Tag Archives: Aliens

Canadian Steve Boucher Describes His Lifetime Encounters with UFO-Alien Phenomenon in Well-Written Account that Will Boggle Minds and Challenge Perceptions

So here we go again – another person emerges from the ordinary walks of life to tell of personal encounters with the UFO phenomenon. His story is extremely weird and easily qualifies for the designation of HIGH STRANGENESS.

Canadian STEVE BOUCHER today is a 60-something who has spent most of his life keeping a lot of incredible secrets. Since he was a toddler, Boucher has been interacting with what we commonly call “aliens.” In his case, they are the classic “greys,” or at least a type of grey ET. Seasoned folks within the UFO community now deem it a standard feature that greys come in distinct varieties.

Much of Steve Boucher’s accounts encompass the broad elements that have become routine aspects of the UFO abduction scenario. But what makes his tale different are the unique and iconoclastic elements he brings to the events. A significant departure of note is a sensational story in which the aliens conduct a mass abduction on a college campus that – super weirdly – Boucher appears to have been only tangentially involved. It was like he came upon the event by accident – and yet, perhaps no event in this guy’s life can be said to be coincidental or accidental.

In recent years, I have been reading and reviewing stories of personal encounters with the UFO phenomenon that involve people like Steve Boucher. That is — otherwise normal individuals who have lived their days in the mainstream. They have maintained successful careers, or moderately so, and who have, you know, just soldiered on with the same life pursuits as anyone else. The difference is that they have done so while enduring a hidden, outlandishly bizarre shadow life on the side.

It’s worth pausing here to mention just a few other books I have reviewed on this site because they possess this same general quality of “normal-person-leads-secret-life-of-alien-contact” scenario:

Nancy Tremaine: Michigan woman abducted at age 12 by reptilian beings, interacted with them throughout her life, kept her secret for 50 years and finally told her story in two books: SYMBIOSIS and PREORDAINED.

Roger Kvande: Minnesota man with a lifetime of abduction/interaction with alien beings. He developed a cooperative interactive relationship; they taught him to pilot a flying saucer! He experienced voluminous ancillary phenomenon, including OBEs, reincarnational experiences, time travel and much more. His book: EXTRATERRESTRIAL ODYSSEY.

Terry Lovelace: Yet another altogether normal guy, enjoyed a successful career as an attorney. He began being abducted while a small boy and faced a lifetime of similar encounters, including a massive confrontation with aliens who abducted him and a friend with a gargantuan triangular craft. His book, like the others, only released after retirement: INCIDENT AT DEVIL’S DEN.

UFO over Minnesota Skies Photo by Ken Korczak

Dave Shoup: A Ph.D. professor of agricultural engineering with a successful academic/research record who completed a distinguished career at the top of his field while also keeping an astonishing secret of persistent alien interaction throughout his life. Like Kvande and Lovelace, he waited until retirement to come clean with his book, UFOS: FIRST PERSON.

Leo Dworshack: He grew up on a humble North Dakota farm during the Great Depression and made contact with a flying saucer crew of human-like aliens at age 8, maintained contact with them for the rest of his life. An amazing story about a hard-working “every-man” kind of guy with a remarkable secret he revealed only near the end of his long life. His book: UFOS ARE WITH US: TAKE MY WORD

I differentiate these people from other abductees whose cases made them famous, such as Whitely Strieber, Travis Walton, Calvin Parker, Charlie Hickson, Barney and Betty Hill, Jim and Jack Weiner and others. They had encounters that made them household words (at least among the UFO community) but some also garnered A-list media attention platforms, including Hollywood movies and/or TV documentaries, endless radio interviews with big-name venues like Coast to Coast AM hosted by Art Bell and so on.

**Drawing made by Steve Boucher, screenshot from YouTube interview:**
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU7uZ4a7aGs

Steve Boucher and the others I mention managed to stay well under the radar until the time came when they opted to seize control of their own destinies. They consciously decided to tell their stories to the world. By the way, if you think they are making significant money selling their books – think again. Take it from a guy like me who has been around the publishing business for decades – there’s precious little money to be made with these kinds of books.

Rather, Boucher and the others are putting their stories out there simply because they think it’s time. They come to the conviction that they have an obligation to let the world know what is happening to ordinary people in Anytown USA or Canada or Mexico or Brazil or Europe, etc. They understand it’s likely that a lot of other people are enduring secret lives of confusion, terror, alienation (no pun intended), but also sometimes wonder, redemption, joy and spiritual transformation.

All the above is the case with Steve Boucher. His experience with “The Others” led him down a path that caused him to re-evaluate everything he had been taught to believe by parents, teachers and society as he grew up in Canada. That included reluctantly but necessarily abandoning his former grounded acceptance of the Christian faith as a legitimate pathway to spiritual growth.

Let me say as a matter of a book reviewer’s housekeeping that this book is well-written and cleanly edited, a rarity in micro-small market UFO books. Boucher is a naturally gifted artist and an accomplished musician. His day job as a designer and draftsman reflects his native gift of expression. He has a facility to communicate complex topics to others clearly and in a way that not only helps us understand but even entertains a bit along the way.

Even so, I surmise that Boucher’s skills were put to the test in telling this complex story of the enormous fallout and consequential developments that can result when two “alien cultures” clash, mix, interact and then endeavor to find a common purpose.

Notice that I say, “two alien cultures.” As Boucher implies, we must consider that from the perspective of the ETs, we are the aliens. Our “otherness” is just as weird and confounding to them as they are to us. In fact, the aliens also fear us in many ways. They see us as a fundamentally violent and aggressive species with a persistent modus operandi to kill each other in endless wars and conflicts. Our knee-jerk reaction to any perceived threat — or even something we don’t understand — is often violence.

Finally, in addition to telling his basic story of his encounters, Boucher offers a grand vision that spells out what the implications are for all humanity and the fate of the planet based. It’s a lot to ponder, but never tedious or boring. Yes, I found some of it subject to debate – such as his proposal of an apocalyptic/global transformational scenario – a common outcome of the abduction experience reported by many. As I have frequently said elsewhere, I think end-of-times scenarios are a typical trap for experiencers and are demonstrably false – but I could be wrong and all these experiencers could be right.

It really doesn’t matter what I think, however, because each reader will benefit greatly from confronting the amazing story of Steve Boucher. Contemplating the subsequent viewpoint he developed is mind-expanding. Read this book and you’ll be illuminated about what might really be going on all around you — and maybe to a friend or neighbor — whether you know it or not.

Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

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Professor Dave Shoup Reveals Lifetime of UFO Encounters After Long, Successful Career in Academia, Science

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

Dave Shoup, Ph.D., enjoyed a long career as a successful academic and research scientist. He earned his doctorate degree in agricultural engineering from Purdue University in 1980. By that time, he already built a considerable résumé working for top-flight companies in the ag sector, including writing computer simulation code for International Harvester where he also worked as a sales engineer.

After he nailed down his Ph.D., he accepted a job as professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Florida States University. Many other plumb positions would follow with A-List institutions. He finished out his career as dean of the college of agricultural sciences at Southern Illinois University.

Shoup was also much in demand as a consultant and scientist-for-hire during his stellar career.

Dave Shoup Ph.D.

But all along, Dave Shoup was keeping a remarkable secret. Since the time he a was a little boy growing up poor on a hard-scrabble farm in Indiana, he was experiencing close encounters with UFOs. That, of course, is unforgivable heresy to mainstream science. As deeply institutionalized member-in-good standing of the Materialist Scientific Priesthood, Shoup had little choice but to keep his high strangeness experiences private and undisclosed.

Doing so has exacted a heavy psychological toll. At times, Shoup said his silence came at the price of “destroying the daily joy of living.” He said eroded his ability to make and keep friends. It put tremendous strain on his personal life and family. He often wondered if he would lose his job, his friends and even his family. At certain times, he felt he would lose his sanity.

Despite all, this book does not come off as a pity party.

The tone is that of a searching, intelligent, inquisitive man pushing on through life, bravely endeavoring to be a normal professional, good father and husband. That while grappling to come to grips with something that simply isn’t supposed to exist – yet it does exist. Despite the enormity of what he is up against, Shoup conveys a certain can-do positivity in these pages, although his sense of deep frustration – and often confusion and fear — is sharply evident.

Shoup encountered his first UFO when he was a boy in 1956. His father shared the amazing sighting. It happened on the share-cropping farm on which his hard-working family eked out a living near the tiny town of Ash Grove, Indiana. Shoup was just a tender five-year-old. He was bringing lunch out into a field where is father was harvesting with a combine. Suddenly, two classic flying saucer disks emerged out of the serve Indian sky to hover near where Shoup and his father stood out in the farm field.

A herd of nearby cattle became nervous and retreated to hide by a tree. Shoup and his father did the same. The disks made no noise. They merely came, hovered for a few moments and went on their way. Young Dave was still too little understand he should have been more frightened. His father was deeply rattled, however, as were the cows. The herd avoided the area thereafter.

Shoup’s father’s subsequent response to the paradigm shattering incident was a common one: He told his son to “never tell anyone and never speak of the incident again.”

And so began a lifetime of encounters and secrecy for Dave Shoup. His experiences soon evolved beyond sightings of UFOs to include paranormal incidents of high strangeness. This includes many other widely reported ancillary phenomenon associated with UFO activity, such as encounters with Men In Black, harassment by what seems to be secretive government agents, bizarre dreams and numerous uncanny incidents too weird to describe.

Dave Shoup’s cousin was General David M. Shoup, Medal of Honor winner and 22nd Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps. He acknowledged to the author’s father that UFOs exist.

What’s fascinating to me is that books like this one are becoming more common. By that I mean books by ordinary men and women and who have led otherwise normal lives, held down solid professional jobs, married, raised families, owned a house in the suburb – but who have grappled incessantly their entire lives with … with … what shall we call it? UFO harassment? An unwanted affiliation with UFO-themed paranormal activity? — or is it a kind of natural affinity to perceive what has always been there for all of us to see, but for some reason, most of us just automatically block it out?

Other people like Dave Shoup have come forward with similar experiences recently. Just a few examples which I have reviewed on this site include:

Terry Lovelace – Like Prof. Shoup, Terry Lovelace enjoyed a successful professional career. He was an attorney, all the while struggling to deal with persistent encounters with UFOs and related phenomenon all his life. Like Shoup, he “came clean” only after retirement to protect his career. SEE MY REVIEW

Leo Dworshak – A man who grew up on a farm in North Dakota and began encountering a UFO and its occupants in 1932. He led a normal life working in various professions, married, raised a family and maintained contact with highly humanlike alien beings throughout his adult life. Wrote book about it only when he reached his 80s. SEE MY REVIEW

Nancy Tremaine – A woman from a small town in Michigan who encountered a UFO at age 12 and spent her life dealing with encounters involving reptilian-type beings. Did not reveal her story until 50 years after original event. SEE MY REVIEW

Roger Kvande – Brilliant computer electronics developer whose extreme high strangeness encounters began in childhood and persisted throughout his life. Wrote a book about it after he solidified a successful career. SEE MY REVIEW

There’s hundreds of others who have come out with books or opted to talk about their stories in public and online forums. Some of them are famous or became famous because of their encounters, such as Travis Walton, Whitley Strieber, Barney and Betty Hill, Calvin Parker and more.

But it’s folks like Dave Shoup, Terry Lovelace and Nancy Tremaine that intrigue me most because they may indicate a trend. They are coming forth, one by one, exposing what is almost certainly a significant portion of our general society who have remained hidden because they felt they had to – but now maybe the veil is being lifted one “normal, ordinary” person at a time.

It may be safe to conclude that for every Dave Shoup that loosens the lid on a lifetime of UFO contact experience, perhaps hundreds or thousands more are still lurking in the UFO closet. That’s why Shoup’s bravery and this book represents such a valuable contribution to society. It’s one more “guy not so different than me” who has decided he’s no longer content to take his remarkable experiences with him to his grave. The more people like him who come forward, the sooner the world can step out of denial en masse and come to grips with the reality that a transhuman intelligence is among us and interacting with millions of people every day.

Perhaps it’s time for the human race to wake up, graduate and join the Galactic Neighborhood.

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Nancy Tremaine’s Second Book, Preordained, Follows-Up and Continues Her Uncanny Story of Alien Encounter and Life-Altering Aftermath

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

For 50 years, Nancy Tremaine kept an astonishing secret.

Living in a small town on the outskirts of Detroit, she was just 12 years old in 1961 when an enormous flying saucer appeared low in the sky in her residential neighborhood not far from her home. Her best friend Cindy was with her – but the two girls were far from the only witnesses. The amazing object was seen by at least three police officers and other residents of Novi, Michigan.

If Nancy and Cindy had merely experienced a sighting – a close encounter of the first kind – it may have been merely a memory for a lifetime. But this was to be a deeply involved event that included the abduction of both girls. For Nancy, it was a highly intrusive physical and psychological confrontation with the unimaginable unknown.

Neither she nor Cindy would ever speak a word of what happened to them to anyone, not even their most intimate friends, family members or spouses – until a half a century later. The weight of this enormous secret exacted a heavy toll on both women. For Cindy, it may have been at the root of her lifetime of severe addiction to alcohol and nicotine, and her death.

