Category Archives: UFO

A.D. After Disclosure: A typical book spinning mundane conspiracy theories that are not well-thought out — also painfully dull, padded, wordy and bland

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Review by KEN KORCZAK

This book reads like it was written by a couple of teenage boys who just had their minds blown by the latest super-cool Star Trek movie, and then decided to start a super-cool blog so they could riff about all the cool possibilities of dealing with hostile aliens.

But it doesn’t even have that fun infectious enthusiasm of jazzed-up fanboys.

A.D. AFTER DISCLOSURE is depressing and boring. It’s also riddled with factual errors and egregiously bad logic. It’s hopelessly naïve.

Perhaps worst of all, it offers nothing in terms of new, inside information on the UFO issue. The rare tidbits it does offer are so stupid and laughable they’re like something out of a Saturday Night Live skit. Here, I’ll give you an example:

The authors offer:

A British “scientist,” whom they do not name, says that his grandfather was a bodyguard for Winston Churchill during World War II. This bodyguard managed somehow to eavesdrop on Churchill having a top-level meeting with General Dwight Eisenhower. This bodyguard overhears their private conversation in which Churchill tells a story – whom he heard from someone else — about a military pilot whose aircraft was buzzed for a few minutes by a UFO.

This bodyguard then blabs it to his daughter — who is then age 9 — yes, he tells his 9-year-old details of a private meeting between the Prime Minister and the Supreme Military Commander of WWII Europe.

Then – years later – eventually — this daughter grows up, gets married and finally gives birth to “the scientist” who one day hears the story from his mother – you know, the story she heard at age 9 from her loose-lipped eavesdropping bodyguard dad — who overheard two leaders of the Free World discuss a second-hand report from an anonymous World War II pilot who saw a UFO.

More years go by during which time the boy grows up, apparently goes through years of college – and at last becomes “a scientist” – and voilà! -his story can finally be told! His information finally trickles into this book after the authors read it in — wait for it – wait for it – a British ‘Red Top’ tabloid, The Daily Mail!

Yes!

The Daily mail, a paper known for its sensationalism and fondly referred to by local Brits as “The Daily Fail”!

Woooo-hoooo!!!! Take that, skeptics!

Speaking of newspapers and journalism, the authors’ understanding of the media and the role of the press in society is abysmally simplistic.

On the one hand:

In typical conspiracy theory fashion, they maintain that a significant portion of those in positions of media power are on the payroll of the CIA, or some other nefarious government black-ops service. Hand-in-hand with government spooks, and with pockets full of payola cash, these paid-off media operatives are expertly killing key stories, and also seeding well-placed disinformation stories to masterfully social engineer the perceptions of the public on the UFO issue. Yes! It’s that easy!

On the other hand:

They repeatedly accuse the press of being “lazy,” “too timid,” “hysterical,” “asleep at the switch,” “unwilling to challenge or confront powerful people” – in short, a gaggle of incompetent, pandering, lazy boobs who would rather stick to the easy stuff, you know, like the topics that shape people’s daily lives, such as crime, the economy, covering local school boards and city council meetings, transportation, poverty, social injustice- the distracted lazy bums!

RICHARD DOLAN AND BRYCE ZABEL want it both ways – when they need the media to be a powerful, organized, efficiently competent manipulator of the minds of an entire nation, then the media is an entity of frightening power, efficiency and intelligence. But when they want to moan about the lack of media attention to the UFO issue, the media then becomes a “lazy,” “timid,” “unwilling,” and “asleep at the switch” — a mass of bungling gomers who helplessly pander and suck up to powerful government agents.

But notice when the authors need to provide a citation for one of their claims, they gladly pluck an item from a cheesy mainstream media British tabloid and serve it up to their readers.

The authors also pass on a dubious bit of information which is often repeated but which has been thoroughly debunked as — if not untrue – at least improvable- and this misinformation is that former CIA director William Colby director said, “The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media.”

Again, Colby never said this, it has been all-but proven that he never said it, and those who care to Google this issue and check on it will see that I am right – and the authors should have Googled it and checked it too – but either they didn’t, or didn’t care to, but were happy to pass on this disinformation anyway.

