THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
August 13, 2017
www.theparacast.com
The Teen Ufologists of the 1960s Are All Grown Up on The Paracast
The Paracast is heard Sundays from 3:00 AM until 6:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, the Boost Radio Network, the IRN Internet Radio Network, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.
SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY A PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! We have another radio show and we’d love for you listen to it. So for a low subscription fee, you will receive access to After The Paracast, plus a higher-quality version of The Paracast free of network ads, and chat rooms when you sign up for The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes, the Paracast+ Video Channel, episode transcripts, Special Features, Classic Episodes and there’s more to come! We’ve just begun to add podcasts and videos from Paul Kimball’s “Other Side of Truth.” Check out our new lower rates, starting at just $1.49 per week, plus our “Lifetime” membership and special free print and eBook book offers! For more information about our premium package, please visit: Introducing The Paracast+ | The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio.
This Week's Episode: With the help of a section called “Saucer Club News” in Ray Palmer’s Flying Saucers magazine in the 1950s and 1960s, enterprising young people got together to form their own UFO clubs, or just looked to meet up with others with the same interests. That’s where such people as your humble host of The Paracast and such notables as Tim Beckley, Jerome Clark, Allen Greenfield and Rick Hilberg got their starts. In a single virtual room, Gene’s old friends will reminisce about their early work in the UFO field. The political and cultural climate, how both may have impacted early research efforts, are also debated. Guest co-host is J. Randall Murphy.
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 13: Gene and guest cohost J. Randall Murphy present a continuation of the discussion involving former teen UFO researchers, featuring Jerome Clark and Allen Greenfield. The discussion more or less begins with a look at the early influences of the UFO saga, and how such notables as Ray Palmer, John Keel and Jacques Vallee may have contributed to the subject. You’ll particularly enjoy Randall’s efforts to tame the always talkative Allen Greenfield. Jerry explains why he feels that is no real UFO cover-up, that it’s just a matter of anomalous reports being set aside by the military — out of sight, out of mind. Allen explains how he managed to create some UFO flaps in the 1960s, and he also recalls an actual UFO event that began with one of the late Jim Moseley’s notorious UFO hoaxes.
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
Ufology — Still Living in the 1950s
By Gene Steinberg
Many Paracast probably aren’t aware of how the UFO field we all cover came together. The common perception is that most of it got started in the wake of the coverage of a single event, Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of nine strange objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier in the State of Washington. Thus, June 24, 2017 represented the seventieth anniversary of the event, but it largely passed unheralded.
That it all came together may be an accident of history. Had there been major news developments elsewhere on that fateful day, the Arnold sighting might have been a non-event. While Ray Palmer once referred to Arnold as “the man who started it all” in promoting his own UFO-oriented magazines, that is not exactly true.
There have been sightings of strange objects in the sky over the centuries, more or less unnoticed in modern times until researchers began to comb the literature. In the days during and after World War II, people saw foo fighters and ghost rockets. And, no, the former isn’t a rock band that came together in the 1990s.
Some date the saucer era back to the works of Charles Fort, who wrote a quartet of books in the early part of the 20th century with an outsized influence that exists to this very day. Fort cataloged loads of anomalous events that included such things as frogs falling from the skies and, of course, UFOs. He even suggested they might be spaceships.
This happened, once again, long before Kenneth Arnold. Yet the man who probably most influenced the modern UFO era was a retired Marine, Major Donald E. Keyhoe, who made a living as both a pulp and aviation writer. Beginning with “Flying Saucers from Outer Space,” he wrote several best-selling books about UFOs and became a go-to expert on the subject.
To Keyhoe, the saucers were spaceships. That reality was so obvious to him that it dictated his entire approach to the phenomenon. If they are real and extraterrestrial, the U.S. government must know the truth and is thus engaged in a massive conspiracy to hide those oh-so-obvious facts from us.
In the 1950s, Keyhoe took over a failing UFO group, NICAP, and turned it into a lobbying organization. He wrote often in the pages of its magazine, UFO Investigator, that his goal was to put NICAP out of business. He wanted Congress to hold hearings and demand that the military disclose the truth.
In the end, Keyhoe failed. A poor manager, NICAP had its financial ups and downs over the years, and its Board of Governors finally decided to give Keyhoe a pink slip. My perception, based on a couple of visits to NICAP’s headquarters, and talking to people supposedly in the know, was that Keyhoe only showed up on an irregular basis, and left the day-to-day management to such people as Richard Hall.
Regardless, it was too late to save the group.
Keyhoe continued to write books and give lectures. I met up with him in the mid-1970s at a UFO convention in Arkansas, where he agreed to a short interview. I don’t know what media credential I provided to persuade him. I was actually without a press affiliation at the time, although I did some freelance writing on UFOs and other subjects.
I suppose that was it. The interview was carried in a supermarket tabloid, but it folded before they had the chance to cut my check. So if I can find a copy of that manuscript, I’ll republish it.
All in all, much of the public’s perception about the UFO saga is based on the reality Keyhoe presented to us, flaws and all.
