The Paracast Newsletter
October 3, 2021
www.theparacast.com
Veteran UFO Investigator Barry Greenwood Reveals Ongoing Project to Digitize Thousands of Key UFO Documents 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 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! For a limited time, you can save up to 40% on your subscription. Long-term subscribers will receive free Amazon gift cards for five-year or lifetime subscriptions. And PayPal now accepts cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, in payment, so act now! For the easiest signup ever, please visit: https://www.theparacast.plus
This Week's Episode: Gene and special guest cohost Curt Collins present Barry Greenwood, who has pursued UFO and other aerial phenomena topics since 1964. He served as an investigator and state section director for Massachusetts MUFON for ten years and specialized in researching government documents in the late 1970s, leading to co-authoring the book "Clear Intent" (with Larry Fawcett) in 1984. He has also published the online "Union Catalog of Periodical UFO Articles," a massive reference listing of UFO articles published in worldwide periodical literature. Other research has been published in the "MUFON Journal," "Flying Saucer Review," “International UFO Reporter,” “Stendek,” “Lumieres dans la Nuit” and a variety of other national and international publications. In more recent years, he has specialized in UFO history, compiling "The New England Airship Wave of 1909" and editing "U.F.O. Historical Revue," a newsletter issued from 1998 to date.
After The Paracast — Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers on October 3: UFO researcher Barry Greenwood continues his description of a project to scan many thousands of UFO files from such organizations as NICAP and the Center for UFO Studies. He also explains why he quit MUFON after several troubling episodes, including the organizations' decision to evangelize rather than investigate UFOs and submit stories to tabloid newspapers. Greenwood has studied UFOs since the 1960s, and has also published the online "Union Catalog of Periodical UFO Articles," a massive reference listing of UFO articles published in worldwide periodical literature. He specialized in researching government documents in the late 1970s, which included numerous requests via the Freedom of Information Act, leading to co-authoring the book "Clear Intent" (with Larry Fawcett) in 1984. He also edited the newsletter "Just Cause" for "Citizens Against UFO Secrecy" (CAUS) from 1984 to 1998.
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: https://www.theparacast.com/forum/. 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
Preserving Memories? What Memories?
By Gene Steinberg
I write a lot about personal experiences, since there is less risk about being inaccurate about them. But it’s not at all so certain that my recollections are entirely accurate, since many of them are not based on referring to my writings.
By the same token, some of the key cases in the UFO field are sourced on the memories of eyewitnesses, who speak of them days, months, years, and even decades after the original event.
In last week’s column, I suggested — and I admit I wasn’t 100% serious about it — that the reason that we don’t have physical proof of the legendary spaceship that allegedly crashed at Roswell, NM in 1947 is that ET took it back. Even now, I think of segments in Star Trek where the crew of the Enterprise didn’t want to leave evidence of their presence, particularly whey they went back through time.
They’d joke that, in the end, sightings of their starship would be regarded as just another UFO. So nothing to worry about since UFOs were obviously not real, correct?
Or perhaps that was just a producer and/or scriptwriter conclusion for the sake of entertainment. I could certainly consider other possibilities, which is that ET did visit Earth during that period, and the Enterprise would be regarded as just one more unknown aircraft. Or maybe that’s what they meant.
In any case, Roswell is much about memories. Until the late 1970s, the story consisted of two reports from 1947, one that a flying disk crashed, and the second, that it was nothing more than a common weather balloon. There is that famous photo of the alleged debris.
It’s not that occasional claims of UFO crashes didn’t appear in UFO-themed literature. Gossip columnist Frank Scully’s 1950 book, “Behind the Flying Saucers” had its moment of greatness, or myth-making, with the original story of the Aztec, NM flying saucer. Only it came to him from a pair of confidence men, and was thus generally dismissed as just another tall tale. But it’s probably the only reason we remember Scully’s book at all since it was otherwise mostly just a bore.