Okay, but now wait a minute – don’t the authors cite an excellent Rolling Stones article by the mighty Carl Bernstein who showed in great detail how the CIA once recruited reporters and infiltrated all of the major news institutions, including the New York Times, Time Magazine and others? And don’t the reporters themselves admit – even the owners and editors of these major news organizations admit – that they had dozens of reporters on the CIA payroll?

Yes, but here are the facts: Those reporters were not involved in writing stories for consumption of the American public, or involved in shaping public opinions by seeding stories- stories that were dictated by CIA spies – and especially not stories about UFOs.

Rather, the CIA was using real reporters as covers to act as spies mostly to snoop on other governments around the world, especially the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The CIA was saying to reporters things like, “Hey, since you’re going to Yugoslavia anyway to do a story about agriculture, will you check to see how many paved airports they have and how many Soviet aircraft you see while you’re there, and let us know when you get back?”

Furthermore, when it became well-known that major media outlets were renting out reporters to act as part time information gatherers for the CIA, Congress objected to the practice and ordered that this kind of activity be ended – which it did – some 35 years ago.

If you don’t believe this, and if you still think the CIA has an iron grip on the American Press, then ask yourself:

* Why didn’t the CIA stop the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a devastating blow to the Vietnam War effort, and major embarrassment to the U.S.?

* Why didn’t the CIA stop the Washington Post and New York Times from knocking off President Nixon himself, the Vice President and other top power brokers over the Watergate break-in scandal? Nixon as Commander-In-Chief and top guy of everything had the CIA at his bidding.

* Why didn’t the CIA stop the Washington Star, New York Times from revealing the heinous Tuskegee Experiment scandal in which government creeps secretly infected black men with venereal disease so they could study them?

* Why didn’t the CIA stop Rolling Stone from running Bernstein’s CIA/journalists Cold War connections article?

* Why didn’t the CIA stop the New York Times from breaking the Iran-Contra Affair, which was partly a CIA operation?

* Why didn’t the CIA stop the media when it uncovered and published the story of Nixon’s Secret Bombing of Cambodia, My Lai Massacre, CIA involvement in Bay of Pigs Invasion, 9/11 government incompetence?

* Why didn’t the CIA stop Dana Priest of The Washington Post for her persistent, painstaking reports that uncovered the secret CIA “black site” prisons in foreign countries and other controversial features of the government’s counter-terrorism campaign?

* Why didn’t the CIA stop Barton Gellman of The Washington Post for his authoritative and provocative coverage which blew the lid off the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, embarrassing the CIA to a huge extent, and revealing the CIA as incompetent?

Yea, verily, so it would seem that, despite what authors Dolan and Zabel would have you believe, the CIA is not as all-powerful, and so in control of the press as they say. Also there are clearly a lot of reporters out there who are hungry, eager, unstoppable and constantly driving hard at the hoop, lusting after fame, a Pulitzer Prize and the truth — and they have nailed the CIA and embarrassed it again and again, decade after decade, on the very biggest stories.

Yet, the suggestion in this book is that there is not a single journalist – among many thousands – who is willing to dig deep enough to find out the truth about what the government knows about UFOs and alien technology – that all the reporters are either “under control and paid off” and/or “too lazy.”

Yeah right. What a crock.

Ken Korczak is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

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New Kindle eBook, “Phantoms and Monsters: Cryptid Encounters” by Lon Strickler will please fans of the paranormal despite some bumpy editing

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Review by KEN KORCZAK

I’ll cut right to the chase and say I enjoyed this Kindle ebook. That’s probably because the subject matter interests me greatly. So for its intended audience – folks like me who are fascinated with strange creatures and the eerie phenomenon that surround them – this is a can’t miss selection.

I’m not going to give it my top recommendation, however, for reasons I’ll explain in just a bit. But first, a brief summary for those who want to know what’s in the book:

PHANTOMS AND MOSTERS: CRYPTID ENCOUNTERS is a collection of raw eyewitness accounts of legendary beasties: Bigfoot, mothman, and there’s a few serpent-like river monsters and a “little people” encounter thrown in for good measure. Here you will find mostly raw or only minimally edited email letters from average folks who were astounded to encountered strange creatures in their everyday lives.

I should say there is also a number of reports of some really weird sightings – bizzare, peculiar creatures — some of which I have never heard of before, and for that I add extra praise.