So those who are interested in the subject are often labeled “ET believers.” TV reality shows usually focus on extraterrestrials and government coverups. Few of these people ever read a Keyhoe book, but his influence has never waned.
The largest American UFO group, MUFON, which is immersed in controversy these days, has more or less advocated for the ET origin since its founding in 1969. That the government knows the truth is largely a given.
UFO disclosure remains a big deal to many, although the optimistic predictions of such lobbyists as Stephen Bassett continue to remain unfulfilled.
Does any government possess the secret of UFOs?
Such long-time researchers as Jerome Clark suggest that the U.S. Air Force was only too happy to shutter its UFO investigative agency, Project Blue Book, in the late 1960s, after the infamous Condon Report concluded that there was nothing to the phenomenon. It may well be that, after determining that a UFO sighting doesn’t have any national security implications, such reports are simply set aside.
Thus, there are no crashed UFOs being examined at Area 51 or Hangar 18. If such events had occurred, we’d live in a very different world today. Government secrets leak like sieves. Just check the daily newspapers and the cable networks for some notorious examples. The possibility that the most important event in our history — the arrival of beings from other planets — could be kept a secret for so long is slim to none.
Now a number of precocious teens were highly influenced by the UFO mystery in those early days. They went on to write about their theories, and sometimes start UFO magazines and hold public conferences. A few even made it their life’s work, more or less.
I got my start in those days, and, inspired the other day by an email from Tim Beckley, a gentleman sometimes known as “Mr. UFO,” I decided to feature some of my long-time friends on an episode of The Paracast. So in addition to Beckley and Clark, I brought onboard Allen Greenfield and Rick Hilberg.
I’ve known them all for 55 years, give or take a few, and thus they’ve became my extended family.
But when you listen to how their thinking on the subject has evolved over the years, you’ll see that it’s very different from Keyhoe’s image of a flying saucer.
Clark, for example, talks about two sets of phenomena. Event anomalies may consist of the UFO cases we’ve all heard about over the years. But such episodes as UFO abductions fit in the category of experience anomalies. The reality of such events is very much internal to the experiencer, even if there might be some external cause we've yet to understand.
So even though the public’s image of a UFO hasn’t changed much in the past 70 years, that doesn't mean there isn’t a wealth of speculation that raises all sorts of intriguing possibilities.
It doesn’t mean that there isn’t intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, or that representatives of advanced civilizations haven’t made their way to Earth. Even if that were so, it doesn’t answer all the questions raised by the presence of the UFOs.
To understand what’s really going on, we may have to achieve a better understanding of the mysteries of life itself.
Copyright 1999-2017 The Paracast LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
August 13, 2017
www.theparacast.com
The Teen Ufologists of the 1960s Are All Grown Up on The Paracast
The Paracast is heard Sundays from 3:00 AM until 6:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, the Boost Radio Network, the IRN Internet Radio Network, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.
SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY A PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! We have another radio show and we’d love for you listen to it. So for a low subscription fee, you will receive access to After The Paracast, plus a higher-quality version of The Paracast free of network ads, and chat rooms when you sign up for The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes, the Paracast+ Video Channel, episode transcripts, Special Features, Classic Episodes and there’s more to come! We’ve just begun to add podcasts and videos from Paul Kimball’s “Other Side of Truth.” Check out our new lower rates, starting at just $1.49 per week, plus our “Lifetime” membership and special free print and eBook book offers! For more information about our premium package, please visit: Introducing The Paracast+ | The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio.
This Week's Episode: With the help of a section called “Saucer Club News” in Ray Palmer’s Flying Saucers magazine in the 1950s and 1960s, enterprising young people got together to form their own UFO clubs, or just looked to meet up with others with the same interests. That’s where such people as your humble host of The Paracast and such notables as Tim Beckley, Jerome Clark, Allen Greenfield and Rick Hilberg got their starts. In a single virtual room, Gene’s old friends will reminisce about their early work in the UFO field. The political and cultural climate, how both may have impacted early research efforts, are also debated. Guest co-host is J. Randall Murphy.
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 13: Gene and guest cohost J. Randall Murphy present a continuation of the discussion involving former teen UFO researchers, featuring Jerome Clark and Allen Greenfield. The discussion more or less begins with a look at the early influences of the UFO saga, and how such notables as Ray Palmer, John Keel and Jacques Vallee may have contributed to the subject. You’ll particularly enjoy Randall’s efforts to tame the always talkative Allen Greenfield. Jerry explains why he feels that is no real UFO cover-up, that it’s just a matter of anomalous reports being set aside by the military — out of sight, out of mind. Allen explains how he managed to create some UFO flaps in the 1960s, and he also recalls an actual UFO event that began with one of the late Jim Moseley’s notorious UFO hoaxes.
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
Ufology — Still Living in the 1950s
By Gene Steinberg
Many Paracast probably aren’t aware of how the UFO field we all cover came together. The common perception is that most of it got started in the wake of the coverage of a single event, Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of nine strange objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier in the State of Washington. Thus, June 24, 2017 represented the seventieth anniversary of the event, but it largely passed unheralded.