NANCY TREMAINE gives all the details of what happened to her on that fateful day in her first book, SYMBIOSIS. (See my review HERE). It’s an uncanny account of nonstop high strangeness which has manifested and followed Tremaine throughout her life and continues to this day.

In this follow-up book, Preordained, the author continues to tell her story – because this is a story that can be truly said to have no end. Nothing ever “ended” for Nancy Tremaine after that fateful July 1961 day, even during her many years of living in denial. That’s why this new book (nor the previous) can’t be categorized simply as a “UFO book.” The complexity and the implications of Tremaine’s experiences are a demonstration that the “UFO phenomenon” has never really been just that. It is something much larger and more profound.

The picture that has begun to emerge in recent years within the UFO community and among those who study such things in-depth is that an encounter with an unidentified flying object is often a kind of symbolic representation of a greater reality. More and more, it’s becoming clear that people who are “experiencers” tend also to be the subjects of paranormal phenomena that run the gamut across a range of bizarre occurrences.

This can be everything from poltergeist activity to encounters with the dead and visitation by all manner of spiritual or otherworldly beings. Experiencers might hear disembodied voices speaking to them when they are alone or get eerie messages on their telephone answering machines. A common “side-effect” is persistent problems with electrical equipment, including the electronics of cars. Incidences of extremely strange, synchronistic coincidences are brought forward as are chance meetings with “strange people” who appear to be normal folks at first glance, but subsequently, turn out to be “something else.” And then there’s the MIB — Men In Black — encounters that are among the weirdest aspect of the phenomenon.

It is important to note that the happenings can also be positive. Some people have been healed of serious illnesses after their encounters, for example. Others develop loving relationships with the beings that once frightened them, abducted them and put them through terrifying experiences. Many subjects go on to achieve expanded states of consciousness and have Vedic or Buddhist-like enlightenment experiences, such as samadhi or the attainment of nirvana. Another reoccurring theme is coming to view all existence as a “grand cosmic oneness.” Religiously-charged and mythologically-charged occurences might also be viewed as positive — such as the many cases when experiences are visited by an apparition of a “Virgin Mary” or “Goddess Women” kind of figure.

This “all-of-the-above” scenario is being increasingly championed by those have been studying the UFO issue for decades. Prominent figures, such as Grant Cameron, Col. John Alexander, Dr. Jacques Vallee, Linda Moulton Howe, Dr. Simeon Hein and Rey Hernandez are just a few examples of those who concluded that the so-called UFO Phenomenon is a kind of “Pan Phenomenon.”

**The Coombs family of Wales experienced intensive UFO sightings combined with wide-ranging, intrusive paranormal activity for months in the 1970s.**

We also have excellent case studies of real-life people who live out this Pan Phenomenon. The most high-profile is undoubtedly Whitley Strieber, although his enormous, Hollywood-level celebrity and his relentless penchant for rolling out his story in a chronically controversial manner has made him a favorite punching bag for armies self-appointed and narrow-minded skeptics.

But there are other more down to earth experiencers who have been proven much more difficult to dismiss and attack because they are not celebrities and their cases enjoy the advantage of multiple witnesses and documented physical evidence – two of the best examples are CHRIS BLEDSOE of North Carolina and the stunning experiences of the Billy and Pauline Coombs family during the famous Welsh UFO flap of the late 1970s. But there are many more lesser-known experiencers, as well – such as DAVE SHOUP, PH.D., an agricultural engineer who enjoyed a stellar academic and scientific career while keeping his life-time contacts with UFOs, MIBs and other phenomena a secret. Once he retired and his career could no longer be damaged, Shoup decided to “come clean” in a book about his experiences. (NOTE: My review of Shoup’s UFOs FIRST PERSON: A LIFETIME OF SECRECY is pending).

Nancy Tremaine’s Preordained is an important book because it vividly illustrates yet another person who is experiencing this highly multifaceted Pan Phenomenon – especially since she decided it was time to break her silence and come forward to tell her story to the world. The paranormal episodes she encounters are wide-ranging.

To take just one bizarre example – Tremaine was having a telephone conversation with a friend. She was not touching her smartphone at the time – it lay beside her on a table with speakerphone enabled. Tremaine began to hear buttons being pressed. On the screen, a series of numbers appeared, seemingly at random. But when she Googled the number series it turned out to be a U.S. Patent Office number – it was the patent number for “a movable ground-based recovery system for a hovercraft landing system.” The equipment is associated with NASA’s Spitzer Telescope project and its SOFIA project.

A second series of numbers when Googled turned out to be a homo sapiens gene ID number representing GPAM, glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferase, mitochondrial.

Furthermore, the person she was speaking to had his own inexplicable experience while Tremaine was watching the numbers pop up on her phone. He could hear the disembodied eerie voice of a woman calling out numbers — he was alone in his apartment during the call.

Nancy Tremaine relates a number of other high strangeness events in Preordained, and I won’t tell you any more of them here because I don’t want to spoil the book for you. Rest assured, however, that you’ll be vexed and amazed at the numerous incidents of baffling and paranormally weird experiences this woman has confronted and endured.

**Former Police Chief Lee BeGole of Novi, Michigan, with the author**

Finally, what impressed me the most about Preordained is how Nancy Tremaine illustrates her dogged and heroic efforts to prove that what happened to her that day so many years ago in 1961 was not something she imagined or made up. Her ace in the hole, so to speak, is the 90-something former police chief of Novi, Michigan, Lee BeGole, a deeply respected figure in his community and a man of unimpeachable character and sound mind. Chief BeGole is in a position to verify the events surrounding the 1961 UFO sighting because he directed his officers to respond to the scene when phone calls began coming into the police station from freaked-out residents of the neighborhood where it happened. His deputies reported back to him what they saw in real-time via radio. BeGole also tells of other people who approached him to report sighting the object.

For Tremaine, such corroborating support that a UFO really did hover over the residential neighborhood of her small town on that day means the rest of her story is underpinned by a powerful measure of authenticity. Tremaine called Chief Lee BeGole, “The bravest man I have ever known” for putting his reputation on the line for telling the truth.

This review is already overlong, but I must add a final note that’s critically important. Nancy Tremaine does something in these pages I think is vital for people to understand – and that is, despite the paradigm-shattering nature of her experiences, Nancy shows her self to be an “ordinary” and “real” person like anyone else, just trying to live her life, pay her rent, work at her job and go home in the evening to enjoy some peace and downtime.

Without asking for it or knowing why, she was thrust into an extraordinary situation – yet she still must endeavor to have a normal life among everyday people amid what everyone has judged to be societal norms.

For example, she tells of her time working as a nurse’s aide in an elderly care facility and shares her insights at the many absurdities in the way our society handles people who are extremely old and well-beyond having an existence of true meaning. We tie them into chairs or strap them into beds and use all manner of artificial means to keep them breathing and their feeble hearts pumping for another day, even when the extremely aged would prefer not to. (Note: I worked my way through college as a nurse’s aide, so I can attest to the authentic nature of Tremaine’s experience).

Another example is the story of how she adopted her beautiful little black cat, Joy, from a shelter. It seems a simple story, but for me the impact was profound. That’s because this vignette, again, shows a normal person, like anyone you know, doing something kind and simple and yearning for the companionship of a wonderful creature.

So, look around you – and have a care. Always be ready to understand. It may be your neighbor, a co-worker, the check-out girl you chat-up at the grocery store, the delivery man who delivers a package or pizza to your doorstep, or a member of your own immediate family. It might be your doctor or lawyer. It’s possible they’re living with an enormous secret and doing their best to cope with it, even when it seems impossible to know how.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I received an advanced copy of this book from the author for review. Publication is forthcoming via FLYING DISC PRESS.

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Whitley Strieber’s Afterlife Revolution Breaks Little New Ground But Is Worthy Addition to Survival of Death Literature

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

The great thing about reading a Whitley Strieber book is that you’re getting a Whitley Stieber book.

The bad thing about reading a Whitley Stieber book is that you’re getting a Whitley Strieber book.

I’ve been a reader of Strieber since he published his first novel in 1978, The Wolfen. This was made into a fine feature film starring Albert Finney. His next work of fiction also got Hollywood treatment. That was The Hunger, published in 1981. The movie version featured a megawatt cast of David Bowie, Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve.

Other successful novels followed. Whitley Strieber was like a more intellectual and elegant Steven King. His books may not have enjoyed spectacular Steven King-like sales, but he developed a significant following and was considered a premier fiction writer of his time.

Then, in 1985, everything changed for Whitley. That was the year he experienced what could only be described at the time as visitation by aliens, the ET kind, not the border-jumping kind. He wrote a book about it that came out in 1987 – the now famous and infamous COMMUNION. Whitely Strieber’s life would never be the same, including his standing in the literary community.

To add insult to injury to the collective egos of the snobby New York literary elites, Communion sold about a gazillion copies. It parked itself on the NYT bestseller list for weeks. It was also made into a bizarre movie starring Christopher Walken. The controversial American scholar Jason Reza Jorjani called the movie, “a surrealist masterpiece.” It was directed by Philippe Mora.

Communion also sent Strieber’s lofty literary career into a wild spin from which Strieber has never re-emerged. After Communion, he entered the Land of New Age Woo Woo – which can be a lucrative niche in and of itself – but his days as an “acceptable” mainstream author seemed finished.

It is difficult to tell if this fate for Strieber was by his choice or the result of the unexpected furor that erupted over Communion and careened out of control. But consider that he wrote several sequels to Communion. If Communion was an out-of-control situation – Strieber seemed to have decided to just roll with it. He was consciously choosing the path he wanted to take.

He remains a significant figure in the paranormal space – esoteric, New Age, occult, ufology, mysticism, psychic stuff – whatever you want to call it. The thing about Whitely is that his work straddles all these categories. Pinning him down as a just “UFO guy” or a “New Ager” will never hit the mark.

So, this latest book is about the survival of death. THE AFTERLIFE REVOLUTION comes in the wake of the death of his beloved wife, Anne, in 2015. The gist of the book is Strieber’s belief and presented evidence that his wife has continued her existence in the Afterlife and has managed to reestablish contact with him. This book is billed as a bona fide collaboration with the spirit of Anne, who only departed physically. She remains an active, living presence for Strieber today. Anne Strieber is credited on the cover as a co-author.

To be honest, even though Strieber leverages the word “Revolution” in his title, I found very little that was revolutionary in terms of advancing the study of contact with deceased individuals. Don’t get me wrong – there’s some intriguing and authentic stuff offered in these pages – but Strieber offers little (in my view) that goes beyond the hundreds of other books written on this topic over many decades now.

Yes, Strieber is correct in calling it an “Afterlife Revolution.” It’s just that, it began about 150 years ago. (I won’t discuss what the Egyptians were doing in this realm thousands of year ago). In modern times, it was around the mid-1800s that an explosion of interest in seances, table rapping, automatic writing, Ouija board work, trance channeling, spirit writing and mediumship began to spread across European high society and elements of American society.

I’m sure I have read more than 300 books about making contact with the departed. I mention this because a lot of them provide evidence of survival than goes well beyond what Strieber is offering in Afterlife Revolution. I have reviewed many of them on this website. Here are just a few recent examples that you will find here:

RAYMOND or Life and Death by Sir Oliver Lodge — Published 1916

STRANGE VISITORS edited by Henry J. Horn – Published 1871

AFTERLIFE CONVERSATIONS WITH KEN KESEY by William Bedivere — Published 2009

WOLF’S MESSAGE by Susan Giesemann

AFTERLIFE CONVERSATIONS WITH HEMINGWAY by Frank DeMarco

THE BOY WHO DIED AND CAME BACK by Robert Moss

NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES by P.M.H. Atwater

GHOSTS I HAVE SEEN by Violet Tweedale — Published 1920

I list this short selection to show just a few examples of works that make a more robust evidential case for the survival of death than does The Afterlife Revolution. There are others, of course, such as the work of DR. STAFFORD BETTY of the University of California.

That’s doesn’t mean Strieber’s book is not a worthy addition to the record. Also, because it is a Whitely Strieber book, it’s well written. I found the stories of Anne’s travails as she battled worsening illness and harrowing trips to hospitals and emergency rooms heart wrenching and profound. Whitley was at her side every step of the way and he masterfully captures the anxiety, fear, sense of hopelessness and desperation as it becomes increasingly clear that the days of his beloved spouse’s sojourn on earth are coming to an end.

My heart goes out to Whitely Strieber for his loss and ordeal, and I know all readers will feel the same.

But now a short additional discussion about Whitely Strieber:

I find Strieber to be among the most vexing of authors to read. He has done an invaluable service to his fellow human beings by sharing the sensational phenomena he has encountered in life — for which he has paid a heavy price.

He has been gleefully savaged by so-called skeptics who belong to the fundamentalist religion of material science. Sure, that comes with the territory for anyone willing to write about personal confrontations with the paranormal, but Strieber has been singled out like few others for some of the most vicious, caustic and flesh-tearing attacks I have seen. It’s largely unfair.