However, the buyer should be aware of what they’re getting here: This is not so much a formal book but a series of “cut-and-paste” selections from author LON STRICKLER’S, popular BLOG. And here is where I have some mild quibbles, based mostly on formatting:

The text is not well-edited. Granted, the author wanted to retain the exact flavor of the original reports of folks on the ground, and I applaud him for that. But the dicey production values go beyond just lack of editing to other factors, especially a constantly shifting text size. Sometimes the font size goes from bigger to smaller from page to page, and this makes little sense to me – and for many it will be distracting.

There are also some raw reports that should have been edited a bit more rigorously – the most intriguing and fascinating report involves an Ohio man’s encounter with the famous mothman entity — made even more interesting because his story relates to the famous Silver Bridge collapse disaster of 1967, which killed 46 people.

This entry is exceedingly bizarre, frightening and gripping – but I had to stop and re-read many passages several times to be clear about what they guy was trying to say because his writing was so muddy. If it was me, I would have provided additional editing or perhaps inserted commentary to help the reader understand this man’s amazing story.

So, this is an ebook created mostly from a “raw dump” from a blog with minimal formal editing – yet, it still gets a sky-high recommendation from me because the content is so interesting, and contributes valuable information to the record.

Ken Korczak is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

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“The Circle and the Sword” by Nigel Mortimer is a rare gem which is an important addition to the field of paranormal investigation, ufology and exploration of mystical studies

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Review By KEN KORCZAK

I believe this small book is an important document. It is a genuine, authentic and intriguing addition to the field of ufology and paranormal investigation — written by an upright “regular bloke” (his words) living day-to-day among what is one of the most important focal points for unexplained phenomenon in the world.

THE CIRCLE AND THE STONE is the story of NIGEL MORTIMER who lives in the North Yorkshire area of England near the fabled ILKLEY MOOR – a sub-realm of greater ROMBALD’S MOOR — a location of incredible rock carvings and ceremonial stone monuments dating to the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. Other megaliths that have been erected here for reasons unknown and known throughout the ages.

In the late fall of 1980 Mortimer was a carefree teenager working as an office clerk. Suddenly, uninvited, without warning or reason, the home where Mortimer lived began to manifest strange poltergeist activity — banging noises, doors mysteriously flung open — and something extremely strange (and almost comical) happened to his sister. Then came the night of November 30 when Mortimer had a personal encounter with one of the famous glowing orbs of Ilkey.

Mortimer at first thought he had experienced merely a brief sighting. He awoke one night “for no apparent reason” and felt compelled to look out his window. In the icy cold skies, Mortimer espies an anomalous moving light — a spherical object — which moved across the sky, and then appeared to come straight toward him. He observed the object for a time — experiencing many strange sensations as he did so — but mostly forgot about the event upon awakening the next morning.

But in coming days, Mortimer came to feel that his sighting was more than a simple, passive event – the glowing orb seemed to have reached somehow deeply into his psyche, implanting a seed within him that would grow into a powerful and irresistible obsession with the bizarre manifestations of this enchanted region.

NIGEL MORTIMER

Mortimer’s experience was both a blessing and a curse. It seized what was once the life of a “normal bloke” and later responsible father, husband and hard-working family man – and flung him onto the path of obsessed UFO investigator.

Mortimer could scarcely believe what was happening to himself. His first marriage began falling apart; his work life suffered – yet he couldn’t set aside his deep fixation. A second marriage would later fall prey to his unstoppable quest as well. It seems that all aspects of the “normal life” for an honest man from a small English village would be consumed by ancient powers inhabiting the moorlands of England.

People have been reporting sightings and encounters with strange glowing orbs Ilkley Moor for uncounted centuries. That this phenomenon exists here is beyond question. The historical record is rife with accounts of bizarre encounters with “energy globes” that have come to be known my many names – “Wi ll-o’- the-Wisp, Jack o’ Lantern (or Lanthorn), Kitty Candlestick and others.

The well-documented historical record of this phenomenon adds credibility to Mortimer’s story – a man who has been living and prowling Rombald’s Moor his entire adult life. He has put his personal credibility and reputation on the line within his community, which adds weight to the integrity of his account.

So this book is not only a must read – but gets my highest recommendation – but now it is time for some tough love – and my tough love message comes in two parts:

First:

The fact is, the technical rendering of the Kindle edition of this book is extremely rough. I would urge the author immediately to implement a thorough editing and reformatting. Much as it pains me, I owe it to the readers of my reviews to warn them that here they will find numerous typos, glitches, uneven formatting to the point of considerable distraction. I won’t belabor this – and so – I leave the issue there.