That it all came together may be an accident of history. Had there been major news developments elsewhere on that fateful day, the Arnold sighting might have been a non-event. While Ray Palmer once referred to Arnold as “the man who started it all” in promoting his own UFO-oriented magazines, that is not exactly true.
There have been sightings of strange objects in the sky over the centuries, more or less unnoticed in modern times until researchers began to comb the literature. In the days during and after World War II, people saw foo fighters and ghost rockets. And, no, the former isn’t a rock band that came together in the 1990s.
Some date the saucer era back to the works of Charles Fort, who wrote a quartet of books in the early part of the 20th century with an outsized influence that exists to this very day. Fort cataloged loads of anomalous events that included such things as frogs falling from the skies and, of course, UFOs. He even suggested they might be spaceships.
This happened, once again, long before Kenneth Arnold. Yet the man who probably most influenced the modern UFO era was a retired Marine, Major Donald E. Keyhoe, who made a living as both a pulp and aviation writer. Beginning with “Flying Saucers from Outer Space,” he wrote several best-selling books about UFOs and became a go-to expert on the subject.
To Keyhoe, the saucers were spaceships. That reality was so obvious to him that it dictated his entire approach to the phenomenon. If they are real and extraterrestrial, the U.S. government must know the truth and is thus engaged in a massive conspiracy to hide those oh-so-obvious facts from us.
In the 1950s, Keyhoe took over a failing UFO group, NICAP, and turned it into a lobbying organization. He wrote often in the pages of its magazine, UFO Investigator, that his goal was to put NICAP out of business. He wanted Congress to hold hearings and demand that the military disclose the truth.
In the end, Keyhoe failed. A poor manager, NICAP had its financial ups and downs over the years, and its Board of Governors finally decided to give Keyhoe a pink slip. My perception, based on a couple of visits to NICAP’s headquarters, and talking to people supposedly in the know, was that Keyhoe only showed up on an irregular basis, and left the day-to-day management to such people as Richard Hall.
Regardless, it was too late to save the group.
Keyhoe continued to write books and give lectures. I met up with him in the mid-1970s at a UFO convention in Arkansas, where he agreed to a short interview. I don’t know what media credential I provided to persuade him. I was actually without a press affiliation at the time, although I did some freelance writing on UFOs and other subjects.
I suppose that was it. The interview was carried in a supermarket tabloid, but it folded before they had the chance to cut my check. So if I can find a copy of that manuscript, I’ll republish it.
All in all, much of the public’s perception about the UFO saga is based on the reality Keyhoe presented to us, flaws and all.
So those who are interested in the subject are often labeled “ET believers.” TV reality shows usually focus on extraterrestrials and government coverups. Few of these people ever read a Keyhoe book, but his influence has never waned.
The largest American UFO group, MUFON, which is immersed in controversy these days, has more or less advocated for the ET origin since its founding in 1969. That the government knows the truth is largely a given.
UFO disclosure remains a big deal to many, although the optimistic predictions of such lobbyists as Stephen Bassett continue to remain unfulfilled.
Does any government possess the secret of UFOs?
Such long-time researchers as Jerome Clark suggest that the U.S. Air Force was only too happy to shutter its UFO investigative agency, Project Blue Book, in the late 1960s, after the infamous Condon Report concluded that there was nothing to the phenomenon. It may well be that, after determining that a UFO sighting doesn’t have any national security implications, such reports are simply set aside.
Thus, there are no crashed UFOs being examined at Area 51 or Hangar 18. If such events had occurred, we’d live in a very different world today. Government secrets leak like sieves. Just check the daily newspapers and the cable networks for some notorious examples. The possibility that the most important event in our history — the arrival of beings from other planets — could be kept a secret for so long is slim to none.
Now a number of precocious teens were highly influenced by the UFO mystery in those early days. They went on to write about their theories, and sometimes start UFO magazines and hold public conferences. A few even made it their life’s work, more or less.
I got my start in those days, and, inspired the other day by an email from Tim Beckley, a gentleman sometimes known as “Mr. UFO,” I decided to feature some of my long-time friends on an episode of The Paracast. So in addition to Beckley and Clark, I brought onboard Allen Greenfield and Rick Hilberg.
I’ve known them all for 55 years, give or take a few, and thus they’ve became my extended family.
But when you listen to how their thinking on the subject has evolved over the years, you’ll see that it’s very different from Keyhoe’s image of a flying saucer.
Clark, for example, talks about two sets of phenomena. Event anomalies may consist of the UFO cases we’ve all heard about over the years. But such episodes as UFO abductions fit in the category of experience anomalies. The reality of such events is very much internal to the experiencer, even if there might be some external cause we've yet to understand.
So even though the public’s image of a UFO hasn’t changed much in the past 70 years, that doesn't mean there isn’t a wealth of speculation that raises all sorts of intriguing possibilities.
It doesn’t mean that there isn’t intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, or that representatives of advanced civilizations haven’t made their way to Earth. Even if that were so, it doesn’t answer all the questions raised by the presence of the UFOs.
To understand what’s really going on, we may have to achieve a better understanding of the mysteries of life itself.
Copyright 1999-2017 The Paracast LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!