At the same time, it’s painful for me to admit, as an admirer, that Whitely Stieber has brought much of it upon himself. For starters, he has made public claims that are demonstrably untrue – such as saying he personally witnessed the 1966 infamous Texas Tower Shooting shooting at the University of Austin perpetrated by Charles Whitman and killing 17 people. It seems clear he did not, and he has changed his own story about the event a number of times. Even his mother said he wasn’t there.

But Strieber has also created genuine problems for himself by seeming to often mix elements of his fictional works with his books of nonfiction. His ever-hounding pack of critics has pointed to specific passages that appeared in his novels which reappear in his nonfiction. (Note: This can be more complicated because Whitley may not view the differences between reality and imagination in the common way — but that’s a complicated issue I must leave aside here).

Another way that Strieber gets himself into trouble – and this is subtle — is that he is a fantastic marketer of himself. Before he embarked on his literary career, Strieber was a bona fide “Mad Man” – as in the television show about the advertising business. I’m not saying Strieber was debauched ala Roger Sterling or Don Draper – but his advertising background comes across (to me, anyway) when I hear Whitely speak or tune into his podcast, UNKNOWN COUNTRY, where he frequently pitches his own books and other things he wants to sell, such as memberships to his Patreon site.

I know what I’m saying is fantastically unfair – Whitley has every right to promote his stuff and earn a living – but when someone is as good at selling, one must fight off that notion that whispers into the mind: “I’m really being SOLD something here.” Again, I strenuously emphasize that it’s monumentally unfair of me to even say this – so why do I? It’s because my larger point is that — I think the smooth way he pitches his stuff tends to work against him in an unexpected, perhaps even subconscious way in the court of public opinion.

Now I’ll address what is the biggest factor which troubles me the most about Whitely Strieber. It’s the undeniable fact that he is a superb merchant of fear. I think of my sister who once told me that only two works of art prompted her to sleep with the lights on for three months. The first was viewing The Exorcist. The second was reading Communion. In fact, that’s one of the most common kinds of comments I have heard from people over the years who have read Communion. They all say something like: “That book really scared the shit out of me!”

Keep in mind that Strieber began his career as a writer of horror fiction. The Wolfen and The Hunger were not so much blood and gore as they were vehicles of deep psychological terror. But the contract we all have with fictional horror is that we agree to or ask for what is being offered. We willingly plunge into the pages of a horror novel eager for chills and unsettling scenarios – psychologists suggest we like to read horror because it serves as a kind of inoculation against real fear and terror, much the same way a weakened version of the flu virus in a vaccine serves as a prophylactic against the flu itself.

But with Communion, Whitley enters our minds through a loophole in the common literary contract. The work is offered as something that is true and real – and also something that could easily happen to anyone of us. It is extremely difficult to defend ourselves from this form of psychic intrusion. What if it’s real? What if bizarre aliens can come into our homes, into our bedrooms and do anything they want to us – including subjecting us to the most personal and intrusive manner of medical experiments. What if they can control our minds and manipulate every aspect of our lives? Are we little more than rats in a cage for them? What then?

By Calistemon – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12853851

Even when Strieber is writing hopeful, inspirational books – such as The Afterlife Revolution – he can’t help but slip in an element of visceral horror. In this case, he relates an episode with frightening giant spiders – dripping with evil — which he said appeared over the bed of his wife and threatened to drop down on her sleeping form.

The same is true for another recent Strieber book – The Key. Here Strieber lays out for us apocalyptic scenarios that are unsettling to the core. Massive global warming, floods, natural disasters, death and destruction are part of the message Strieber’s messenger from another dimension regales him with during a series of mysterious meetings.

By Sailko – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39809967

I could go on, but here’s the point: Strieber’s works have injected massive doses of fear into our society. This comes at a heavy cost. The opposite of love is not hate – the opposite of love is fear, although hate is a byproduct of fear. When millions of people are prompted to vibrate the energy of fear, the effect cascades across the collective consciousness of humanity. Think of the way a pebble dropped onto the still surface of a pond sends waves across the whole system. Or think of the way one section of a spider web getting plucked sends a shivering message across the whole network.

For better or worse – and even if we might say he is justified in doing so – Whitely Strieber tends to generate fear with his works, even when he’s attempting to relate us a story of hope and wonder, as in the glorious notion that we all survive death

That’s what’s vexing about Whitley Strieber. It doesn’t have to be that way.

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David Marler’s ‘Triangular UFOs’ Is A Landmark Work For Ufology And Should Be Held As A Model For How To Handle The Subject In The Proper Way

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

With the exception of “lights,” the most common form of UFO reported by eyewitnesses are triangle or triangular-like flying objects.

The classic “flying saucer” or “disk” shaped UFOs don’t come close to the number of triangular UFO reported. That’s according to a survey conducted of 87,000 sighting reports since 1994 collected by the National UFO Reporting Center.

The count was conducted by Peter Davenport, the UFO Reporting Center’s director. He found 11,000 reports of triangular UFOs and 6,460 that were shaped liked disks.

In fact, even the very first modern report of flying saucers were not flying saucers.

On June 24, 1947, private pilot Kenneth Arnold was flying near Mount Rainier when he spotted nine objects which he described as, “something like a pie plate that was cut in half with a sort of a convex triangle in the rear.” He described their movement as “a saucer skipping across the water.” A local reporter fixated on “saucer” and the term “flying saucer” was born.

David Marler

But get this: The first modern report of a triangle UFO predates the Kenneth Arnold sighting by more than 10 years. In the book I’m reviewing today, TRIANGULAR UFOS: AN ESTIMATE OF THE SITUATION, author DAVID MARLER tells us about two young men who encountered a giant flying triangular object while walking along a lonely, snow-covered road one night in Alaska. The year was 1936. As the gigantic object approached them, they became frightened and dived into the snowbanks on the side of the road to hide as the fantastic object passed by.

Obviously, this obscure event on a remote rural road in Alaska did not create the sensation as did Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of nine triangle-disks skimming over the skies of Washington, and so usher in the modern UFO era. But it does demonstrate something important — that triangular flying objects have been appearing in our skies for many decades.

That’s part of the reason why this book is an incredibly important contribution to the study of UFOs. Marler chooses to focus on triangular objects, but in doing so, he has made one of the best cases I’ve ever encountered for the idea that UFOs cannot be explained away as something natural or the product of human invention.

The evidence is powerful and persuasive that airborne triangular objects are of nonhuman origin – be that entities from the stars, alternate dimensions, future timelines — or even something else.

Marler doggedly hammers away at the issue with painstaking and relentless presentation of case after case of sightings mostly gleaned from local newspaper reports, but also from the files of those organizations with study the phenomenon, such as MUFON or the National UFO Reporting Center.

Time and again, people from all walks of life tell of their experiences with sightings of gigantic triangular objects that float with utter silence in seeming complete disregard for the laws of gravity and physics. Many sightings report that the triangles travel with the widest side forward rather than “point forward” in weird contradiction of common-sense aerodynamics.

There’s also high strangeness. For example, some reports tell of triangles that shape shift, split in two and reform or take on other forms. Some have rows of windows in which, occasionally, glimpses of occupants are seen. Then there’s the uncanny, gigantic size of the objects. In the case of the famous series of sighting in 1997 “Phoenix Lights” incident, one triangle is estimated to have been 7 to 9 miles long – and was seen by thousands of people.

Darryl Barker created a 28-minute documentary on the Illinois events.

Other cases involve thousands of witnesses as well. Another prominent sighting is the Tinley Park Triangle. Tinley Park is a fast-growing suburb of Chicago. In August of 2004 thousands of people looked up into the night sky to see three bright lights that formed a triangle. UFO investigators located at least 30 videos of the object captured by residents. Although no physical structure could be seen between the lights, video analysis by computer-video expert Terrence Masson and Dr. Ted Acworth indicate that the lights were attached to a solid structure that was about 1,500 feet long.

Early in the book Marler takes us with painstaking detail through the January 5, 2000, sightings of a triangular UFO that was seen and tracked by numerous witnesses, including five police officers, one of who managed to get a Polaroid picture, although of poor quality.

Here Marler demonstrates his almost obsessive detail-oriented approach, relating every niggling instance in laying out the facts of the case. For example, he tells us where a police officer turned his squad car right and where he turned left as he followed the strange object as it traversed across southern Illinois skies. The effect for the reader is often tedious, and yet, instills us with the surety that here is a writer who is a serious, painstaking investigator that doesn’t mess around.

THE MEDIA AND UFOS

I think anyone reading this book will be struck by the fact that the majority of it could never have been written if it had not been for the steady work of local newspaper reporters toiling away at small and medium-sized papers across the nation and world.

Indeed, I was delighted to see that one of the historical accounts cited was gleaned from a Midwest daily newspaper I once worked for as a general assignment reporter back in the 1980s – The Daily Journal of Fergus Falls, Minnesota.

I bring this up because I notice Marler’s book is published by RICHARD DOLAN Press. Mr. Dolan, of course, has been a premier voice in the UFO field for decades. His contribution to the understanding of legitimate, evidence and fact-based study of the issue has been beyond calculation. He has my endless admiration.

However, where I part ways with Mr. Dolan has been his frequent excoriation of the media as “part of the problem” in terms of the frustrations within the UFO community about being accepted as a legitimate field of study. That’s why I was prompted recently to flay Mr. Dolan and his co-author Bryce Zabel in a scathing review of their book, A.D. AFTER DISCLOSURE. (See that review HERE).

To be fair, I have sometimes heard Richard Dolan make it clear that he thinks local, or perhaps second-tier media outlets are doing a good job of reporting the UFO phenomenon, but he contends that the “nexus of control” occurs at the top-tier of the mainstream media level. He has frequently made the dubious (and demonstrably incorrect) claim that major news outlets are “controlled by the CIA” and other dark government influences. (Again, see his argument in A.D. After Disclosure). This is where the otherwise level-headed Richard Dolan tragically falls prey to full conspiracy theory mode psychology.

This view is widespread among the UFO community. Most have accepted as gospel that the media has long played a nefarious, dishonest and corrupt role in not only keeping the truth about UFOs suppressed but but also acting as a proactive agent of outright disinformation.

I offer David Marler’s book as Exhibit A that this is not true. Again, anyone reading Marler’s fine study of triangular UFOs must conclude unambiguously that the media has been the best friend of the ufologist – from the time reporters broke the very first UFO sightings of Kenneth Arnold. After all, it was newspaper reporters who announced to the world in a bold headline that, “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch In Roswell Region.”

It was on-the-ground, hard working journalists who first revealed the UFO story to the public — and did not hide it from the public — and they continue to do it every day up to present day. David Marler’s book demonstrates that.

Finally…

So, I find Triangular UFOs: An Estimate of the Situation to be among the most important books about UFOs written in decades. In addition to reports of sightings, the author offers critical examination, discussion and proposes a plan of action for future study. Included is an important interview with the distinguished aviation engineer, Professor John E. Allen, Chief of Future Projects for British Aerospace. This offers invaluable perspective from a man who has been on the cutting edge of aviation design for decades. He’s mostly a skeptic, but an open-minded one. His views on what is possible in terms of current man-made technology helps make the case most triangular UFOs cannot be “ours.”

The book is bolstered by forward written by the legendary JOHN B. ALEXANDER Ph.D. An afterward section provides short essays that offer more perspective. These include offerings by Richard Dolan, Mark Rodeghier, George Wingfield, Omar Fowler and Peter Davenport.

Additional Note:

A recent book involving a massive triangular UFO and abduction case has been making some waves recently. It’s by retired attorney Terry Lovelace. I review his book here: INCIDENT AT DEVIL’S DEN

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PLEASE CHECK OUT MY REVIEWS OF OTHER UFO BOOKS, LINKED BELOW:

BLACK SWAN GHOSTS by Simeon Hein PhD

SYMBIOSIS by Nancy Tremaine

PASCAGOULA: THE CLOSEST ENCOUNTER by Calvin Parker

Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

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Physicist Bruce Maccabee Provides Clarity And Important Perspective On How Government/Military Policy Evolved On UFO Issue

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

Physicist BRUCE MACCABEE has been a significant figure in ufology for some 50 years. He holds a Ph.D. earned from American University, Washington D.C. He is often referred to as an “optics physicist” because of his work with optical data processing for the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, later known as the Naval Surface Warfare Center.

He also worked on underwater lasers to generate subsurface sound and made significant contributions on aspects of SDI, Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” space-based defense platform.

For those of us who have been addicted to UFO stuff for decades, Dr. Maccabee is an instantly recognizable face. Starting in the 1970s he began popping up in UFO documentaries on TV and film, usually as an analyst of anomalous photographs and video.

If Bruce Maccabee pronounced an image or video footage “authentic” or “unexplainable by natural means” – well, that really meant something. With his serious scientific credentials, he could not be written off as just another flake.

Dr. Maccabee is also a dogged researcher who has made enormous efforts to obtain all manner of military and government documents relating to UFOs. A major milestone was getting his hands on the secret “flying disc files” of the FBI – yes, there really was an actual FBI “X-Files.”

