Category Archives: UFO literature

“Aliens in the Backyard” by Trish and Rob MacGregor is a well-written, terrific contribution to UFO literature and lore that will keep you turning pages

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

You know that old adage: “Call a man a dog once and you insult him; call him a dog a thousand times and he may start barking.”

Well, that’s the effect I get when I read one UFO book after another. After five or six of these things, I find myself thinking: “Well, by golly, maybe we really are being visited by aliens, alternate dimensional beings, intruders from a parallel universe – or just whatever the hell they are.”

That might be the case for you too when you read a well-written, infectiously compelling book such as this one, ALIENS IN THE BACKYARD by TRISH AND ROB MACGREGOR.

Both authors are seasoned veterans at writing about the UFO phenomenon, cutting their teeth by reporting for that spectacular glossy publication of the 1980s, OMNI Magazine.

The MacGregors are not only well-trucked in UFO literature; they are accomplished and prolific fiction novelists. That means they bring highly polished wordsmithing skills to crafting highly controversial nonfiction. So skeptics beware — these writers can pull you in.

The MacGregors focus on four individual cases of real people who encountered the unimaginably strange, and then struggled mightily to come to grips with the eschatological shock of having their paradigms shattered. The authors do a marvelous job of presenting these accounts as believable, captivating – and frightening.

These four case studies serve as a platform for the authors to expand on other aspects of UFO phenomenon. They include some of their personal investigations, such as their travels to the Chilean island of Chiloe, where centuries of fabulous legend combine with the modern elements of “alien” abductions and apparitions. It’s interesting stuff.

But, you know, an integral element of ufology is that it naturally produces confusion, confounding contradictions and a tendency for the discussion to devolve into the ridiculous. With that in mind, there are a couple of areas where the MacGregors fall prey to those notorious bugaboos of UFO lore – conspiracy theories and apocalyptic scenarios.

A major buzzword in ufology today is “Disclosure.” This speaks to the idea that the U.S. government – and apparently with the cooperation of all other world governments, who can’t cooperate on anything else – know the truth about UFOs and aliens, and they’re all colluding to hide the astounding truth from the public.

And so there is a movement among ufologists to demand “Disclosure.” That is, they insist that governments finally come clean, tell us what they know, and stop hiding the most important story in human history from all of us, the common rabble.

All of this is patently ridiculous.

I can criticize the Disclosure nonsense on many levels. I partially did so in my review of Richard Dolan and Bryce Zabel’s book A.D. After Disclosure (see my review here: DISCLOSURE REVIEW) The authors reference Dolan and Zybel to their detriment.

I have other quibbles as well.

The authors trot out – yet again — the purely asinine quotes of Ronald Reagan regarding alien life from other planets. You know, Ronald Reagan, the President who said that air pollution is caused by trees, a year’s waste from a nuclear power plant could be stored “under a desk,” and that he didn’t know enough about astrology to understand if it was real or not. (This after it was revealed his wife was consulting with an astrologer to help plan the schedule of the President of the United States).

Ronald Reagan spewed all kinds of shoot-from-the-hips folksy quips and quotes (including unwittingly saying into a live mike that he would start bombing the Soviet Union “in 10 minutes”) – yet UFO folks have latched on to his comments about aliens as if they were the most hallowed of “smoking gun” slips. It’s absurd.

Trish and Rob MacGregor

They also drag out – yet again – Jimmy Carter’s 1969 UFO sighting, which is the thinnest of thin gruel indeed. As an extremely experienced amateur astronomer, and after reading reams of pages about the Carter sighting, I am 100% convinced that he saw the planet Venus – as do most others – including other UFO researchers. The people who were with Carter on that day also think it ridiculous to suggest that what they all saw was a “real UFO.” It just wasn’t that impressive.

The authors make a lot of hay about statistics which show that millions of people believe that UFOs and aliens are real – but this is meaningless. A recent poll showed that as much as 52% of people in some areas of the Deep South believe that President Barack Obama is a Muslim. This does not make Obama a Muslim – it just means that millions of people are easily deluded.

Other aspects of the book trouble me as well – such as the marvelous psychics the authors seem to have access to. For example, in one case, they bring to a psychic a vial of holy water that an abductee has been carrying around in his pocket to frustrate “evil beings” that continue to torment him after a bizarre visitation event.

With a mere touch of the vial, the psychic is able to spin off astounding detail about the situation of the owner. She provides a detailed analysis which matches almost point by point the scenario that is vexing the “experiencer.”

All this is well and good – but it can’t help but make me think – with psychics of such astounding clarity of vision out there – why then can’t they turn their penetrating powers on some of the other UFO mysteries that the authors are concerned about?

