The Paracast Newsletter
July 2, 2023
www.theparacast.com
Discover the Life of Ray Palmer, "The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers," with Dean Bertram 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.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP FOR THE PARACAST+ YET? PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARACAST+ SO YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE ULTIMATE PARACAST EXPERIENCE AT A SPECIAL LOW PRICE! 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 an exclusive podcast, After The Paracast, plus an enhanced version of The Paracast with the network ads removed, when you join The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes on your device. Flash! Use the coupon code ufo20 to receive a 20% discount on five-year or lifetime subscriptions. And PayPal now accepts cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, in payment. And if you don't want to use PayPal, we now also offer a second payment option, from Stripe, which accepts major credit or debit cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay. For "qualified users," you can also take advantage of Pay Later options, so act now! For the easiest signup ever, please visit: https://www.theparacast.plus
This Week's Episode: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz introduce UFO researcher and filmmaker Dean Bertram, who talks about a documentary he's working on, "The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers." It tells the story of how Raymond A. Palmer, a disabled science fiction mega-fan became editor of America's leading science fiction “pulp” magazine, Amazing Stories, and created modern UFO belief. Palmer grew the magazine to all time circulation highs with a heady combination of hi-octane space operas and pseudo-scientific theories, culminating in something known as the “Shaver Mystery,” a series of tales by Richard S. Shaver allegedly based on real-life contact with a technologically advanced subterranean civilization, and space faring extraterrestrials, that abduct human beings from the earth's surface. As the Shaver Mystery reached its zenith, in June of 1947, pilot Kenneth Arnold reported some of the first “flying saucers” seen in American skies. His account exploded across the world. Palmer hired Kenneth Arnold, with whom he co-wrote a series of articles and a book, "The Coming of the Saucers," that recounted the case of a proto-Roswell UFO crash, Men in Black, murderous conspiracies, abductions, and missing time. In other words, the blueprint for modern UFO lore.
After The Paracast — Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers on July 2: WUFO Researcher/filmmaker Dean Bertram continues the discussion with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz about Raymond A. Palmer, whom he regards as "The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers." Palmer's impact on UFO history is covered, along with decades of efforts at UFO disclosure, the Pentagon UAP whistleblower, government disinformation and other topics. Bertram has a PhD in history from the University of Sydney, Australia. His doctoral dissertation was titled “Flying Saucer Culture: An Historical Survey of American UFO Belief.” His writings have been featured in a range of publications, including Fortean Times, People Magazine, The Spectator, and The Australian. He hosts the podcasts Talking Weird and Mysterious Library on the Untold Radio Network. Bertram is also a filmmaker and film festival programmer. He runs MidWest WeirdFest, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and is currently shooting a feature documentary about Palmer and the Shaver Mystery.
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. Visit our new online shop for great branded merchandise at: https://www.theparacast.shop, and check out our new YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheOfficialParacastChannel.
At the Beginning of the Modern UFO Legend
By Gene Steinberg
One date has stuck in the UFO mythology for decades: June 24, 1947. That’s when a private pilot, Kenneth Arnold, started up the modern UFO era by reporting nine ellipsoid objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier in Washington State.
It wasn’t really the first UFO sighting, but it happened at the right time to generate loads of publicity. Had it not occurred, you have to wonder how things might have turned out. Even though there were plenty of cases, would it have all become a national — and even global — cultural phenomenon? Or would such sightings have been confined to the local media, particularly the local newspapers at a time when such publications were actually available in most localities.
While Arnold played a role in advancing the flying saucer legend, someone he did some work for, as a reporter, is regarded as the man who invented the flying saucers.
And that’s Ray Palmer.
Now Palmer isn’t widely known nowadays. If you’re a fan of super hero lore, you might remember that name as a comic book character, a scientist who invents a suit that makes him tiny and super powerful. Also, that he’s over six feet tall, but the name actually honors the original, who stood a little over four feet tall due to a serious accident in his childhood that left him a hunchback.
That condition, though, didn’t stop Palmer from pursing his dream. His vivid imagination led him to write sci-fi for the early pulps. In 1938, he became editor of the original, Amazing Stories.
Segue to 1945, when letters from one Richard Sharpe Shaver led him on a path that predicted the arrival of the saucers in the years before Arnold’s sighting. The Shaver stories told of personal encounters with under earth beings, the deros and teros, descended from an advanced race that departed Earth eons ago.
Stories of technologically advanced civilizations in the caverns date back many decades. The creator of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs, based his Pellucidar stories on those legends. Indeed, he even brought Tarzan to that land in one of his novels.
In addition to more or less predicting the coming of the saucers in Amazing, he turned Arnold into a reporter who did a couple of significant assignments for Palmer. First was to write a story about his sighting for the debut issue of Fate magazine in 1948.