Dr. Bruce Maccabee

So, in this short book, THE LEGACY OF 1952: YEAR OF THE UFO, Maccabee offers an important perspective on where things stand in UFO research today, and “how we got here,” for better or worse.

He argues that early on, but especially in the year 1952, certain protocols became set in stone in terms of how our military and government would treat the UFO issue and how they would relate what they knew (or did not know) to the taxpaying public they serve.

Those protocols hardened into “tradition,” Maccabee writes, in 1952 and have remained largely unchanged since. The result is wide ranging and enormous. An entire American generation grew up with a government that either denied the “reality” of the UFO phenomenon … or for any case it could not explain, no matter how sensational, the policy was to suggest it could be explained in common terms if more facts were obtained.

What was so special about 1952? Well, that year witnessed a remarkable explosion of UFO sightings. Thousands of reports poured into media outlets, local police and various government agencies. It seems no location in America was spared.

The most significant is known as the “WASHINGTON FLAP” occurring from July 12 through July 29 in the summer of 1952. It was an amazing time! Suddenly, “swarms of UFOs” began appearing over the American capital city. And it wasn’t just sightings. The objects were routinely captured on radar. Jets were scrambled to pursue the objects. Our best-trained fighter pilots observed UFOs with their own eyes. The “saucers” routinely outdistanced the F-94s and other assets that chased them – and when the jets ran low on fuel forcing them to cut off chase and return – the UFOs would sometimes turn around and come right back!

It was impossible for anyone to be in denial of what was happening!

The sightings were making headlines in major papers across the nation. Also unable to ignore the events was President Harry Truman himself. Truman was alarmed enough to call top people in the Air Force to get some answers.

Stop for a minute and think about that. The President of the United States picks up the phone, calls his Top Brass, and orders them to get some answers about UFOs.

President Harry Truman

What would it take today for the President of the United States to pick up the phone and call his top military commanders to focus urgent attention on getting answers about the UFO issue?

And … and … well, I guess that leads me to my take away from this book. It informs me or, I guess, clarifies for me how we came to be in the place we are today in ufology. Ii helps explain the sort of “crazy labyrinth” that is the “UFO question” in which we find ourselves endlessly lost here in 2019.

Reading Maccabee’s book gave me the notion that a certain normalcy or rationality held sway for a few short years after that June day in 1947 when the Kenneth Arnold sighted nine shiny objects flitting over Mount Rainier, kicking off the modern UFO era.

For example, the press was reporting the UFO story largely in a straightforward way. It was “just that facts, ma’me.” If entire fleets of UFOs were observed over Washington D.C., ordinary, mainstream newspapers, such as the Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa, would sport the headline:

“SAUCERS SWARM OVER CAPITAL”

Sure, that’s a sensational headline, but it also happened to be simply factual and true. There was no need to hide it, censor it, spin it, mock it or sugar coat it for the reading public – the media just reported to the people what happened – so that citizens could have this information.

The same goes for the military and government. Early on, a fantastic UFO sighting was not immediately inserted into a meat grinder of denial, disinformation, propaganda or captured into a classified super-double-top-cosmic-secret-for-your-eyes-only-report. Rather, it was confronted directly as a problem for government experts to look at directly as they strove to come up with straightforward answers.

But after 1952 – and because of critical policy decisions made by top government officials in that amazing time – we were all kicked down the proverbial rabbit hole we remain lost in today. That’s mostly what Dr. Maccabee is suggesting in this book.

On the other hand, this is all a much more complex issue. There’s a lot more at play here. For example, the UFO phenomenon has evolved in texture and scope to an astonishing degree since 1952.

Just nine years after 1952, guess what happened? In 1961 a certain couple from Vermont reported they were abducted aboard a UFO by alien beings. They were subjected to medical tests – Barney Hill reported what is arguably the first ever report of an anal probe. His wife, Betty, had a long needled pushed into her belly. Barney was also forced to give a sperm sample.

And then things really got weird.

I have three words for you: “Praying Mantis Alien.” Or how about three more: “20 And Back.” See where I’m going here?

Oh for the days when swarms of flying saucers were blackening the skies over Washington! What simple times!

So, on the one hand, Dr. Maccabee’s book provided for me an excellent sense of sociological clarity and perspective on how the UFO issue developed from the 1950s to present time in terms of government, military, media and public dynamics.

On the other hand, this perspective “stays in its lane,” so to speak, as it represents a narrow slice of the overall phenomenon as it roils and boils today. That’s by no means a knock on Dr. Maccabee’s well-presented book. It provides a compelling narrative which adds to the realization that the UFO phenomenon is not only real, but that the conventional explanations supplied by the skeptics are demonstrably flawed.

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PLEASE CHECK OUT MY REVIEWS OF OTHER UFO BOOKS, LINKED BELOW:

BLACK SWAN GHOSTS by Simeon Hein PhD

SYMBIOSIS by Nancy Tremaine

PASCAGOULA: THE CLOSEST ENCOUNTER by Calvin Parker

INCIDENT AT DEVIL’S DEN by Terry Lovelace

MANAGING MAGIC by Grant Cameron

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Eden Phillpotts Wrote 300 Books, Including ‘Saurus’ — A Hyperintellectual Lizard Visiting Earth From Outer Space

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

A large nut-shaped metallic object comes crashing to earth and buries itself on impact into the bucolic pastures of the East Devonshire countryside.

A distinguished and semi-retired biologist who lives nearby investigates. He digs out the object and is stunned to discover it’s not a natural meteorite, but obviously something hollow and of intelligent design.

But the real surprise comes when his team of workmen finally manage to open the space capsule. Inside they find three small boxes. One contains an egg, the next contains a cache of seeds and the third a mysterious tin containing what appears to be some sort of jelly.

Of course, they have to hatch that egg. Out of it emerges a rather humanoid-like iguana. This iguana has no tail. It also sports a large, bulbous head and large, luminous eyes that gleam with intelligence from Day 1. The seeds are also planted. The result is a rapid-growing plant that produces a fruit resembling a tomato. It turns out the tin of jelly is “baby food” for the newly hatched reptoid — apparently sustenance until the space tomatoes are ready to eat. And so “Saurus” is born — an extraterrestrial envoy from some mysterious source in outer space.

Prolific British author EDEN PHILLPOTTS leveraged this science fictiony premise as a vehicle that would enable him to present a series of essays and commentaries on the state of human affairs, from geopolitical and theological, to historical and philosophical.

So this is not a thrilling science fiction yarn with a well-developed plot, and not the brand of space opera action that was thriving in 1938 when this book was published. Saurus matures to adulthood in just weeks, learns to read and write quickly — and then he learns to type. That’s his only method of communication since he cannot not speak. Fortunately, he commands a blazing fast word-per-minute proficiency.

After a deep read of world history, a thorough survey of philosophy, math, theology and sundry other topics he begins to spill forth with his assessment of earth’s collective humanity and our current level of psycho-social development. Of course, these are the views of Eden Phillpotts.

It’s interesting to note this book came out in 1938, a dire time for Great Britain. The nation still bore the scars of the first Great War. Everyone knew that a second World War was certainly right around the corner. Also, the rising menace of the Russian communists and the gigantic figure of Joseph Stalin rumbled menacingly on the Eastern horizon.

Marker denoting “Eltham” the home of Phillpotts in Torquay, Devon, England.

One would think that simmering atmosphere would have informed and influence the many opinions Phillpotts espouses through the fictional vehicle of his intellectual lizard — and yet I detect scant sense of fear or anxiety within these pages. In fact, Saurus is the very personification of staid English tact and aplomb. The qualities of politeness and a certain pragmatic chivalry infuse the fundamentals of his discourse.

I’ll also say that Phillpotts does not come off as radical in his politics, nor does he display the agitation of a social malcontent who is deeply critical or pessimistic about the fate of mankind. His views on the achievements of his own culture are measured. That Great Britain spread a common law grounded in the fundamental liberty of the individual throughout its empire is what Phillpotts considers his country’s greatest contribution to the world. Yes, he acknowledges that Britain committed its share of atrocities in its forays around the globe, but he says these sins are ultimately mitigated when the basic principles of English law and culture take hold after the dust settles. As Saurus writes, the British find “hating” to be “very fatiguing.”

On the other hand, Phillpotts’ central notion is that mankind is ultimately unable to live up to its own highest ideals. For example, Saurus identified the GOLDEN RULE as perhaps the most enlightened concept ever idealized. Unfortunately, no one is able to adhere to the Golden Rule for long, be it an individual or a nation. So Phillpotts says that while people understand what to do — they ultimately fail to do it — and the reason for that is that we fall prey to our passions, emotions and latent animal instincts.

Adelaide Phillpotts as a child,

And there’s so much more. For example, Phillpotts upholds the first American President George Washington as one of the greatest men in history and that England should have learned more from his example — but I’ll leave it there.

Unfortunately, one can never consider any of the hundreds of popular books Phillpotts wrote without also noting his infamous, years-long incestuous relationship with his daughter, ADELAIDE PHILLPOTTS ROSS. She revealed the incestuous nature of her relationship with her father in a 1976 interview. It started when she was a girl and may have continued until she was 55 when she married an American bookseller, Nicholas Ross — which Eden Phillpotts objected to strenuously. Upon her marriage, he never spoke to her again. He died in 1960 at age 98.

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Sociologist Simeon Hein Warns Denial of UFO And Other Anomalous Phenomenon Could Have Unexpected Consequences For Human Race

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

So SIMEON HEIN is a guy with some serious academic chops. He holds a PhD in sociology which he earned at Washington State University in 1992. He’s into things like nonlinear research methods, statistical analysis and technological determinism.

He’s also into a lot of stuff that makes mainstream scientists grind their teeth, such as UFOs, remote viewing and crop circle research. One is tempted to say that Dr. Hein is himself a kind of Black Swan — you know, an outlier, someone willing to dally with the fringe — or should we say the leading edge?

But first, what is this reference to Black Swan that Hein uses in the title of this book?”

The Black Swan Theory is that which states that certain events can happen that are totally unpredicted and unexpected, can produce a major effect, often hugely negative — but are then rationalized after the fact with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight.

The concept was first put forward by the Lebanese-American intellectual and scholar NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB. Simeon Hein’s book title is a play on Taleb’s 2007 highly influential book, THE BLACK SWAN.

UFO witness Louise Voves.

So this book presents a series of case studies of unexpected events that Hein calls Black Swan Ghosts. It’s things that are not supposed to happen, or even exists, yet they do happen and they apparently do exist. An example Hein provides is that of a wonderful Idaho lady by the name of Louise Voves. She was picking huckleberries in a remote rural area with her brother one day in the 1970s when a gigantic “tortoise-shell” shaped UFO suddenly appeared over a nearby treeline and maneuvered around right before their eyes and at close range.

There was no mistaking this object for anything known, man-made or natural. The object created significant marks on the grass below. It was seen by several other witnesses as well. When Louise reported the sighting to police, things quickly get all Blacky Swany.

The police must have informed the military because troops quickly descend at the sighting location and banish all “ordinary” citizens from the area. They tell Louise that she must not only forget about picking huckleberries in this prime spot, but she should also forget what she saw and never speak of it again. Army and Air Force personnel are on the scene for several days, but the incident gets no press coverage and the military clams up — it’s like it never happened.

But wait — this event may be a “Black Swan Ghost” event in itself although it does not constitute an overarching Black Swan scenario.

Simeon Hein PhD

The singular event is wholly unexpected, yes, but we can’t say it produces a large-scale effect. It’s localized at best. One also cannot say it is rationalized with 20/20 hindsight, although many UFO sightings are rationalized. But the Voves sighting is not so much rationalized as it is denied and covered up, and for authorities, hopefully forgotten.

But If I understand Dr. Hein’s thesis correctly, he’s more concerned about the meta-analysis here. He’s not just pointing to individual cases, but the thousands of UFO encounters similar (and many far stranger) to that of Louise Voves. They’ve been happening from at least that day in 1947 when pilot Kenneth Arnold made arguably the first postmodern UFO sighting report.

Hein says that the way our government, media, culture and society has been handling the UFO phenomenon for some 70 years may invoke a large-scale Black Swan scenario in the near future. It holds the potential to create a widespread impact on all the people of earth. He warns of the possibility of a kind of culture shock that will shake the collective psychology of the human race to the core.

In other words, once day the dam of secrecy may burst. The years of cover-ups, the official lying and overzealous use of the “Top Secret” classification system, the inability or unwillingness of the media to report the story and general public apathy will one day all fall away — the truth will be undeniable — it will be stunning — and our major institutions will be rattled.

Furthermore, Hein says there is plenty of blame to go around — and this is where I give Simeon Hein very high marks, indeed. That’s because most prominent ufologists today keep of a steady drumbeat of blame for UFO secrecy against the usual suspects — the government, the media and the military industrial complex.

Certainly, Hein takes his shots at these entities as well, but consider this passage from Black Swan Ghosts:

“It’s pretty clear that it’s not just the federal government that’s withholding secrets about this issue. The public as a whole wants it this way or they would be demanding more information. It’s clear that the federal government has black budget programs around this issue. However, the public seems to trust that the government knows what it’s doing or they would demand more. They could easily pick up the phone and call their Senator of Congressperson. But they don’t.