Second and more importantly:

I believe this book, The Circle and the Sword – as it stands –represents one of the greatest missed opportunities in the history of UFO/mystical/paranormal literature – but it’s still not too late.

Let me explain:

What we have here is one of the best personal stories of UFO/mystical experience encounter in the world. That’s not hyperbole. It’s a story that spans decades, and it is a saga of unquestionable integrity. In the context of history, the quest of Nigel Mortimer is important to the legacy of the region.

So what I’m saying is that this book begs to be so much more.

The combination of Mortimer’s personal story — the struggles of his personal life, his obsessive quest, his inability to free himself from the powers of Ilkley Moor – combined with the astonishing (and authenticated) mystical phenomenon associated with ancient monuments – cries out to be expanded in deeper, richer detail.

For me, the very best books are those that read like a compelling work of fiction, but are, in fact, true stories. We have the beginnings of that here. Mortimer’s story contains the four primary key and classic ingredients of the best fiction: character, setting, theme and plot.

Consider:

• Character – Nigel Mortimer is inexplicably obsessed, thrust unwillingly like an Odysseus into a journey of magical encounter. He is often lost, depressed and feels hope is lost. But he keeps pressing forward on his hero’s journey, finding strength, sometimes glimpsing wonders and joy, sometimes finding unexpected help along the way.

• Setting – What could be better? The ancient terrain of Rombald’s Moor, like something out of a Thomas Hardy novel. A scene littered with hoary ancient monuments, redolent with the ages, virtually shimmering with the latent potential of primeval energies – a picturesque, austere, yet beautiful landscape.

• Theme – The quest for ultimate knowledge; the challenge of melding the modern ufology with mythology and the genuine, lost esoteric mysteries from the mists of time.

• Plot – The main plot is a quest for knowledge and enlightenment. It’s a mission to uncover the secrets of a magical, hidden alternate universe. And there are subplots aplenty – the struggling relationships of Mortimer with his family; his sometimes dicey relationship within a modern community that has lost touch with its magical past and greater reality. Mortimer’s story is an alchemist’s heart-wrenching search for spiritual gold.

Mind you – I realize nobody is asking for my advice – and Circle and the Stone stands as a gem (although must be edited). However, I offer my comments as a fellow writer, journalist and maven of the UFO/paranormal genre who much admires this work, and wants more of it and from it.

Ken Korczak is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

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“The Roswell Legacy” by Jesse Marcel Jr. is written by a man who was there, but this book offers nothing new and the prose struggles

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Review by KEN KORCZAK

Let me just say that Jesse Marcel Jr. has my great admiration. He’s lived an honorable life as a hard-working physician, healer of the sick, father of eight children, grandfather, National Guard member, served in the Iraq War for 13 months as flight surgeon – he’s a classic all-around, All-American good guy.

He also projects a warm, avuncular vibe in the TV and video interviews I have seen — he’s obviously a marvelous human being – I wish he was my uncle or my next door neighbor.

And thus it pains me to inform my readers that THE ROSWELL LEGACY is a fairly awful book.

There isn’t a single new revelation to provide a single shard of information that might shed new light on what really happened at a remote desert about 75 miles from Roswell, New Mexico, on June 14, 1947. Everything said about the supposed crash of an alien spacecraft (or something) at the location has already been aired ad nausea in a blizzard of other books, articles, TV shows, movies, Internet sites.

True, Marcel is more than a footnote in the annals of UFO lore. By virtue of his fiddling for about 20 minutes with some of the debris of whatever crashed in the desert when he was an 11 year old boy, Marcel has gained a minor star in that strange constellation of players that comprises the field of ufology.

He says he wrote this book to clear up scads of egregious misinformation and false statements that have been made about his father by debunkers and skeptics over the years, as they questioned Jesse Marcel Sr.’s role as one of the first men to see the Roswell crash site, and collect some of the wreckage.

Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr.

But he adds absolutely nothing new to the record. Everything he tells about his father is known. If anything, Marcel somewhat dulls the luster of his father’s reputation. He describes Marcel Sr’s slow descent into alcoholism and a bitter sense of cynicism and alienation from the military, possibly related to the government’s attempt to control whatever message it wanted to control about the Roswell incident. I give the author high points for unflinching honesty, however.