There have been occasional attempts over the years to resurrect the Aztec tale as something genuine, most recently from a book, “The Aztec UFO Incident: The Case, Evidence, and Elaborate Cover-up of One of the Most Perplexing Crashes in History,” from 2015, authored by Scott Ramsey, Susanne Ramsey and Frank Thayer, with a preface from Stanton T. Friedman.
Aside from the original story in Scully’s book, the evidence was decidedly threadbare. Unlike the Roswell episode, the people of Aztec had no collective or cultural memory of the appearance of a flying saucer, let alone one having crashed there.
But wasn’t Roswell a very different affair?
Well, after the original 1947 story about mistaking a weather balloon for a flying saucer, the story remained essentially dormant for more than 30 years. Then Stanton Friedman, on a lecture tour, came upon a supposed witness. It pretty much started from there, as more and more memories flowed forth that there was something significant about the case after all.
They claimed with many descriptive variations that a physical spaceship did crash in July, 1947 near Roswell, NM. There were reports of its recovery by the authorities and the possible presence of the bodies of its crew, alien creatures who were dead or dying.
Thus a legend was born. In 1980, the first major Roswell book appeared, “The Roswell Incident,” by Charles Berlitz and William Moore. If you read the credits, you will also find Stanton Friedman’s name in there, and while he claimed to have made major contributions to this title, he didn’t receive much in the way of credit for his work.
In retrospect, maybe he needed a better agent.
I know when I wrote a lot of material for a technology book in the 1990s, I got paid for my efforts, but no share of the royalties or much beyond a simple credit. Then again, I was not an author of record, and I was just glad to flesh out my bank account. It did, however, bring me a bunch of additional writing gigs, so it ended up well.
In any case, as much as Berlitz and Moore could be credited with jump-starting the Roswell legend, their credibility was suspect. Berlitz was a clever guy with dancing eyes and the claim that “I’m honest as the day is long,” which he repeated to me lots of times.
The grandson of the founder of the famous language schools, Charles became famous as the writer of “The Bermuda Triangle,” and “The Philadelphia Experiment.” Indeed I got a credit for helping him research material for the latter, although I never for a moment believed the claims. Or that the legendary Bermuda Triangle was a portal for paranormal events.
Moore? Well, he later admitted to spreading UFO disinformation for the government, which pretty much wrecked his reputation as a researcher. He is also credited — or blamed — as one of the authors of the infamous MJ-12 documents, which described a nonexistent group within the government that was supposedly involved in the UFO matter.
Despite MJ-12 being exposed on a number of occasions, Friedman embraced the myth and, for the rest of his life, maintained it was genuine.
So we see that the core of the Roswell legend was created by three gentleman whose credibility was questionable.
It’s not that nothing happened. Clearly there were dozens and dozens of people who fleshed out details of the case. A main question, of course, is the extent to which popular culture — possibly even the Aztec myth — might have influenced those memories over the years.
In his quest to chase cold cases, author/researcher Kevin D. Randle, another key figure publishing evidence in favor of Roswell, published “Roswell in the 21st Century” in 2016. Giving the story a full going-over, he revealed that some of the most provocative tales about Roswell, including the presence of alien bodies, did not hold up so well upon further scrutiny.
This doesn’t mean Randle rejects the Roswell story outright. He still maintains that something strange did happen in the New Mexico desert in 1947, only that he’s not so clear anymore about what it might have been. As for me, I just don’t know.
Again, when we look at the memories of Roswell, I have to be troubled by how the 30-year interval between the original event and the decision of people to speak about it might have impacted the accuracy of their stories. Researcher Barry Greenwood, who has spent years putting together historical records of UFO cases, feels we should be more inclined to believe the original Roswell story as published in 1947, that it was just a weather balloon, and not so much the revisionist history.
Many have criticized the Pentagon UAP Task Force for not focusing on historical UFO sightings. The Roswell case may be a key example of why such an approach might be a very good idea if we ever hope to get to the bottom of the mystery of the flying saucers.
Copyright 1999-2021 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!