“They don’t because it is easier not to know. The public wants to keep ignoring the elephant in the room and then blame the government for the secrecy rather than take the responsibility. It’s just a whole lot easier to pretend you can’t do anything about it.”

Thank you Dr. Simeon Hein!

This is why we need more sociologists in ufology. They have a broader perspective on the complexity of the matrix that makes up society. Government, the media, the military and corporations don’t exist or operate in a vacuum. The general public is also a primary, fundamental player and a key element that contributes to the overall situation as it exists today. Few of our most prominent ufologists today ever make this leap.

This is a juncture where I’m tempted to launch into a more in-depth analysis of the social dynamics of how all this works — but that will take me far astray of what’s supposed to be a book review of Black Swan Ghosts.

I’ll just close with some additional notes:

• An excellent feature of the ebook format of this book are video links to the UFO cases cited. They’re terrific and lend great weight and credibility to the stories presented.

• UFO events are not the only category of example used by Hein to make his Black Swan case. He also takes a look at cold fusion, the overwhelming scientific evidence for biological-microbial fossils existent in rocks from Mars and meteorites, crop circle phenomenon, remote viewing and more.

• Hein writes well. His presents his narrative in clear, concise language that’s palatable to a general audience while also including enough thoughtful, academic gristle to make this a work of depth that challenges the reader and makes a call for action.

• Hein has established an organization he calls the Mount Baldy Institute. Its website is HERE. His YouTube channel also provides many entertaining and edifying videos which you can find HERE.

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Nancy Tremaine’s Story of Alien Contact With Reptilian Beings Is Relentlessly Weird But Is Also A Tale Of Courage And Hope That Deserves Serious Consideration

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

The late journalist Jim Marrs, who wrote bestselling books about UFOs and sundry conspiracy theories, described something he called the “mental boggle point.”

That’s the point when even the most open-minded people confront information that is so unbelievable that the mind succumbs to a “rubber band effect,” snapping back to beliefs that are more comfortable and socially acceptable.

I wager that some of the even most enthusiastic supporters of the reality of UFOs, aliens and the like will reach their mental boggle point when reading the story of NANCY TREMAINE. If her experiences are true, then our reality is far, far stranger than most of us have ever dared imagine, and the implications of the UFO and alien contactee phenomenon are shattering.

In SYMBIOSIS, Tremaine documents a lifetime of UFO contact since age 12. She grew up in Novi, Michigan, a small town close by the outskirts of Detroit. Early one evening in 1961 she and her girlfriend Cindy, also 12, were stunned when a flying saucer appeared suddenly over their residential neighborhood. The object was “bigger than a house” and hovered close.

Nancy Tremaine

Cindy’s father was also a witness on the scene. It was not yet dark. The object was observed by many others in the neighborhood, including at least three police officers. At one point, the UFO sent down a light beam that zapped an unmarked police car and stopped it cold.The officers radioed the sighting back to their Chief of Police, Lee BeGole — who today in his 90s still remembers the report from his men.

Tremaine and her young friend were abducted into the craft. The aliens performed a number of highly intrusive physical examinations upon Nancy. Cindy was merely locked up in a “tube” positioned above from where she observed the aliens working over her friend. It seemed that the aliens had particular interest in Nancy, but not so much Cindy.

The two girls were let go after an indeterminate amount of time. A period of missing time then occurred. The next thing Nancy knew, she was back in her home where her obviously disturbed father was doing his best to reassure her she that was safe. He told his shaken daughter that what had just happened was to never be spoken of again — not even a secret whisper to a friend — period.

And so, Neither Nancy Tremaine and Cindy maintained utter silence about the event for 50 years. The two women could not even bring themselves talk to each about it despite the fact that they shared an astounding incident that deconstructed all sense of normalcy. It changed their world view. The event may have contributed to Cindy’s future as a lifetime alcoholic.

Nancy had no memory of what had happened to her inside the craft. She only recalled standing in the street observing the fantastic object in the sky and the stunned, fearful reactions of Cindy and the police officers. The next thing she knew, she was home. But some deeper undercurrent haunted her for the next five decades.

Nancy suffered from classic symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. Much about her life was dysfunctional. She married and divorced four times. She suffered mysterious panic attacks. Her sexual experiences were often disturbing and her libido sometimes went into hyperdrive. She experienced odd blips of missing time and inexplicable anxieties. She had a pervasive sense of being alone in the world — as if she were in a strange place where she did not belong.

It was not until 2011 that Tremaine finally underwent hypnotic regression to find out what happened on that day so long ago. The sessions revealed a lifetime of fantastically freakish events retrieved from her memory. What she had to say under hypnosis was extraordinary and weird.

The most sensational claim, of course, it that Nancy Tremaine says she met an an alien back in 1961 of a type known in UFO circles as a “reptilian,” a kind of humanoid lizard being.

Furthermore, Tremaine says she has since developed a deeply loving relationship with a particular reptilian whom she has dubbed “Mr.” (that’s Mr. with a period). Tremaine says that she has been impregnated by Mr. and bore him a son whom she calls Drax. Drax is actually a three-way hybrid resulting from a combination of Nancy, her human lover, Sid, and the reptilian Mr. (Sid is not the real name of her boyfriend. She said Sid stands for “Some Guy I dated.”)

Has your mind reached the mental boggle point yet? Well, hold on. There’s more.

Not only did Nancy Tremaine give birth to a human-reptilian hybrid alien child, she did so at the age of 62! Yes, she has a picture of her swollen, pregnant belly which she shows us in this book. But she didn’t give birth naturally to this baby — it was simply taken from her one night by the aliens. One day her stomach was showing, the next day it was flat.

She also has pictures of an odd set of round footprints in the snow that lead up to her house and appear to enter right into her doorway. Tremaine said these are tracks left by Drax when he came to visit her one night.

Okay, I’m probably revealing too much information here, but I promise those who want to read Tremaine’s book there is plenty more information to challenge your mind and world view.

David Icke

Now — those who are already schooled in UFO lore are probably familiar with what has become a well-defined sub-genre of ufology which is the suggested existence of a class of aliens known as the reptilians. For better or worse, reptilians are probably most associated today with the prominent, prolific and vociferous conspiracy theorist, DAVID ICKE.

Icke is a British citizen who has written numerous books postulating a variety of conspiracy-driven scenarios. One is that our planet has been visited by an interdimensional race of reptilian beings for thousands of years. Icke says the reptilians have mastered shape-shifting and can appear as humans that are undetectable from real humans. They possess extremely advanced holographic technology that makes them masters of illusion on many levels. Icke says the reptilians have infiltrated world governments, banks, corporation and our society in general and are meddling in human affairs on all levels.

But many others report the existence of reptilians as well. In fact, thousands of experiencers and contactees tell of seeing or interacting with reptilian beings. Others contend that their existence is hinted at in the Bible. The snake who tempted Adam and Eve, for example, is a metaphor for the interference of reptilian in the affairs of humankind. Other religions also feature snake or reptile motifs in various godlike roles interacting with mankind.

Curiously and intriguingly, reptilians also pop up in other modes of altered-consciousness explorations. One of the most striking are the DMT experiments of DR. RICK STRASSMAN. DMT is a powerful hallucinogenic compound that is produced naturally in the human brain’s pineal gland in microscopic amounts. DMT is sometimes called “the Spirit Molecule.” In medically approved and legally sanctioned studies, Dr. Strassman injected some 400 volunteers with DMT. These subjects described the powerful psychedelic and psychotropic effects they experienced — some of which included not only interaction with reptilian beings, but sex with reptilians, or experiences of being raped by reptilians.

Encounters with reptilians have been reported by those partaking in ayahuasca ceremonies under the guidance of shamans in the rainforest regions of South America. Ayahuasca is a powerful natural hallucinogenic compound made from the banisteriopsis vine combined with another plant, usually the shrub psychotria viridis. The combination contains monoamine oxidase inhibitors and the psychotropic compound dimethyltryptamine. Interactions, good and bad, with reptilian figures under the influence of ayahuasca are commonplace, and these date back to ancient times as reported by indigenous rainforest dwellers.

Reptilians entities have even been glimpsed or perceived by REMOTE VIEWERS, including perhaps the greatest of all the U.S. Military remote viewers, JOE MCMONEAGLE.

Perhaps one of the foremost experts on reptilians today is JOHN RHODES who heads up the website reptoids.com. Mr. Rhodes has done in-depth research into all aspects of the reptilian phenomenon. He prefers the term “reptoids” which he says is a more accurate description for who and what these beings truly are. His most fundamental claim is that reptoid are not aliens or interdimensional beings but a species native to our own planet earth. They evolved here, Rhodes says, and they live in a vast realm they maintain in the interior of the planet. You can view an excellent lecture by Rhodes on everything he has learned about reptoids here: JOHN RHODES: MUFON LECTURE.

Reptilian statues at Horiuji Temple, Japan, from about 600 A.D.

I’ll make only brief mention of an entirely other angle to the reptilian issue, and that involves the idea of mythical archetypes. Some scholars have made the suggestion that snake or reptilian themes are fundamental to the human psyche — some would even trace it to the limbic system of the human brain, which is also called our internal “Lizard Brain” — and so when people enter into altered states of consciousness (including hypnosis) the reptilian archetype can be triggered and brought to the forefront of human experience in a vivid and meaningful way. But all this is a deep subject far beyond the scope of this review.

The point is, Nancy Tremaine’s story may be bizarre and seem unbelievably fantastic, but she is hardly alone concerning the deep relationship she believes she has developed with a reptilian entity. It’s a worldwide phenomenon that exists across cultures in all parts of the globe and has been manifesting in human experience since the beginning of time.

Figurine of ancient Vinča Culture of Serbia features many reptoid-like statues. Dated to 5700 B.C.

Simple-minded skeptics will find as easy mark in Ms.Tremaine. No doubt they will pounce on her revelation that she was sexually molested as a youth. Indeed, much about her entire life story is shot through with the painful sexual abuse experiences she suffered personally and within her family. Her own daughter was sexually molested. She speaks of a certain uncle who apparently was a serial molester — a man who got his hands on numerous members of Tremaine’s extended family. Everyone knew it, but no one did anything about it, she said.

An entire body of skeptical belief exists that seeks to explain away all alien abduction phenomenon as rooted in the trauma of sexual molestation. The basic theory is that victims of molestation grasp at a false alien abduction fantasy as a way to repress or distance themselves from what really happened to them. They re-frame the painful experience in a way that is less shameful and personal, and as a way to deal with guilt, and so forth.

Of course, skeptics will also gleeful discredit anything Tremaine says because they reject utterly the efficacy of any information obtained by way of hypnotic regression. Skeptics maintain that this form of memory retrieval is 100% unreliable because it readily encourages elaborate, creative imaginings by the subjects. They also claim a hypnotist has a tendency to “lead the witness” with either overt or subconscious suggestion.

Geneticist J.B.S. Haldane

But these same skeptics have a major problem in the case of Nancy Tremaine — it’s the fact that the genesis of her lifetime of contactee experience was a UFO event that has been corroborated by multiple witnesses. Her story that is supported by the highly respected former Novi, Michigan, Chief of Police Lee BeGole who has street named after him. Her friend Cindy is on record with both seeing the UFO in 1961 and being aboard the craft where she was ensconced in a tube. Other witnesses have come forward as well.

Granted, merely observing a UFO does not equal a lifetime of interaction, having sexual relationships with and breeding a hybrid child with a reptilian being — but it does add considerable weight to her narrative. And Nancy Tremaine offers a body of other circumstantial evidence to support the reality of her story.

I say — just read the book. Don’t judge it by its cover art or dismiss because its outlandish premise triggers your “mental boggle point.”. Nancy Tremaine deserves to be heard. Her story is worthy of being considered and taken seriously. Remember the words of British geneticist and evolutionary biologist J.B. S. Haldane who said:

“My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we CAN suppose.”

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NOTE: Please see my reviews of other UFO books by clicking on the following links:

EXTRATERRESTRIAL ODYSSEY by Rocky Kvande

MANAGING MAGIC by Grant Cameron

HOW TO TALK TO AN ALIEN By Nancy DuTertre

ALIENS IN THE FOREST by Noe Torres and Ruben Uriarte

SEARCHERS by Ron Felber

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‘Traveler’ Is A Fictionalized Rendering of a UFO Crash Event In 1897 Texas As Told By Newspaper Accounts Of The Day

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

The premise of this novel centers around one of the most iconic UFO cases in history, but most of it reads a lot more like the Dukes of Hazzard or an episode of Hee-Haw than the X-Files. There’s a lot muscle cars, old pickup trucks, horses, hay bales and Harleys. Where you find them, you’ll find a lot of good ol’ boys, hayseeds, hickster lawmen, slutty women and biker gang types.

This ambitious book also takes us back more than 100 years to tell the tale of a UFO-crash through the eyes of the frontier people who witnessed it. That would be the residents of Aurora, a hardscrabble small town in northern Texas where the Dallas Morning News famously reported in April of 1897 that a UFO crashed and left the body of a dead alien for the townsfolk to bury.