The quality of the writing is barely adequate, if not poor – it reads like a high school student turning in a report about what he did on his summer vacation. There is also more than a little flat-out padding with bland information about space travel anyone can find on Wikipedia, a superfluous appendix, too much info about weather balloons, and a chapter written by his wife who adds minor, irrelevant pleasantries.

A number of errors are made as well, – for example, the Soviet-Era space station MIR is misidentified twice as “Muir.” Also J. ALLEN HYNEK’S name is incorrectly spelled “Hyneck.”

Furthermore, Marcel mistakenly says that the famous “swamp gas” concept was a favorite go-to explanation that Dr. Hynek used to debunk UFO reports. The truth is, it was reporters who misunderstood something Hynek said in a press conference which led to the popularization of the “swamp gas” term, and it was the media which subsequently hammered “swamp gas” into the public consciousness.

If the price was maybe .99 cents for the Kindle edition, I would say go ahead and buy it. But this is not a significant contribution to the Roswell legacy.

Ken Korczak is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

Follow @KenKorczak

“Captured! The Barney and Betty Hill Experience” is a surprisingly absorbing read which reveals never-before-released information about this most famous alien abduction case

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Review by KEN KORCZAK

I was two years old when what is still probably the most famous case of alien abduction of all time occurred in 1961 – that involving Barney and Betty Hill of New Hampshire. When I was about seven years old I was struck with a magnificent obsession for astronomy, and that naturally led to an interest in the possibility that Earth was being visited from the stars.

So I have been aware of the Hill abduction saga virtually all my life. Over the decades, I have read a book or two and dozens of articles about the case. It’s also frequently discussed in other UFO books. I vividly remember being glued to the TV as a teenager over the 1975 made-for-TV docudrama of the Hill story starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons.

Thus, ever since KATHLEEN MARDEN’S book CAPTURED! THE BARNEY AND BETTY HILL EXPERIENCE first came out in 2007, I’ve been taking a pass on it, thinking, “What more is there possibly to say about this already over-analyzed case?” and:

“Do we really need another Barney and Betty Hill book?”

I now know the answer is “Yes!” I decided to purchase “Captured” partly on a whim, but also because it’s been too long time since I read a good UFO yarn. I was flabbergasted by how much I still did not know about the case after all these years – in fact, I can say that I have an all-knew perspective.

I have opted to move myself out of the “skeptic” column regarding the Hill abduction into the “believer” column – as difficult as that is for me to say.

Marden (who is the primary author of this book and who is Betty Hill’s niece), rolls out a case that may be wholly circumstantial – but the weight and the aggregate of all this circumstantial evidence as presented here would be more than enough to hang a man in any court of law.

By contrast, the alternative explanations offered by some of the greatest skeptics and debunkers – including Carl Sagan, James Randi and Philip Klass – seem petty, sparse, cherry-picked and highly theoretical by comparison.

Kathleen Marden and Stanton Friedman

In Captured!, Marden (along with famed UFO investigator STANTON FRIEDMAN who consulted on the book and also wrote a couple chapters), presents a painstaking, point-by-point analysis of every aspect of the case, from an in-depth analysis of the hypnotic regression sessions compared with consciousness memory accounts and Betty’s dreams; the lives and character of the Hills; actual physical evidence (left on her dress); the famous “Star Map”; follow-up events and sightings – and how the aftermath played out in the lives of the Hills for decades to come – the latter of which shows how the case actually has gained credibility over the years.

I noticed that some other reviewers were turned off by one of the late chapters in which the authors launch an intense and scathing attack on skeptic and debunkers. I think some will find the tone of this chapter a bit overwrought, harsh and even mean – and yet, there is not charge made that does not point to direct and obvious, egregious errors committed by debunkers – which they seem to get a free pass on.

That’s because the general public – even myself at times – still find is astoundingly difficult to wrap our collective minds around the implications which naturally fall out of the Hill abduction case. I mean, if their story is true – it means space aliens are running around, picking up ordinary people, sticking anal probes up their orifices, and conducting studies on human being like so many wildlife biologists drugging and tagging animals.

The danger, though, is in making comparisons that are mundane. The true meanings behind alien abduction scenarios like the Hill case have their actual basis in a kind overarching-meta-reality … or … or … perhaps in terms of some greater, higher dimensionality of thought and conception of the universe.