Now Fate was founded by Palmer and Curtis Fuller in the days after the publisher of Amazing, Ziff-Davis, decided not just to cut the controversial Shaver stories from the magazine, but to plan a move from Chicago to New York City.
Before he departed Amazing and the other publications he edited for Ziff-Davis, Palmer identified himself in Fate as Robert N. Webster, in case you have a chance to look over the older issues. Reprints are still available from the present publisher at: www.fatemag.com.
The early culture of the flying saucer legend was, in part, cemented in a 1952 book from Arnold and Palmer, “The Coming of the Saucers.” It not only listed a number of sightings over the previous few years, but featured the former’s account of his attempts to investigate a possible UFO crash at Maury Island, in Washington State.
The story read almost like a spy novel — no doubt with heavy editing from the ever-prolific Palmer — recounting possible episodes of eavesdropping, government interference, and, in the end, the unfortunate deaths of in a plane crash of two Air Force officers who brought aboard some fragments from this alleged saucer.
Add it all up: Flying saucers, a crash, government interference. Possible Men in Black? Yes, Maury Island appears to have had a conventional explanation, but lots of strange things that spoke of intelligence still occurred, according to Arnold’s account.
In his final years at Fate, Palmer moved to a tiny town in Wisconsin, Amherst, and set up his own publishing operations. From there, he introduced Other Worlds, a sci-fi magazine competing with Amazing Stories that ultimately morphed into Flying Saucers From Other Worlds and, eventually, just Flying Saucers.
It was one of the few actual newsstand magazines solely devoted to the subject. It featured lots of articles from known names in the field, plus its own little social networking section, Saucer Club News. That’s where readers, many of whom were teenagers, would post announcements about their clubs, meetings and newsletters.
In fact, it was through that section that I met most of the people I call friends even now.
And Palmer had a continuing involvement and influence in the saucer field.
That takes us to October of 1965. While studying broadcasting, I had taken on a part-time job at Jim Moseley’s Saucer News magazine. I joined him on a trip to Chicago, where we met up with two of those friends I met through Saucer Club News, Allen Greenfield and Rick Hilberg.
You’ve heard both on The Paracast over the years.
We first met Jaques Vallee at a Chicago hotel. He was busy promoting his first UFO title, “Anatomy of a Phenomenon.” We spent over an hour in conversation, led mostly by Jim, but I had a little trouble parsing Vallee’s then deep French accent, so I don’t recall much of it.
The main point of our journey, however, was to meet Ray Palmer at his Wisconsin home.
It was a memorable trip in many respects. We traveled in Jim’s oversized rental car, navigating narrow two-lane roads to our destination. Even though Palmer gave Jim specific directions, he still got lost as we neared Amherst.
Entering Amherst, a town of just a few hundred people, we located a service station, probably the only one there. On a whim, Jim asked the attendant if he knew where Palmer lived. In such a place, one figures that everyone knows everybody, and he was right.
Jim wrote down very specific directions to where Palmer lived, and, in minutes, we arrived at our destination, a large frame house overlooking a river. It appeared far more luxurious than one might have expected considering Palmer’s constant appeals for his readers to buy more stuff to help the cash flow.
In order to protect himself from fans who wanted to look him up, the mailbox had a different name, Olson. It was confusing, but we nonetheless knocked on the door. In a moment or two, Palmer’s wife, Marjorie, ushered us in.
Palmer’s gait was slow, halting, the result of a serious accident in the previous years. But he was nonetheless pleasant, easy-going, and appeared to welcome our visit.
We were there for close to an hour. I used a portable tape recorder to interview Palmer and he covered the basics of the saucer mystery and the Shaver saga.
Alas, I no longer have that original recording, although the text was later published in a UFO/paranormal magazine I coedited, Caveat Emptor.
Over the next decade or so, Palmer continued to tout several possible solutions to the flying saucer mystery beyond space visitors. He revised the hollow Earth myth, and even spoke of visitors from the astral, defined as another plane of existence.
That theory appears to echo the more physical version popularized in super hero fare, such as the recent movie based on a comic book character, “The Flash,” where the protagonist visits a parallel universe where everything is essentially turned upside down compared to our own reality.
Indeed, David Grusch, that supposed Pentagon UAP whistleblower who has been making the rounds in the media in recent weeks, has also talked about the multiverse as a source for the phenomenon.
As I’ve said many times, the UFO field as it is continues to echo the past about spaceships, government conspiracies, Men In Black and other tropes. And right there at the beginning was none other than Ray Palmer.
It’s why he is named as “The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers” in a forthcoming documentary being filmed by this weekend’s guest on The Paracast, Dean Bertram.
Copyright 1999-2023 The Paracast Company. 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!