But wait — this book attempts to do even more. In addition to telling a story from two different historical timelines, it makes frequent breaks away from the dual fictional narratives to provide readers with scads of straightforward information about UFOs.

Co-author of TRAVELER Kerry Trent Haggar

Does it all hold together? Well … I guess I’ll say with mediocre enthusiasm that it does. It presents a coherent narrative for the most part. The diversions from the fictional tales to give us nonfictional UFO information aren’t so intrusive as to scuttle our sense of a story that flows and makes sense.

On the other hand, whatever chance this tale had for being a riveting page turner was lost when the authors decided on the three-pronged approach I describe above.

That’s too bad because the premise for TRAVELER is an idea with tremendous plot potential: A plucky young reporter gets her hands on a hot story — a deep mystery that’s even more complex than anyone imagines. She sets out to unravel the mystery using her skills as an investigative journalist to write the scoop of the century.

But all that is washed out because the narrative is constantly switching gears between competing story timelines with added breaks to fill us in with UFO background information.

TRAVELER co-author Johnny Cochrane.

Another drawback for me is that the authors’ choice to play their story for lowbrow laughs. It features characters that are painfully stereotypical “white trash” types — you know, folks that are barely employed, grow “weed” on the side for extra cash, poach deer for food, live in shabby dumps, drive junky cars, hang out in frowzy bars, etc.

Even our newswoman heroine, Bonnie Reynolds, is a saucy tramp known to engage in the occasional casual three-way sex romp with her lusty dominatrix roommate. Here is how the authors describe reporter Bonnie Reynolds:

“142 pounds of alluring femininity … She was and forever would be a little slutty and a little dirty but perfectly happy with herself for being that way …”

Okay! So she’s not exactly Florence Nightingale. But hey, I’m no prude. (I was even a newspaper reporter once). It isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Bonnie Reynolds’ licentiousness makes her a more interesting character, I suppose. It’s just that, because her impulsive debauchery is a baseline trait for about everyone in this tale, it doesn’t exactly make her stand out as a unique viewpoint character.

Aurora’s UFO crash has been subsequently investigated a number of times over the years, but each re-opening of the case only seems to deepen the mystery.

Sadly, I feel compelled to call out one particular passage in this book that brings great discredit to the authors. Although it’s only a couple of pages worth, it involves descriptions of Native Americans, of the Comanche people, and their attack on a group of settlers. The way this scene was written left me with a sense of loathing. That’s because it’s put forward with a certain gleeful viciousness I found disturbing.

Were the fierce Comanche people of this historical period saints? Absolutely not. But were the Spanish, Mexicans and American settlers who were invading, milling around and robbing the lands of the First Americans one iota better? Again — absolutely not. It was a different, complicated time. But if one is inclined to write about atrocities committed by one group — then at least give a balanced account of history. There was plenty of blame to go around.

I could go on here with more to criticize as well — but I’ll only mention the painfully bad editing of this product. I despise playing Grammar Police but sometimes authors who produce indie books or those issued by small press operations (in this case FLYING DISK PRESS) give me no choice. Don’t blame the messenger.

Overall, I can neither recommend or not recommend TRAVELER because its quality will be in the eyes of the reader. I think opinions will be widely split.

ADDITIONAL NOTE:

The story of the Aurora UFO crash which appeared in the Dallas Morning News was written by S.E. Haydon. His great-great-grandson Stan Haydon published a small book in 2013 which is also a slightly fictionalized account of the event.

Stan Haydon said that story has been a source of constant controversy within his family for “five generations.” He suggests that his grandfather believed the story to be true and not a hoax by the original Haydon, as has often been charged by skeptics.

You can read my brief comments on this short, 29-page booklet over on Amazon HERE

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Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

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Veteran UFO Investigator Grant Cameron Makes His Case: U.S. Government Has Been Managing A Subtle, Controlled Disclosure Strategy For 70 Years

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

Who is the most important person in ufology today?

Forget Steven Greer or Tom Delong or Stanton Friedman or Linda Moulton Howe or Richard Dolan or Leslie Kean or Steve Basset or Timothy Good or Luis Elizondo or Robert and Ryan Wood or Michael Salla — or even the now mostly silent Jacques Vallee.

The most significant figure in the study of UFO phenomenon today is this guy: GRANT CAMERON.

Cameron, a well-mannered Canadian from the Great Plains city of Winnipeg, has been doggedly seeking the truth about UFOs for 42 years. He was unwittingly thrust into this role after a personal encounter with the famous Charlie Red Star in 1975.

That was the name given to a blood-red, pulsating ball of light that amazed people dwelling in a series of small towns in southern Manitoba near the North Dakota border.

The Charlie Red Star UFO was captured in many photos as it cruised the countryside of southern Manitoba from 1975 to 1976.

For an incredible two years, Charlie Red Star haunted the skies of this sparsely-populated, wide-open prairie landscape dotted by small farming communities. The conservative, no-nonsense folks of the region could only gape in wonder at the bold aerial antics of the unfathomable object gamboling across their heavens.

Grant Cameron – who previously had zero interest in UFOs – suddenly knew that he would spend the rest of his life trying to find an answer: “What was that thing?”

Now, more than four decades later, he feels he has an answer. He sums up his conclusion with a single word: “Consciousness.”

Grant Cameron

More than anything else, the central most important aspect of the UFO phenomenon is the idea that Consciousness is primary and material reality is secondary. If you want to understand UFOs, you must start there, Cameron says.

Furthermore, if you stay mired in materialism – specifically, the paradigm of material, nuts-n-bolts science – your fate in the UFO field will be an agonizing entanglement in one bizarre rabbit hole after another – it might even drive you insane.

Cameron has avoided insanity, however, or even evolving into an eccentric UFO weirdo. He’s maintained a kind of grounded dignity. He has diligently sought answers while living gracefully with uncertainty and staying close to facts.

But that doesn’t mean he has rejected high strangeness out of hand. Cameron has since embraced a lot of way-out-there stuff, from the accepting the reality of ETs interacting with us daily to the existence of trans-dimensional portals that can punch us through to parallel worlds. (NOTE: See Cameron’s video documentation of Xendra Portals HERE

This book, MANAGING MAGIC, sticks to slightly more practical matters, however. A few years ago, Cameron said he was done with investigating UFOs. He concluded that chasing lights in the sky and sifting through endless classified government reports obtained through FOIA requests was fruitless.

Recent release of a U.S. Air Force F/A-18 fighter jet footage of a UFO exploded speculation that the government was about to reveal more of what it knows about UFOs

But just like Michael Corleone’s famous lament from Godfather III – “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in” – Cameron felt compelled to write another UFO book. That’s because of what he believes he now knows about the issue of Disclosure – official government disclosure to the public about the reality of UFOs.

A huge portion of the UFO community has been foaming at the mouth for decades, excoriating the government for withholding information from tax-paying citizens who have a right to know . In fact, ranting and raving about oppressive and corrupt government secrecy is an almost inseparable issue from the central premise of UFOs itself within ufology circles.

Government secrecy fosters delicious conspiracy theories and a self-righteous “feel-good” outlet for venting and blaming the powerful elite for the condescending way they treat the masses. The evil cabals at the highest levels of society have earned our virtuous rage of the sainted public.

Let’s face it – playing the victim is a guilty pleasure for many people — perhaps even when justified.

Cameron now believes, however, that our government has likely adopted the correct course all along – that course is an extremely gradual disclosure designed to drip-drip-drip out UFO information over a period of decades.

Doing it that way is for our own good, Cameron says. That’s because the actual truth behind the phenomenon is so bizarre, so enormous, so weird and so epistemologically shattering – a long, drawn-out disclosure is the only responsible thing to do. In the conclusion of Managing Magic he writes:

“After decades of work on the disclosure problem I have become much more sympathetic to the position the government has taken, and how they have handled the situation they were handed in the 1940s.

“Many in the UFO community will say that full disclosure should be a simple thing and done ASAP. The more I view the evidence, the less I agree with that position and the more I see a potential for disaster were that approach to be taken.”

He also states near the beginning of the book:

“The American government is taking the lead on this measured disclosure. When the facts get reviewed, this becomes very evident.”

This view is anathema to so many in ufology. Again, the endorphin rush they get from the righteous indignation they feel at the hands of a deceitful government is a fundamental aspect – in an ironic sort of way – of why people get enthralled by the UFO issue in the first place.

Rock star turned UFO investigator Tom DeLong.

Dr. Steven Greer.

Cameron offers a blunt assessment on some of the biggest names in ufology today – especially rock-star-turned-ufology-star TOM DELONG, former front man for the band Blink 182. Another is DR. STEVEN GREER the emergency-room-doctor-turned-self-proclaimed-greatest-ufologist-of-all-time.

Cameron points out what these two men have in common: They are both supreme ego maniacs. As such, they have been easily manipulated by government disinformation agents who are only happy to use them to leak both factual UFO information to the public – and disinformation when it suits the government strategy of a nuanced, subtle and gradual disclosure process.

That’s the crux of what Cameron is trying to tell us here. Our government, in fact, IS disclosing UFO information to us – but it is also misleading us with smoke screens when it wants to. The government is threading a delicate middle path between disclosure and disinformation – this middle way is designed to gradually acclimate the public over a period of many years – a necessary strategy to avoid catastrophic consequences.

But be warned: This is complicated.

Cameron’s thesis toils under the burden of that complication. I advise the reader to consider the information in this book with great care. The potential to misunderstand what Cameron is telling us is considerable. There are occasions in which the author would appear to contradict his own theories – but I believe that’s an artifact of the tangled labyrinth we necessarily must stumble through. The truth about UFOs is the the proverbial, “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, hidden inside an enigma.”

With Managing Magic, Grant Cameron makes a heroic effort to light a pathway through the most vexing labyrinth ever to confront mankind.
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NOTE: SEE SOME OF THE OTHER UFO BOOKS KEN HAS REVIEWED ON THIS SITE:

EXTRATERRESTRIAL ODYSSEY By Roger Kvande

SELECTED BY EXTRATERRESTRIALS By Bill Tompkin

PASSPORT TO THE COSMOS By John Mack M.D.

LIGHT QUEST By Andrew Collins

SEARCHERS By Ron Felber

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Once Upon a Missing Time by long-time UFO researcher Philip Mantle is a terrific read that is compelling and entertaining, a work of integrity but never waxes ponderous

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

When I saw that one of Britain’s most respected, renowned and dogged UFO investigators, PHILIP MANTLE, had published a work of UFO fiction my first thoughts were, “Uh-oh.”

That’s because I have been down this road before with researchers famous in the UFO field, most notable the great Jacques Vallée, who a few years back took a turn at fiction with his novel Fastwalker. It was pretty bloody awful.

Others in UFO or similar fields have also attempted a fictional turn with disastrous results, notably NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin who wrote a fantastically boring science fiction novel called Encounter With Tiber.

And so I was not only pleasantly surprised – but absolutely delighted by Mantle’s, ONCE UPON A MISSING TIME. This is a terrific book that delivered everything I expected from a tale of close encounters with strange beings – but the plot also took unexpected turns which makes this book a work of depth and pragmatic integrity.

As far as I can tell, the story is based on a bona fide UFO abduction event known as the Aveley Abduction which occurred on a dark country road in West Essex in 1974. I believe the story was first reported in Flying Saucer Review by writer and long-time UFO investigator Andrew Collins. Collins also writes about the Aveley Abduction in his recent book, LIGHTQUEST. (See my review of LightQuest HERE).

I’ve also seen the story of the Aveley Abduction bounced around in the endless echo chamber of the Internet – often with details slightly altered and with the “names changed to protect the innocent” – but with the core of the story essentially in tact. Some call it the U.K.’s “most important UFO multiple abduction case.”

The events involve an ordinary family: Dad a school teacher and mum a social worker, who along with their 12-year-old daughter, enjoy a middle class lifestyle that couldn’t be more grounded and normal. But then they confront the extraordinary – or I should say – the extraterrestrials!

The result is the shattering of three lives. In additional to the eschatological shock of having their world views torn to shreds, the larger effect precipitated upon the close-nit, small-town and social network of their staid Yorkshire community is vexing, to say the least.

Ufologist and author Philip Mantle

What makes Once Upon a Missing Time truly a top-notch read is Mantle’s considerable skill at creating vivid characters. He makes us feel strong empathy for them as they struggle with their stunning situation.

Believe me, taking a run-of-the-mill school teacher and a plodding social worker and selling them to the reader as interesting and sympathetic characters is no easy task for any writer – but Mantle pulls it off.

The author gets it done – in my opinion – by not being a blowhard and trying his hand at “great literature.” Rather, Mantle writes within his own capabilities. His years spent writing nonfictional UFO accounts and serving as editor of a number of UFO publications has provided him with the pragmatic clarity of a journalist, but also the expanded skill of observation required for someone in the endlessly enigmatic, twisted and tangled field of Ufology.

The result is tale well told, the ordinary made extraordinary, and a piece of fiction that displays a keen eye for what makes common people tick. Once Upon A Missing Time has my highest recommendation.

