. But eventually chucked it as well. Those two books were so ridiculous that being in my possession embarrassed me.
 
What an excellent question.

Way back in the day (1970's) I was very much into the Time/Life books centering around Military History and so forth, when one day I received a "special" introductory offer from the company, and a brand new beautifully printed 1st edition copy of the very first Man, Myth and Magic Encyclopedia:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0839360355/?tag=rockoids-20

It started my fascination into the occult, magic, paranormal activity and even the "UFO Phenomenon". I even began to develop a "witches" garden based on an illustrated pictorial they presented on the various species of plant a witch supposedly utilized.

Unfortunately when I went away to college my parents decided that the mass work was too large to keep in their new home, so they had a garage sale and the rest is history.

I have to say that without a doubt, this series had so much in it, that one could get lost for hours and hours in just the photography alone. It was from there that I began to buy other books on strange happenings, etc.
 
I read some of the Ruth Montgomery books from my public library back in the day. Also, Shirley Mclain although not ufo did kind of open up some esoteric doors as well as books about Edgar Caycee. The Bible and Flying Saucers was one of the first ufo themed books I read. The Timothy Goode books as well as the later Strieber books. I remember Flim Flam by James Randi which although I now find a little simplistic in it's debunking at least challenged me and also I remember a book called Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind. Anyway, it is an interesting question and takes me back.

---------- Post added at 06:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:52 PM ----------

Went back over the thread and saw Omni Magazine. I also read that and remember an old documentary on Chariots of the Gods.
 
I remember reading "Flying Saucers, Serious Business" back in the 60's, as well as an early book by Jacques Vallee. Plus one of my grandparents apparently had an interest in the paranormal, since there were copies of "Fate" magazine and even a book called "The Hollow Earth" lying around their house, which I read when I visited. My parents on the other hand were total skeptics. My own interest in the paranormal waned by the time I got to high school (more earthly concerns had developed) and didn't really resume until some web surfing on alternative religions led me to the Paracast. Today I'd call myself a paranormal agnostic. I think people who aren't dumb or deluded do have strange experiences, which they generally don't get much help in dealing with from conventional science/medicine. I don't think the paranormal explanations I've heard hold much water either. They're interesting to listen to though.
 
CapnG said:
The first book I can remember reading about the paranormal that wasn't fiction was a copy of TIME/LIFE's "Mysteries of the the Unexplained" in the school library. There were two in fact, one on ghosts and one on UFOs and Aliens. I believe I was 10 or 11 at the time.
Click to expand...

Holla! I too got started with this series, and around the ripe ol' age 8 or 9. I remember my school librarian giving me the stink eye when I would keep returning with more requests for the weird and strange -from hauntings to UFO's to oddities and tales of spontaneous combustion and onward. From that point on, what I was reading just got weirder by topic and by degree.
Communion was a mile marker of sorts as well.
 
Back
Top