July 2, 2023
www.theparacast.com
Discover the Life of Ray Palmer, "The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers," with Dean Bertram 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.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP FOR THE PARACAST+ YET? PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARACAST+ SO YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE ULTIMATE PARACAST EXPERIENCE AT A SPECIAL LOW PRICE! 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 an exclusive podcast, After The Paracast, plus an enhanced version of The Paracast with the network ads removed, when you join The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes on your device. Flash! Use the coupon code ufo20 to receive a 20% discount on five-year or lifetime subscriptions. And PayPal now accepts cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, in payment. And if you don't want to use PayPal, we now also offer a second payment option, from Stripe, which accepts major credit or debit cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay. For "qualified users," you can also take advantage of Pay Later options, so act now! For the easiest signup ever, please visit: https://www.theparacast.plus
This Week's Episode: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz introduce UFO researcher and filmmaker Dean Bertram, who talks about a documentary he's working on, "The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers." It tells the story of how Raymond A. Palmer, a disabled science fiction mega-fan became editor of America's leading science fiction “pulp” magazine, Amazing Stories, and created modern UFO belief. Palmer grew the magazine to all time circulation highs with a heady combination of hi-octane space operas and pseudo-scientific theories, culminating in something known as the “Shaver Mystery,” a series of tales by Richard S. Shaver allegedly based on real-life contact with a technologically advanced subterranean civilization, and space faring extraterrestrials, that abduct human beings from the earth's surface. As the Shaver Mystery reached its zenith, in June of 1947, pilot Kenneth Arnold reported some of the first “flying saucers” seen in American skies. His account exploded across the world. Palmer hired Kenneth Arnold, with whom he co-wrote a series of articles and a book, "The Coming of the Saucers," that recounted the case of a proto-Roswell UFO crash, Men in Black, murderous conspiracies, abductions, and missing time. In other words, the blueprint for modern UFO lore.
After The Paracast — Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers on July 2: WUFO Researcher/filmmaker Dean Bertram continues the discussion with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz about Raymond A. Palmer, whom he regards as "The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers." Palmer's impact on UFO history is covered, along with decades of efforts at UFO disclosure, the Pentagon UAP whistleblower, government disinformation and other topics. Bertram has a PhD in history from the University of Sydney, Australia. His doctoral dissertation was titled “Flying Saucer Culture: An Historical Survey of American UFO Belief.” His writings have been featured in a range of publications, including Fortean Times, People Magazine, The Spectator, and The Australian. He hosts the podcasts Talking Weird and Mysterious Library on the Untold Radio Network. Bertram is also a filmmaker and film festival programmer. He runs MidWest WeirdFest, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and is currently shooting a feature documentary about Palmer and the Shaver Mystery.
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. Visit our new online shop for great branded merchandise at: https://www.theparacast.shop, and check out our new YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheOfficialParacastChannel.
At the Beginning of the Modern UFO Legend
By Gene Steinberg
One date has stuck in the UFO mythology for decades: June 24, 1947. That’s when a private pilot, Kenneth Arnold, started up the modern UFO era by reporting nine ellipsoid objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier in Washington State.
It wasn’t really the first UFO sighting, but it happened at the right time to generate loads of publicity. Had it not occurred, you have to wonder how things might have turned out. Even though there were plenty of cases, would it have all become a national — and even global — cultural phenomenon? Or would such sightings have been confined to the local media, particularly the local newspapers at a time when such publications were actually available in most localities.
While Arnold played a role in advancing the flying saucer legend, someone he did some work for, as a reporter, is regarded as the man who invented the flying saucers.
And that’s Ray Palmer.
Now Palmer isn’t widely known nowadays. If you’re a fan of super hero lore, you might remember that name as a comic book character, a scientist who invents a suit that makes him tiny and super powerful. Also, that he’s over six feet tall, but the name actually honors the original, who stood a little over four feet tall due to a serious accident in his childhood that left him a hunchback.
That condition, though, didn’t stop Palmer from pursing his dream. His vivid imagination led him to write sci-fi for the early pulps. In 1938, he became editor of the original, Amazing Stories.
Segue to 1945, when letters from one Richard Sharpe Shaver led him on a path that predicted the arrival of the saucers in the years before Arnold’s sighting. The Shaver stories told of personal encounters with under earth beings, the deros and teros, descended from an advanced race that departed Earth eons ago.
Stories of technologically advanced civilizations in the caverns date back many decades. The creator of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs, based his Pellucidar stories on those legends. Indeed, he even brought Tarzan to that land in one of his novels.
In addition to more or less predicting the coming of the saucers in Amazing, he turned Arnold into a reporter who did a couple of significant assignments for Palmer. First was to write a story about his sighting for the debut issue of Fate magazine in 1948.