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The Long UFO Journey of Greg Bishop “Defies Language”

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

Greg Bishop is an aging UFO warrior who got sucked into the bizarre vortex of ufology when still a young boy – and now all these decades later he bears the psychic scars that only UFO investigation can inflict upon the eager seeker who just wants to know the truth – but where finding any truth may be impossible.

His efforts have been persistent and bordering on heroic. In this book Mr. Bishop takes us on a breezy sojourn through his thoughts and experiences gleaned from his persistent pursuit for understanding of the UFO phenomenon. In these pages, he often veers from one extreme to another – from the brutal realization that much about UFOs is depressing bunk, while at the same time, acknowledging there remains tantalizing evidence that something “nonhuman” has been interacting with mankind for thousands of years.

But just what is it? That’s the question that torments Greg Bishop. That’s what makes him the kind of UFO junkie I can appreciate. Bishop has learned to live gracefully with uncertainty. He knows that just when you think you’ve found some solid footing about who or what UFOs are, the game changes suddenly and quixotically. Fact becomes fallacy, truth becomes fraud – but just when you’re ready to chuck it all and give up, guess what?

Something happens to suggest that: “They’re he-e-e-r-e!” And so the devotee is off and running again on the universe’s most mercurial quest.

George Adamski: Perhaps the most famous of the ’50s Era Conactees

Howard Menger: Was this famous Contactee a fraud, a CIA asset, or the real deal?

His journey has sent Bishop reaching for answers and grappling to suggest new models. For example, he suggests that the 1950s contactee era, ala the likes of George Adamski, Howard Menger, et.al., might be viewed (or explained) as a kind of post-modern art movement – an attempt to inject radical new ideas into the collective consciousness of humanity leveraging the benign space visitor motif. Was this “art movement” a conscious creation of the various Adamskis and Mengers? Were they blatant bunko artists — or perhaps they were unwilling pawns of actual alien influences, meddling with the mind of humanity for a planetary social engineering project?

Who knows.

While Bishop conjures new paradigms, he also decries our penchant to latch on to pre-packaged explanations for what UFOs are, especially the long-dominant belief that, “They are alien beings from other planets visiting the Earth in nuts-and-bolts spacecraft.” He says a statement like this is “so loaded with semantic baggage … it is meaningless.” He writes:

“Belief implies a lack of critical thinking. UFOs are automatically assumed by most to be structures vehicles piloted by intelligent being from other planets. They don’t need to be … there are many reasons that a skeptical mindset and lack of assumptions make the subject more interesting and worthy of consideration. To settle on one explanation is to shut down serious inquiry …”

Greg Bishop

That goes for all the theories and models floated in the past 50 or 60 years – that UFOs are interdimensional beings/craft, time travelers, ancient ‘gods’ or exotic but indigenous races that co-evolved with humanity right here on earth, or that the UFO phenomenon is a manifestation of consciousness evolution of the psyche of mankind itself.

Maybe it’s all of the above – but ultimately – the brutal fact is that we still find ourselves mired in a radical state of: “We just don’t know.” That does not mean that we should stop clawing at our intellects to eke out some measure of understanding, Bishop suggests.

So this is a pretty good read – and that goes for both the extremely experienced UFO enthusiasts (guys like me who have read thousands of books and articles and done actual investigations) to the casual reader who likes to browse a UFO book occasionally to scratch a UFO itch.

Be aware that this is one of those books that has been cobbled together from a collection of the author’s blog posts and other published articles from over the years – these kinds of books tend to suffer a bit from lack of focus or a certain unevenness in the quality of what’s included and what probably should have been cut.

However, for the most part, IT DEFIES LANGUAGE challenges, entertains and invites us to stretch our minds. Greg Bishop urges us to think outside the box, shake off our preconceived notions, guard against getting rutted in outmoded models, avoid fallacies and traps – and beseech our Higher Power of choice for the wisdom to know the difference.

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Diary of a mad man: Aerospace engineer Bill Tompkins bizarre ramblings about aliens and UFOs damages respectable ufology

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

This is a bizarre book that is so terrible, I can’t decide if it’s “so bad it’s funny” or “so bad it’s sad.” I opt for the second.

It’s sad because a travesty such as this publication can set back the legitimate study of the UFO phenomenon by decades. It’s a bonanza for hard-core, closed-minded skeptics, always eager to find the latest example of “UFO-Fringe-Nut” material to heap scorn upon.

What’s even worse is that this book is written by a bona fide aerospace industry insider – BILL TOMPKINS – a man who worked at the top his field in rocket science as a designer and engineer for decades. Tompkins worked on some of the most sensitive military defense and space program projects and had the highest security clearances. This makes him a man genuinely in a position to “know” and be a bomb-shell whistle blower.

The book’s editor, DR. ROBERT WOOD, has an equally impressive resume. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University and was a top scientist for McDonald Douglas for 43 years.

But instead of delivering the ultimate UFO smoking gun, Dr. Wood and Tompkins give us this muddy mish mash of egregiously poorly written, edited and childishly sexist garbage that should never have seen the publishing light of day.

There are many claims that are clearly delusional and easy to prove as false – the most obvious of which is that Tompkins claims to have consulted personally with DR. JACQUES VALLEE, astronomer, computer scientist and arguable the world’s leading theorist on UFO phenomenon.

Dr. Jacques Vallee, right, with J. Allen Hynek

Tompkins says he meetings with Dr, Vallee took place in the early to mid-1950s – he said that Dr. Vallee:

“… divulged his knowledge concerning the Federation of Planets – a sort of galactic governing force that limited the extraterrestrials of rogue planets from threatening other planets. Basically, Jacques was … in contact with them …”

The only problem? In the early 1950s Jacques Vallee was a teenage boy growing up in France. He was still years away from becoming a Ph.D. scientist. Apologists for Tompkins say, “Okay, maybe he just confused the time frame a bit … he might have met with Dr. Vallee in the late 60s or 70s …”

But we know this is impossible as well since Dr. Jacques Valle himself has publicly stated that he has never met Bill Tompkins, and furthermore, Dr. Vallee calls the comments about him in Tompkins book “absurd,” “false,” and even “injurious.”

In addition to whoppers like this, the book is riddled with small factual errors, such as saying modern humans emerged 30,000 years ago, and in another passage, Tompkins says it was 300,000 years ago. Any idiot can spend two minutes on Google and find out both these dates are wrong and that the first known anatomically modern human is dated to 190,000 years ago.

I could fill another page with similar blunders, but let’s get to some of the other giant absurdities, such as the author’s monumentally, even painfully sexist, sleazy and raunchy accounts of sex-play with what he believed to be alien women.

He tells of how the American aerospace industry was infiltrated with dozens of sizzling hot human-looking female “Nordic” aliens who universally dressed and acted like hookers – and they were seemingly incapable of stopping themselves from “rubbing their bodies” against all those pencil-neck rocket engineers dressed in their short sleeve white shirts, ties, horn-rimmed glasses and pocket-protector pen holders.

Sexy “Nordic” alien women. Were numerous lurid pulp sci-fi covers like this one inspired by the real thing?

Again and again, insanely beautiful young women dressed in “micro-mini skirts,” wearing “translucent plastic 4-inch spiked heels” and “breasts falling out of their tops” come on to Mr. Tompkins and his pals, not only promising the hottest sex they have ever had, but taking the time to “red mark” and correct and update their advanced engineering specs in their spare time.

Tompkins believes these were ETs who were sent by “the good aliens, the “Nordics” – and that these wise beings used these lovely sluts to implant psychic images for advanced space vehicle designs directly into engineer’s heads — before taking them out on the town for wild drinking parties and unstoppable sex.

Yes! It’s all in this book!

The editor, our famous Dr. Wood, makes the claim that his pal Bill Tompkins was propositioned dozens of times by these alien-prostitute-geniuses, but “never once gave in” – and yet, Tompkins includes a special chapter in which an alien hottie takes him off planet in a space ship to a distant “Las Vegas-like planet” where she says that they will spend three months together having sex. She tells him:

“We will climax many times together and you will love every month of it.”

Of course, Tompkins then backs away from this bizarre tail – probably because he knows his wife and children are reading – and says his outer space sex romp may have been just a “mental image” implanted in his mind by the aliens. He just isn’t sure.

Skeptics will quickly dismiss this book as the delusional rambling of an old man afflicted with senile dementia – and then Dr. Robert Wood with his advanced age and 43 years in the aerospace industry must also be senile and delusional – and skeptics will say that these two senile, demented old men decided to get together and write a crazy book, for some reason.

But such skeptics are no better than these two nutty, sadly lecherous old coots.

So what are we to make of this? While skeptics will gleefully heap scorn, certain conspiracy theorists will scream “mind control!” They’ll say top secret government mind-warping techniques implanted the brains of Tompkins and Dr. Wood with fantastic delusions they now believe to be real – all this to seed chaos, throw up smoke screens, to keep the general public pacified, and keep everyone guessing about what “black-ops” and “shadow governments” are really up to.

As for the rest of us – well, why worry about it? This book can be summarily dismissed as a “non-contribution” to ufology. It’s a worthless document, and meaningless.
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PLEASE CHECK OUT MY REVIEWS OF OTHER UFO BOOKS, LINKED BELOW:

BLACK SWAN GHOSTS by Simeon Hein PhD

SYMBIOSIS by Nancy Tremaine

PASCAGOULA: THE CLOSEST ENCOUNTER by Calvin Parker

INCIDENT AT DEVIL’S DEN by Terry Lovelace

MANAGING MAGIC by Grant Cameron

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Lawyer turned psychic Nancy du Tertre fascinates with “How to Talk to An Alien” going where few other UFO books have gone before

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

Just when you think that most UFO books today have grown monotone, repetitive and threadbare, along comes an author with a refreshing angle to explore an intriguing niche of ufology no one else has significantly covered.

In “How to Talk to an Alien,” NANCY DU TERTRE takes on the question of human-to-alien communication, but also, the overall nature of just what constitutes an “alien language,” including possible alien alphabets, writing styles and scripts, spoken languages and psychic or telepathic-enabled communications. But there’s even more, such as a gander down through history at ancient forms of writing that have been attributed to “angels,” long before we started framing our reality in terms of modern science.

What’s also fascinating is that du Tertre comes to this issue out of left field — her primary “day job” has nothing to do with flying saucers and extraterrestrial aliens. She’s a high-powered New York securities litigation attorney, and successful businesswoman who stumbled into the weird world of the paranormal more or less by accident.

The author says she had no interest in topics paranormal until age 35. It was then that she was invited to attend a workshop exploring the topic of intuition for psychologists by noted psychotherapist Dr. Ron DeAngelo – she was the only non-psychotherapist invited, but Dr. DeAngelo thought his lawyer friend would find it beneficial. (Du Tertre details this event in her book “Psychic Intuition.”)

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“The Skeptical Psychic” Nancy du Tertre

To make a long story short, a bizarre experience at the workshop launched du Tertre into an entirely new phase of life – she began to explore her own psychic abilities, studied (and interned) with a famous psychic police detective, took training in REMOTE VIEWING – and about 10 years later emerged with her old paradigms shattered (or at least vastly expanded).

Somewhere along the way du Tertre’s psychic explorations cross-pollinated with the subject of extraterrestrials (or extradimensionals), UFOs and the like, and so now we have a fascinating book that begs the question: “What do the aliens have to say and how do they say it?”

The title is my only quibble with this outstanding book – this is not really a “how to” book and it won’t teach you “how to talk to an alien.” Rather, it’s an overview of cases involving close encounters where people engaged in two-way communications with other nonhuman beings of wide variety – and then seeks to form some theories and opinions about what it all means.

As I was reading, I was reminded of the great theoretical physicist RICHARD FEYNMAN. That’s because he had a knack for asking basic questions that no one else would even think of asking, questions that were quirky and weird, such as “Do numbers come in colors?”

Well, Ms. du Tertre is asking those basic, yet unusual kinds of questions, such as, “Do aliens have mouths with actual tongues in them, vocal cords and a larynx that they can use to make the sounds of speech?” Then she looks at specific cases, from the famous accounts, such as that of Brazilian farmer and lawyer Antônio Vilas-Boas, who was abducted in 1957 and forced to have sex with an alien.

The author is able to give this and many other well-known cases an intriguing new freshness because she is laser-focused on revisiting these events with the purpose of looking specifically at how communications were experienced by the subjects.

She also provides us with new perspectives on monumental historic events, such as the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and the works of the famous English mathematician-genius and polymath JOHN DEE, adviser to Queen Elizabeth I. Dee is well-known for having “channeled” what is known today as the Enochian Alphabet, also called the “Angelic Alphabet,” the “Divine Language,” or “Language of the Gods.”

Dr. John Dee

Dee reports that he received a visitation from a levitating angelic figure who gave him a kind of scrying stone through which he coaxed out and ratiocinated a symbolic form of transmundane, symbolic language. His description of the events sounds a lot like one of today’s alien visitation scenarios.

It’s all deliciously fascinating, and what’s better is du Tertre’s marvelously fluid and easy writing style which makes this a user-friendly read for any mainstream audience. She never talks down to us, yet provides even intellectuals with plenty of fodder to chew upon.