The bottom line is: Barney and Betty Hill may have had a genuine abduction experience, but what the event actually means and implies may be something that can never be known in terms of the current way we model our ideas about what is real and what is unreal. It is something that is beyond the ken of material and empirical science – but also beyond any level of metaphysical and spiritual conceptions we have managed to develop as a species at this point in our evolution.

Ken Korczak is the author of: THE MAN IN THE NOTHING CHAMBER

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For My Money, ‘Searchers’ Is The Most Frightening Book Of Alien Abduction

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Review By KEN KORCZAK

Over the years just a handful of UFO books have been able to creep forth and poke their icy, boney fingers into the soft underbelly of the deepest subconscious fears of the public, scaring the bejeepers out of millions of readers.

Whitely Strieber’s COMMUNION, for example, seemed honest and authentic, and therefore exceedingly unsettling and creepy. John Mack’s ABDUCTION was more scholarly and clinical, but because it was the work of a respected Harvard psychiatrist, it probably made even hardened skeptics think: “Gulp! I wonder if something like this could really be happening?”

But there is one book of UFO alien abduction I have read over the years which delivered that feeling of quesy fright like none other. This is a much more obscure book — it’s SEARCHERS: A TRUE STORY OF ALIEN ABDUCTION by RON FELBER.

An interesting aspects of this book is that Felber is an outsider to Ufology. Unlike Strieber, Bud Hopkins, David Jacobs and others who made careers and reputations by focusing on alien abduction topics, Felber is a mainstream writer and businessman. He has produced several books of fiction and nonfiction. But “Searchers” is his only work in the UFO genre. He appears to have written it only because a tip from an associate pointed his way to an extraordinary story that Felber found so compelling he had to write about it.

The book describes a sizzling night of terror as experienced by an ordinary middle class California couple, Steve and Dawn Hess. It was 1989 when the Hesses decided to head out to the Mojave Desert for a camping trip. Upon arriving and setting up camp in the middle of nowhere, the isolated couple began to see strange globes of light in the sky. They were unnerved but tried to explain them away in all the common ways. But then, events rapidly escalated to an profoundly frightening degree.

The “lights” moved toward their camp. Steve and Dawn Hess retreat to hide in their camper, only to be accosted by an array of eerie alien beings who surround them, look into their camper window, and seem intensely bent upon getting at them and probing every aspect of their beings. They perform devastating psychological invasions of their minds – at times, the couple is surrounded by dozens of bizarre alien manifestations of wide variety.

Dawn Hess described it this way:

“They (the aliens) wanted everything we had … everything …our minds, our bodies, even our souls, I think. It was like they drew it out of us with a syringe … every molecule. And it was painful and I thought we were going to die, or already had died and were being tortured in hell.”

After enduring a night of this hell, the Hesses returned to their normal lives and jobs, but all was not well with them. Nightmares, fears, anxieties, post-traumatic stress – everything that had happened to them had shattered their sense of what it means to be a normal human being.

It’s a remarkable story, and in the hands of an extremely skilled writer – Felber holds a Ph.D. in Arts and Letters – the result is one of the most terrifying books on alien abduction ever written.

A “UFO Book” That Reads Like a Spiritual Classic

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Review By Ken Korczak

Harvard educated psychiatrist John E. Mack was at the peak of a distinguished career as a doctor, Harvard professor, writer and researcher. He even won the Pulitzer Prize for literature and enjoyed universal respect. Then in 1994 he astonished everyone by daring to publish a UFO book.

It was as if every accomplishment of his entire life was now called into question. A Harvard “kangaroo committee” began to investigate him. High-level academic peers condemned him. Public ridicule followed.

Ironically, Mack’s 1994 book “Abduction” was a bestseller and probably made him a ton of money – opening him up to that old skeptic’s attack over anything to do with UFOs – ‘he did it to cash in.’ I remember other quotes in the media from egg-head academics that went something like this: “John Mack is a really brilliant guy, but for some reason, he just lost it.”