October 3, 2021
www.theparacast.com
Veteran UFO Investigator Barry Greenwood Reveals Ongoing Project to Digitize Thousands of Key UFO Documents 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 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! For a limited time, you can save up to 40% on your subscription. Long-term subscribers will receive free Amazon gift cards for five-year or lifetime subscriptions. And PayPal now accepts cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, in payment, so act now! For the easiest signup ever, please visit: https://www.theparacast.plus
This Week's Episode: Gene and special guest cohost Curt Collins present Barry Greenwood, who has pursued UFO and other aerial phenomena topics since 1964. He served as an investigator and state section director for Massachusetts MUFON for ten years and specialized in researching government documents in the late 1970s, leading to co-authoring the book "Clear Intent" (with Larry Fawcett) in 1984. He has also published the online "Union Catalog of Periodical UFO Articles," a massive reference listing of UFO articles published in worldwide periodical literature. Other research has been published in the "MUFON Journal," "Flying Saucer Review," “International UFO Reporter,” “Stendek,” “Lumieres dans la Nuit” and a variety of other national and international publications. In more recent years, he has specialized in UFO history, compiling "The New England Airship Wave of 1909" and editing "U.F.O. Historical Revue," a newsletter issued from 1998 to date.
After The Paracast — Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers on October 3: UFO researcher Barry Greenwood continues his description of a project to scan many thousands of UFO files from such organizations as NICAP and the Center for UFO Studies. He also explains why he quit MUFON after several troubling episodes, including the organizations' decision to evangelize rather than investigate UFOs and submit stories to tabloid newspapers. Greenwood has studied UFOs since the 1960s, and has also published the online "Union Catalog of Periodical UFO Articles," a massive reference listing of UFO articles published in worldwide periodical literature. He specialized in researching government documents in the late 1970s, which included numerous requests via the Freedom of Information Act, leading to co-authoring the book "Clear Intent" (with Larry Fawcett) in 1984. He also edited the newsletter "Just Cause" for "Citizens Against UFO Secrecy" (CAUS) from 1984 to 1998.
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: https://www.theparacast.com/forum/. 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
Preserving Memories? What Memories?
By Gene Steinberg
I write a lot about personal experiences, since there is less risk about being inaccurate about them. But it’s not at all so certain that my recollections are entirely accurate, since many of them are not based on referring to my writings.
By the same token, some of the key cases in the UFO field are sourced on the memories of eyewitnesses, who speak of them days, months, years, and even decades after the original event.
In last week’s column, I suggested — and I admit I wasn’t 100% serious about it — that the reason that we don’t have physical proof of the legendary spaceship that allegedly crashed at Roswell, NM in 1947 is that ET took it back. Even now, I think of segments in Star Trek where the crew of the Enterprise didn’t want to leave evidence of their presence, particularly whey they went back through time.
They’d joke that, in the end, sightings of their starship would be regarded as just another UFO. So nothing to worry about since UFOs were obviously not real, correct?
Or perhaps that was just a producer and/or scriptwriter conclusion for the sake of entertainment. I could certainly consider other possibilities, which is that ET did visit Earth during that period, and the Enterprise would be regarded as just one more unknown aircraft. Or maybe that’s what they meant.
In any case, Roswell is much about memories. Until the late 1970s, the story consisted of two reports from 1947, one that a flying disk crashed, and the second, that it was nothing more than a common weather balloon. There is that famous photo of the alleged debris.
It’s not that occasional claims of UFO crashes didn’t appear in UFO-themed literature. Gossip columnist Frank Scully’s 1950 book, “Behind the Flying Saucers” had its moment of greatness, or myth-making, with the original story of the Aztec, NM flying saucer. Only it came to him from a pair of confidence men, and was thus generally dismissed as just another tall tale. But it’s probably the only reason we remember Scully’s book at all since it was otherwise mostly just a bore.