Why, for example, can’t these obviously marvelously gifted psychics get to the bottom of the Disclosure issue? Why can’t they ferret out details of what the government knows, or who knows what, and provide at least decent clues to investigative journalists — to help them gain some traction on the government cover-up issue? But they never seem to apply their amazing powers in this way.

Quibbles aside – the closing impression I want to leave is that this is among the best UFO books I have read in a long time. The areas of concern I mention are relatively minor compared to the overall information Rob and Trish MacGregor present in these pages.

My judgment of the authors is that they are sincere, thorough, and intelligent. They are even more balanced in their approach many other UFO writers I have read recently. Aliens In The Back Yard is a fascinating, well-written, highly entertaining read.

Ken Korczak is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

Follow @KenKorczak

LightQuest by veteran UFO investigator Andrew Collins puts an intriguing new spin on what might be going on behind the UFO phenomenon

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Review by KEN KORCZAK

LIGHTQUEST is among the most intriguing UFO books I have read in a long time; the author’s approach is refreshing, even while traveling a lot of familiar ground. He manages to make ufology interesting again with new spin and perspective.

What’s particularly fascinating is that ANDREW COLLINS takes a favorite foil of the most ardent UFO debunkers and turns it back on them – commandeering one of the skeptic’s best “go-to-debunking tools” and effectively taking it out of their hands.

What we’re talking about here is plasma – as in the natural formations of plasmatic balls of light energy which form as a byproduct of certain geological processes beneath the earth’s surface.

Hard-core skeptics, such as Philip Klass, frequently trotted out plasma as a favorite explanation for mysterious lights manifesting in bizarre patterns across the sky and landscape – whether it was the famous “Foo Fighters” which dogged military aircraft during World War II — or the thousands of encounters with globes or saucer-shaped objects on a lonely road in a remote location as reported by unsuspecting motorists.

Klass often maintained the gullible observers were mistaking natural emissions of plasma light – including stuff like “swamp gas” – for otherworldly aircraft or some other paranormal phenomena. Klass often pointed out that natural plasmas can act in weird and unexpected ways, giving the impression of alien intelligence operating behind them.

Well, Andrew Collins agrees that plasma lights are almost certainly natural formations generated by earth-bound processes, specifically, high pressure faults beneath the surface of the earth. This theory is on solid ground (no pun intended) – such plasma formations have even been recreated in a laboratory setting by applying immense pressure tools to certain kinds of rocks until they burst forth plasma emissions.

But then Collins takes it a step further – or perhaps I should say, several miles further – by suggesting that these natural plasma emissions might actually play host to intelligent life forms -or “light beings” – which leverage the plasma state and manifestation to enter our dimension and plane of existence for short periods of time.

ANDREW COLLINS

If it sounds farfetched, I say read the book: Collins does a marvelous job of providing a solid theoretical model of how a natural plasma formation could be the “temporary body” of trans-human life forms. He brings in quantum entanglement, and also offers physicist David Bohm’s “implicate order” as a background framework of how all this could come together.

His theories are backed up with case studies – both famous incidents, such as the Barney and Betty Hill abduction, and the amazing events which took place at the Rendelsham military base in the U.K. – as well as lesser known cases of abduction that are not widely known.

Is this a perfect book? No. There is much I would quibble with – it’s not as tightly written or eloquent as one might hope. I also think Collins gets some things dead wrong, such as his conclusion that hypnotic regression is by-and-large unreliable in retrieving memories of “lost time” events as the result of abduction scenarios.

Admittedly, for the past couple of decades, I was in complete agreement with Collins about the quality of information gleaned via hypnosis – until I read the works of Harvard-trained psychiatrist John Mack, who makes a powerful argument in support of hypnosis as a legitimate investigation tool.

There is also the case of the Hills whom were hypnotized by one of the world’s best experts in hypnosis, Dr. Benjamin Simon. I would urge the author (and others) to read or review the marvelous book, CAPTURED: THE STORY OF BARNEY AND BETTY HILL written by the niece of Betty Hill, Kathy Marden, along with a co-author, the famed UFO researcher Stanton Friedman. In this book, we see how hypnotic regression – when done right and professionally – includes any number of protocols and safeguards which can screen out imaginative content infecting the narrative of memory.

But like I said – I’m just quibbling here. LightQuest is a terrific, must-read for anyone interested in the UFO phenomenon. Even those well-versed in ufology and who have consumed scads of UFO literature over decades (like me) may learn something new, or maybe see this most enigmatic and confounding of subjects in an all-new light (pun intended).

Ken Korczak is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

Follow @KenKorczak