Now Fate was founded by Palmer and Curtis Fuller in the days after the publisher of Amazing, Ziff-Davis, decided not just to cut the controversial Shaver stories from the magazine, but to plan a move from Chicago to New York City.
Before he departed Amazing and the other publications he edited for Ziff-Davis, Palmer identified himself in Fate as Robert N. Webster, in case you have a chance to look over the older issues. Reprints are still available from the present publisher at: www.fatemag.com.
The early culture of the flying saucer legend was, in part, cemented in a 1952 book from Arnold and Palmer, “The Coming of the Saucers.” It not only listed a number of sightings over the previous few years, but featured the former’s account of his attempts to investigate a possible UFO crash at Maury Island, in Washington State.
The story read almost like a spy novel — no doubt with heavy editing from the ever-prolific Palmer — recounting possible episodes of eavesdropping, government interference, and, in the end, the unfortunate deaths of in a plane crash of two Air Force officers who brought aboard some fragments from this alleged saucer.
Add it all up: Flying saucers, a crash, government interference. Possible Men in Black? Yes, Maury Island appears to have had a conventional explanation, but lots of strange things that spoke of intelligence still occurred, according to Arnold’s account.
In his final years at Fate, Palmer moved to a tiny town in Wisconsin, Amherst, and set up his own publishing operations. From there, he introduced Other Worlds, a sci-fi magazine competing with Amazing Stories that ultimately morphed into Flying Saucers From Other Worlds and, eventually, just Flying Saucers.
It was one of the few actual newsstand magazines solely devoted to the subject. It featured lots of articles from known names in the field, plus its own little social networking section, Saucer Club News. That’s where readers, many of whom were teenagers, would post announcements about their clubs, meetings and newsletters.
In fact, it was through that section that I met most of the people I call friends even now.
And Palmer had a continuing involvement and influence in the saucer field.
That takes us to October of 1965. While studying broadcasting, I had taken on a part-time job at Jim Moseley’s Saucer News magazine. I joined him on a trip to Chicago, where we met up with two of those friends I met through Saucer Club News, Allen Greenfield and Rick Hilberg.
You’ve heard both on The Paracast over the years.
We first met Jaques Vallee at a Chicago hotel. He was busy promoting his first UFO title, “Anatomy of a Phenomenon.” We spent over an hour in conversation, led mostly by Jim, but I had a little trouble parsing Vallee’s then deep French accent, so I don’t recall much of it.
The main point of our journey, however, was to meet Ray Palmer at his Wisconsin home.
It was a memorable trip in many respects. We traveled in Jim’s oversized rental car, navigating narrow two-lane roads to our destination. Even though Palmer gave Jim specific directions, he still got lost as we neared Amherst.
Entering Amherst, a town of just a few hundred people, we located a service station, probably the only one there. On a whim, Jim asked the attendant if he knew where Palmer lived. In such a place, one figures that everyone knows everybody, and he was right.
Jim wrote down very specific directions to where Palmer lived, and, in minutes, we arrived at our destination, a large frame house overlooking a river. It appeared far more luxurious than one might have expected considering Palmer’s constant appeals for his readers to buy more stuff to help the cash flow.
In order to protect himself from fans who wanted to look him up, the mailbox had a different name, Olson. It was confusing, but we nonetheless knocked on the door. In a moment or two, Palmer’s wife, Marjorie, ushered us in.
Palmer’s gait was slow, halting, the result of a serious accident in the previous years. But he was nonetheless pleasant, easy-going, and appeared to welcome our visit.
We were there for close to an hour. I used a portable tape recorder to interview Palmer and he covered the basics of the saucer mystery and the Shaver saga.
Alas, I no longer have that original recording, although the text was later published in a UFO/paranormal magazine I coedited, Caveat Emptor.
Over the next decade or so, Palmer continued to tout several possible solutions to the flying saucer mystery beyond space visitors. He revised the hollow Earth myth, and even spoke of visitors from the astral, defined as another plane of existence.
That theory appears to echo the more physical version popularized in super hero fare, such as the recent movie based on a comic book character, “The Flash,” where the protagonist visits a parallel universe where everything is essentially turned upside down compared to our own reality.
Indeed, David Grusch, that supposed Pentagon UAP whistleblower who has been making the rounds in the media in recent weeks, has also talked about the multiverse as a source for the phenomenon.
As I’ve said many times, the UFO field as it is continues to echo the past about spaceships, government conspiracies, Men In Black and other tropes. And right there at the beginning was none other than Ray Palmer.
It’s why he is named as “The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers” in a forthcoming documentary being filmed by this weekend’s guest on The Paracast, Dean Bertram.
Copyright 1999-2023 The Paracast Company. 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!