There have been occasional attempts over the years to resurrect the Aztec tale as something genuine, most recently from a book, “The Aztec UFO Incident: The Case, Evidence, and Elaborate Cover-up of One of the Most Perplexing Crashes in History,” from 2015, authored by Scott Ramsey, Susanne Ramsey and Frank Thayer, with a preface from Stanton T. Friedman.
Aside from the original story in Scully’s book, the evidence was decidedly threadbare. Unlike the Roswell episode, the people of Aztec had no collective or cultural memory of the appearance of a flying saucer, let alone one having crashed there.
But wasn’t Roswell a very different affair?
Well, after the original 1947 story about mistaking a weather balloon for a flying saucer, the story remained essentially dormant for more than 30 years. Then Stanton Friedman, on a lecture tour, came upon a supposed witness. It pretty much started from there, as more and more memories flowed forth that there was something significant about the case after all.
They claimed with many descriptive variations that a physical spaceship did crash in July, 1947 near Roswell, NM. There were reports of its recovery by the authorities and the possible presence of the bodies of its crew, alien creatures who were dead or dying.
Thus a legend was born. In 1980, the first major Roswell book appeared, “The Roswell Incident,” by Charles Berlitz and William Moore. If you read the credits, you will also find Stanton Friedman’s name in there, and while he claimed to have made major contributions to this title, he didn’t receive much in the way of credit for his work.
In retrospect, maybe he needed a better agent.
I know when I wrote a lot of material for a technology book in the 1990s, I got paid for my efforts, but no share of the royalties or much beyond a simple credit. Then again, I was not an author of record, and I was just glad to flesh out my bank account. It did, however, bring me a bunch of additional writing gigs, so it ended up well.
In any case, as much as Berlitz and Moore could be credited with jump-starting the Roswell legend, their credibility was suspect. Berlitz was a clever guy with dancing eyes and the claim that “I’m honest as the day is long,” which he repeated to me lots of times.
The grandson of the founder of the famous language schools, Charles became famous as the writer of “The Bermuda Triangle,” and “The Philadelphia Experiment.” Indeed I got a credit for helping him research material for the latter, although I never for a moment believed the claims. Or that the legendary Bermuda Triangle was a portal for paranormal events.
Moore? Well, he later admitted to spreading UFO disinformation for the government, which pretty much wrecked his reputation as a researcher. He is also credited — or blamed — as one of the authors of the infamous MJ-12 documents, which described a nonexistent group within the government that was supposedly involved in the UFO matter.
Despite MJ-12 being exposed on a number of occasions, Friedman embraced the myth and, for the rest of his life, maintained it was genuine.
So we see that the core of the Roswell legend was created by three gentleman whose credibility was questionable.
It’s not that nothing happened. Clearly there were dozens and dozens of people who fleshed out details of the case. A main question, of course, is the extent to which popular culture — possibly even the Aztec myth — might have influenced those memories over the years.
In his quest to chase cold cases, author/researcher Kevin D. Randle, another key figure publishing evidence in favor of Roswell, published “Roswell in the 21st Century” in 2016. Giving the story a full going-over, he revealed that some of the most provocative tales about Roswell, including the presence of alien bodies, did not hold up so well upon further scrutiny.
This doesn’t mean Randle rejects the Roswell story outright. He still maintains that something strange did happen in the New Mexico desert in 1947, only that he’s not so clear anymore about what it might have been. As for me, I just don’t know.
Again, when we look at the memories of Roswell, I have to be troubled by how the 30-year interval between the original event and the decision of people to speak about it might have impacted the accuracy of their stories. Researcher Barry Greenwood, who has spent years putting together historical records of UFO cases, feels we should be more inclined to believe the original Roswell story as published in 1947, that it was just a weather balloon, and not so much the revisionist history.
Many have criticized the Pentagon UAP Task Force for not focusing on historical UFO sightings. The Roswell case may be a key example of why such an approach might be a very good idea if we ever hope to get to the bottom of the mystery of the flying saucers.
Copyright 1999-2021 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!