But Mack was only going where the science was leading him. As a therapist, he was intrigued that he was getting an increasing number of patients who claimed to have been abducted by UFO aliens. They were distressed over their experiences, but Mack was perplexed that, outside their bizarre tales of abductions, these people seemed altogether normal and mentally healthy in all other respects. They wanted to stay anonymous; in fact, they were desperate to keep their experiences a secret. It was clear they were not just a bunch of nutty attention seekers, or deeply neurotic or psychotic lunatics. They were ordinary people who needed to deal with a traumatic event.

And so what really got Mack into hot water, especially among the academic and scientific community, is that he had the audacity to suggest that maybe these people really had been abducted by aliens! That maybe they were telling the truth! It was blasphemy!

In my view, Mack, who died in 2004, was treated in much the same way the Catholic Church treated Galileo when he dared support the idea that the sun did not revolve around the earth. In the end, Mack faced no disciplinary action from Harvard, and he didn’t lose his license to practice psychiatry, but he endured a scathing wind of condemnation from the “established elite” and sacrificed his standing in the medical and academic community.

Just as I found Mack’s “Abductions” a riveting read, I give stellar marks to this book, “Passport to the Cosmos.” It’s an amazing book in many ways – it’s not even really so much a book about alien abduction as it is about spiritual transformation. “Passport to the Cosmos” bears greater relationship to such spiritual classics as “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramahansa Yogananda than to other books about UFO-related phenomenon – although there is plenty of “alien and UFO” discussion underpinning all of the content.

In addition to the experiences or ordinary Americans, Mack also highlights the UFO-like experiences of three modern day shamans – Sequoyah Trueblood, Bernardo Peixoto and Credo Mutwa. This is significant because Mack rather brilliantly shows us the UFO phenomenon through the eyes of a different culture – perspectives that are not as entangled in the highly rational, secular, materialistic, scientific mindset of Western society. It gives us another way to look at and consider just what might be going on with this whole UFO thing. It forces us to look at it in a new light.

For many readers who have read Mack’s “Abductions,” this book may seem like “more of the same” but my view is that Mack’s thoughts and ideas about what is going on with abduction patients (“experiencers”) and the UFO phenomenon have advanced and solidified, and are stated more firmly around a more coherent theory in this book.

This is an important book. I wish millions of people would read it, and give it serious thought.

Ken Korczak is the author of The Fairy Redemption of Jubal Cranch JUBAL CRANCH

Despite A Few Misteps, a Credible Analysis of UFOology

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Review By Ken Korczak

It’s natural that any book tackling subjects as deeply controversial as UFOs, alien abduction and the interaction of humans with extraterrestrials and beings from other dimensions (ultraterrestrials) be subject to great skepticism – both fair an unfair.

But if you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen, as they say.

The author of Ultraterrestrial Contact is a fine writer with terrific credentials as a long-time UFO investigator. He has proven over time that he can uncover and present credible stories of alien-human contact. In this latest book, Philip Imbrogno lays out case after fascinating case which provides credible evidence that something real is happening, and that people should take the subject of UFO and alien contact seriously.

Unfortunately — very unfortunately — the author stumbles badly in just a couple of the stories he includes here, which leaves him open to the charge that he is being too open minded — open minded to a fault about what “contactees” are telling him.

The case in point I have the most problem with is the story of a young man who claims to be in contact with alien beings from a planet that is located in the Orion constellation. In his story, the young man claims to have visited the alien planet, and while on the planet, notices that there are “three suns” which he says are the stars in Orion’s belt.

Anyone can take five minutes to Google the actual position of the stars in Orion’s belt and see that while they look close together from our perspective on earth, they are not actually close together at all in space. They are:

Alnitak, 800 light years away
Alnilam, 1300 light years away
Mintaka, 900 light years away

So there is no way this “contactee” could have been to a planet with three suns that were the stars in Orion’s belt. Also, the details of the young man’s other experiences are patently ridiculous and riddled with cliché aspects of UFO lore. He even gives his alien friends goofy, wacky B-Movie names, like “Zintron.” Yet, Imbrogno thinks his story is important.

My point is: While I think most of the stories presented in this book are fascinating and credible, all it takes is for one weak link in the chain to place the entire body of work into question — and that’s unfortunate. Imbrogno should have taken greater care to be more selective in the cases he chose to include here.

Still, I highly recommend this book. There are plenty of case studies that should be given serious consideration and anyone with an interest in ufology and the paranormal will find much to excite the mind.

Ken Korczak is the author of: THE FAIRY REDEMPTION OF JUBAL CRANCH