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Your Paracast Newsletter — July 15, 2018


Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
July 15, 2018
www.theparacast.com


Explore the Frontiers of Reality with Cutting-Edge Commentator Allen Greenfield 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.

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This Week's Episode: Gene and guest cohost J. Randall Murphy present the one and only Allen Greenfield, Allen is a published author on Masonic rites, UFOs, esoteric spirituality and psychic phenomena. Having done considerable field research and lab work in all of these areas, he subscribes to the “Many Worlds” interpretation of Quantum Theory, and thinks that the explanation for phenomena as diverse as ghosts, Near Death Experiences, spontaneous cases of the reincarnation type, Men In Black, shadow people, cryptids etc. is in the overlap among so called “branes” (that’s b-r-a-n-e-s) or alternate worlds impinging upon our consciousness, a concept he has advocated since the late 1960s. Gene and Allen have been close friends for well over five decades.

Allen Greenfield's Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=t allen greenfield

After The Paracast -- Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers on July 15: Fresh from an especially informative and entertaining episode of The Paracast, Gene along with guest cohost J. Randall Murphy and Allen Greenfield continue talking about the frontiers of reality and religion. In suggesting such contactees as George Adamski may have had a genuine paranormal encounter, Allen explains that such experiences — and magic for that matter — or not consistent, which is why subsequent experiences may have to be fabricated. And is it true that the cover of the classic book, “The Coming of the Saucers,” from Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer, depicted one of the original flying saucers in a way that resembles modern day stealth aircraft?

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

The Wild and Wooly Early Days of Ufology
By Gene Steinberg

The UFO conferences I’ve visited in recent years have been pretty staid affairs. People give lectures to a usually attentive audience, while others hang around the vendor booths to talk, browse and sometimes buy some merchandise.

Now it may well be because most of the people who attend such events are over 50 years of age, often way over. But that’s nothing unusual when it comes to media of one sort or another. The median age for viewers of the major cable TV news networks in the U.S. is 60 years and older.

But I got started in this field when I was 11 purely by accident. It wasn’t from a sighting, but an unplanned visit to my brother Wally’s apartment, which was a relatively short walk in those years. As regular listeners know, I saw a copy of “Flying Saucers From Outer Space” by Major Donald E. Keyhoe, on a coffee table.

I absentmindedly paged through the book, and started to read the early chapters. In short order, I was hooked, and Wally’s wife agreed to let me take the book home, provided that I agreed to return it to the library on time.

While I didn’t consider it then, I saw little evidence that Wally was ever actually interested in UFOs, although he appeared to follow science fiction based on the stories he’d tell me before he left home. But I had the distinct feeling that he knew I’d be there to take that flying saucer home and thus alter the direction of my life, more or less.

In any case, over the next few years, I made frequent visits to the famous Samuel Weiser bookstore in Manhattan, focusing on the basement where most paranormal books were on display. Books that didn’t sell were consigned to the closeout shelves, where I could buy the ones that interested me for $1.00 each. Forget about my allowance!

While in my late teens, I began to attend UFO conventions. I’d often ride with Jim Moseley, thus keeping the costs low except for the hotel room. When I arrived, I usually met up with Allen Greenfield and other lifelong friends. Unless we were in charge, we hung out in the hallways of the lecture hall or at the vendor tables. But there was always room for some innocent mischief and fun discussions, particularly when the lectures were ones we had seen previously.

When I made the mistake of offering to actually sponsor the National UFO Conference in 1975 in King of Prussia, PA, I barely noticed the speakers. I was too busy working with my colleagues to make sure people didn’t sneak in to avoid paying for tickets.

I suppose attendance was decent enough, though we didn’t exactly fill the conference hall. When we calculated our receipts, we found that, after expenses, we lost $135, which wasn’t so bad in the scheme of things. But I didn’t have much fun and opted never to do it again.

So if you wonder why there hasn’t been a Paracast Conference, that is probably the reason, though I wouldn’t refuse if I had the capital and a crew of helpers who could do all the grunt work.

Perhaps the most interesting convention of all occurred that year at Fort Smith, AK. Just about everyone who was anybody in the UFO field attended. I drove there with a friend, Curtis K. Sutherly, who was a featured writer for Caveat Emptor, the magazine I edited with my first wife, Geneva.

The drive from Pennsylvania was relatively pleasant as long drives go, but the stress of the trip helped push my aging Mazda RX-2 over the edge. A cold start caused the exhaust pipe to pump out a white smoky exhaust for several minutes until it warmed up, a telltale clue that it would soon need an engine rebuild.

Still, we survived the trip, and it was memorable.

Between marriages, my confidence lifted when an attractive woman sat next to me at the lecture hall and decided to place her arm around my shoulder. No, it didn’t go any further.

Another attractive woman, from Germany, invited me to her country to give a lecture, though we never quite worked out the financial arrangements.

I had a pleasant interview with Major Keyhoe, and compiled it into an article that I sold to one of those supermarket tabloids. The paper ceased publication not long thereafter, and I was never paid.

As some of you know, I had a bad experience in 1965 when I visited NICAP, the organization Major Keyhoe directed for a number of years. I was accompanied by several UFO researchers to its staid office suite in Washington, D.C., near Dupont Circle. Joining me were Allen Greenfield, Rick Hilberg plus Martin Salkind, a close friend Brooklyn, NY that I’d known for several years. When I knocked on the door, Richard Hall, who served as essentially the office and operations manager, saw me and, with shaking finger, directed me to leave with the pronouncement, “you’re not welcome here.”

My friends accompanied me and we left.

Later on, we telephoned Ray Palmer, then editor of Flying Saucers and Search magazines, who lent a sympathetic ear. A few months later, he published a story about this unfortunate close encounter entitled, “No Investigations Can Actually Proceed,” or, of course, NICAP.

Hall eventually left NICAP, though I won’t say it was necessarily due to the unfavorable response to his behavior as a result of this article and several pieces written by Jim Moseley in Saucer News.

Ten years later, I met Hall at that Fort Smith UFO event. He seemed pleasant enough when I came up to him. We shook hands and buried the hatchet.

Greenfield admits that, to this day, he holds grudges. But he also arrived ahead of the sponsors of the convention and, with some help from me, attempted to push the news media towards our more enlightened approach to UFO research.

To us, such groups as APRO, the Mutual UFO Network and the remnants of NICAP would never actually solve the mystery, and we were happy to explain why. We also made it crystal clear that we weren’t at all convinced that the prevailing theory, that the saucers were spaceships, had yet been proven.

As it was then, we still hold to the viewpoint that such mysteries are far more complicated than visits by ET. But that doesn’t mean the theory is wrong.

While some of those conventions may have seemed dull at the time, we all had our youthful fun, and perhaps it has made us jaded about the way things are run now.

I mean, can you actually call one of those MUFON Symposiums enjoyable let alone informative? To me, except for that controversial session that featured wacky speculation about a secret space program, the proceedings always seem more about reinforcing one’s belief system than actually learning something new.

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