The only sad thing for me is that the 175 pages melted by for me as quickly as a pleasant dream from an afternoon nap – I was left profoundly wishing that du Tertre could have given us a couple hundred more pages.
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Web-based movie series “Milgram & The Fastwalkers” Out-Xs the X-Files

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

Think of a soap opera, but not the kind with impossibly handsome doctors and lawyers tangled in sleazy love affairs with achingly gorgeous women — no, instead imagine a soap opera that has UFOs and alien abduction as its central premise.

Well, that’s what you get with the first season of MILGRAM & THE FASTWALKERS, a micro-budget but heroic attempt to take ufology to the streets serial-TV style … well, Internet-platform style, that is.

But wait a minute — I want to jump right ahead and say that while Season 1 of ‘Fastwalker’ was indeed rather soapy, Season 2 quickly evolves into something much more sensational, and by sensational, I mean sensationally good.

Milgrim & The Fastwalkers easily out-Xs The X Files, in my opinion, and I loved the X Files.

But this is better. Read on.

Here’s the premise: Brilliant psychiatrist Richard Milgram (Richard Cutting) has his career in high gear having just won the prestigious “Pullman Prize” for penning a brilliant book, while his practice has a mile-long waiting list of people who desperately need one of the world’s best shrinks.

In the meantime, a young, career-climbing lawyer has developed a real problem. She’s the lovely Sally Lemm (Walker Hays), beautiful as a summer day — but tough, cold and hard-bitten as the worse kind of A-hole lawyer you ever want to meet

Her career is crumbling because she is being taken up, up and up into the frightening interior of a UFO operating room where nasty aliens are giving impregnating her with alien hybrid seeds, only to terminate her pregnancies whenever they see fit. And then they do it all over again.

Ms. Lemm eventually finds her way to Dr. Milgram, who is skeptical at first, but gets pulled toward where the science is taking him — to the astounding realization that this whole alien abduction thing just might be real.

Dr. Milgram is certainly based on the real, world-famous and late Harvard psychiatrist DR. JOHN MACK. Like Milgram, Mack had won the Pulitzer Prize for a brilliant book, and was among the most eminent psychiatric doctors in the world. Like Milgram, Mack was drawn into the endlessly bizarre world of ufology when he dared conclude that his many patients complaining of alien abduction were not crazy — that what was happening to them was probably real.

Dr. John Mack, Photo by Stuart Conway

Mack’s distinguished career was rocked to the core. Harvard elites formed a kangaroo court and tried to revoke his tenure and spit him out like a bad oyster — but Mack was saved thanks mostly to the efforts of attorney Daniel Sheehan (of the Pentagon Papers case), who pulled his fat out of the academic-witch-hunt fire.

Portraying Dr. Milgram in the image of John Mack is just one thing that this intelligently written series gets right. Finally, here is a serial dramatic production channeling the UFO phenomenon which goes beyond all the surface cliches of ufology. It gets at the truly mind-bending, far reaching implications of what is most likely the most important sociological/scientific/spiritual issue of our times.

Yes, ufology is hopelessly infected with the lunatic fringe, but at the same time, has captured serious attention of some the most brilliant minds in the world, including the aforementioned John Mack, but also others, such as Jacques Vallee, Carl Jung, J. Alan Hynek, Horace Drew, Gordon Cooper, Laurance Rockefeller, Edgar Mitchell — and many other movers and shakers in science and industry.

Two other things that make Milgram & the Fastwalkers a superior production:

Character driven plots: The creators do not rely on the sensational aspect of the UFO phenomenon to carry the entire narrative. This saga is deeply character driven, and there are a lot of them! Milgram and Sally Lemm are the major players, but they are surrounded by well-fleshed out characters with all the normal problems of everyday life — from Milgram’s boozy, sex-starved wife, Evelyn (Kate Revelle), to Fred Robinette (John C. Bailey), Migram’s fellow psychiatrist with an addiction to gambling, to Lisa Hill (Danielle Davy), a repulsively seedy, scruples-free journalist hell bent on digging dirt to further her own career.

Punchy Script: The screenplay often sores to delightful levels with crackling, cut-to-the-bone dialogue that will spin the mind of the viewer like an alien brain implant. A prime example is a sizzling (and darkly humorous) scene in Episode 3 of Season 2 when hapless mechanic Kevin (Joe Hansard), a frequent UFO abductee, is confronted by the wonderfully freakish Claire Tighlman ( Victoria Guthrie) — who is almost certainly some kind of alien (probably a “reptilian” disguised as a human) — who badgers and bullies Kevin while simultaneously dishing out an awful kind of tough love.

I want to make mention of another scene that lifts this series to a higher level of authenticity. It’s in Season 2, Episode 6 in which Sally Lemm is paid a visit by a MIB (Josh Davidson), one of ufology’s infamous “Men In Black.”

I use the word “authenticity” because the scene captures the real flavor or the incredible weirdness of the MIB phenomenon, and while an element of wry humor is involved, it doesn’t present the MIB event as a shallow Hollywood joke as did those silly the Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones movies.

It seems clear that the scene leverages two of the most famous real MIB events, the first as reported by Jacques Vallee in his book, Confrontations. The incident occurred in 1976 near a small lumber town in California called Happy Camp. After numerous UFO sightings and confrontation with aliens, a local restaurant in the small town received a strange customer one day. Vallee describes it this way:

“… a stranger who had never been seen in town happened to stroll into Lois’s Cafe … all conversation stopped when the man came in. He ordered a steak dinner but proved unable to use a knife and fork, and eventually left without paying … he had pale skin and ‘oriental’ eyes. He wore a bizarre sort of shirt and no coat, although it was the middle of winter. He smiled constantly at people in a strange, forced grimace. Among the peculiar things he did during his extraordinary dinner was a brave attempt to drink Jell-O out of a glass.”

The other MIB event the scene takes a cue from is from the book, CAPTURED! by Kathleen Marden, the niece of famous UFO abductee Betty Hill. In this book, Marden describes a frightening MIB visit to a medical doctor who had hypnotically regressed a young man who had experienced an abduction event. Part of the doctor’s bizarre conversation with the MIB involved the MIB asking the doctor to hold a coin in his hand. Marden writes:

“(The MIB) told the him to hold (the coin) in his outstretched hand. he told him to watch the coin, not him. He did this and saw the penny change to a silver color, then to a blue color, become hazy, indistinct, and vanish .. the MIB said no one on this plane would ever see that coin again.”

The MIB then tells the doctor that Barney Hill (Betty’s husband) “knew too much” and that his heart had been taken in just the same way the coin had been made to vanish. This very same scene is played out with Sally Lemm and her MIB visitor, except he vanishes her ring instead of a coin.

The point is, the star and writer of this UFO show, Richard Cutting, has clearly done his homework and is delivering to his audience a script that is inspired directly from the pages of some of the best books on the subject. It imbues this drama with a depth and intelligence rare in shows about the UFO issue.

Again, I want to emphasize that Milgram & The Fastwalkers really hits its stride and becomes something special in Season 2, but I recommend you watch from the beginning, starting with Season 1, which is composed of 12 short episodes of just seven to 20 minutes each.

Let’s hope there is a Season 3.

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Michael Siemsen’s new novel “Exigency” is a thrilling science fiction romp

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

For the 347,098,789th time in science fiction, an intrepid crew of brilliant scientists/astronauts crash land on a distant planet, and now must struggle to survive in an exotic environment populated by multiple species of aliens, some hostile, some not so hostile, and others that just fill out the flora and fauna of an alien world.

No, there is little cutting-edge invention in this latest offering by rising SF star MICHAEL SIEMSEN. It’s all tried-and-true formula stuff with the same themes that have been explored time and again since the creation of the genre.

Even one of the most intriguing plot elements – the way which an alien species achieved a fast track to superior intelligence – has been done before. The very same situation was brilliantly employed by Jack Vance in his 1973 novel, The Asutra. (I won’t tell you any more about this because I don’t want to issue a spoiler alert.)

My point is, like most new works of science fiction today, EXIGENCY stays safely ensconced within the broad parameters of science fiction solidified over the past century, and especially during the “Golden Age” of science fiction.

But you know what? There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with formula fiction as long as we have a writer who is up to the task of making it all seem fresh and stimulating again.

Think of it like blues music. It’s all based on just one fundamental riff: “dah-de, dah-de, dah-dah.” The challenge then is to take that basic form and innovate within it to keep making it seem new, reborn and freshly alive. Hundreds of artists have done it. “The Blues” never go out of style.

I’m happy to say that Exigency not only makes what’s old in science fiction exciting, vibrant and new – but it’s also thrilling and fun.

I found this novel to be engaging and enjoyable from first page to last. The reason why it works is:

• Well-developed characters that we instantly care about. The primary character Minnie (Minerva) is complex. She is at once brilliant, warm and likable, but just as often, cold, self-absorbed and exasperating. She is courageous, tough and talented beyond belief – but also struggles with a debilitating Achilles heel. So she has everything you want in a SF heroine, and maybe some things you don’t want – which, in turn makes for top-notch fiction.

Michael Siemsen

• Almost from the beginning Siemsen expertly builds relationships between his characters (without ever letting the pace drag). This provides an emotional cohesion that is necessary to sustain our interest in the characters as they face their various challenges to survive on an alien world.

• A fully-realized, vividly imagined world that has a depth which not always apparent to the reader up-front, but which looms offstage in a way we can feel intuitively, yet without belaboring us literally.

• The writing is tight – there is very little in the way of exposition, which is the downfall of so many lesser science fiction writers.

• Aliens that are sufficiently alien, yet not so bizarre and exotic as to be entirely un-relatable. This is yet another tried-and-true element of science fiction which, although nothing new, is necessary to sustain the relationship with the reader.

• Plot – well, okay, there really isn’t much of a plot. It can be summed up as: “Stranded space travelers struggling to survive a harsh, alien environment. Will they make it?” But – yes, I’m going to say it – you don’t always need a strong plot to make for an absorbing, exciting read. (To hell with all of those literary snobs who would tell you different). After all, science fiction has always been the “literature of ideas” which separates it from the requirements of mainstream fiction.

But wait a minute, didn’t I already say there were precious few new “ideas” in this novel. Yes, I did, but it’s still a thumping read – and that means Michael Siemsen just has “that undefinable something” that enables him to write a terrific, captivating novel.

It reminds me of the great science fiction editor John Campbell, the famously imperious and despotic leader of Astounding Science Fiction, and the time in the late 1930s when he read a story submitted by A.E. Van Vogt.

The short novel was “The Weapon Shop.” According to ALEXEI PANSHIN, writing in his book The World Beyond the Hill, a study of science fiction:

“… the story proved to have a very strange effect on the editor. As he was reading this novelet, he recognized that he was enjoying it thoroughly. But when Campbell attempted to analyze the story intellectually, he just couldn’t see why it should be so effective.”

Panshin later explains why Van Vogt’s works can invoke such a magical effect on many readers (but completely turn off others) – and all I will say here is that the reason Siemsen’s novel is so enjoyable (and perhaps not so much for others) is due to a similar (similar but not exactly the same) effect.

But I’m not going to go into that further here – this review is already way too long.

In the final analysis – because of what science fiction is today, where it has come from and where it is going – what we truly need to make for a thoroughly enjoyable read is an author who has that certain “Van-Vogt-Like-Effect” that makes us want to keep turning the pages, and wishing that a 400-plus tome such as this was even a 100 pages longer.

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The Boy Who Died and Came Back by Robert Moss is a rich, extraordinary journey through the multiverse

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Review By KEN KORCZAK

The title of this book may lead some to believe that it’s mostly about the NDE, or near death experience. But the author’s experience with “dying and coming back” at age nine seems a brief anecdote against a backdrop of an entire lifetime of extraordinary experiences.

This is a book far more about dreaming than the NDE, and using the dreaming experience as a launching pad for an intense exploration of the universe, or more accurately, the transphsyical universe and “multiverse.” The subtitle says this book is also about a tantalizing something called “dream archaeology.”

Not to say that the author’s NDE account isn’t fascinating. It’s one of the most unique you will read about even if you have already read hundreds of others, like I have. I suspect that ROBERT MOSS is a guy who can’t be defined by a single event, or just one kind of experience, no matter how mind blowing.

Moss could aptly be described a 21st Century shaman — in a way that combines the most ancient definition of the term with that of a modern man and scholar who is a lifetime student of history, ethnography and mythology.

A former history professor and journalist, Robert Moss began his literary career writing international spy thriller novels. His first big success, “Moscow Rules” landed on the New York Times Best Seller list, stayed there for weeks, making Moss wealthy and a hot commodity among publishers.

He could have continued to rake in the big cash as a Tom Clancy or Frederick Forsyth kind of writer — but he soon succumbed to his true nature, that of a shamanic dreamer and explorer of consciousness.

He went over to writing books that were either about dreaming or dovetailed with dreaming, such as his historical novel, The Firekeeper, which he wrote after experiencing a kind of psychic and/or dream contact with Sir William Johnson, a major figure in the French and Indian War of 1754-1763.

Moss combined direct dream contact and a psychic connection with intensive field research to create a powerful historic novel which was praised by the likes of literary giant James A. Michener.

Robert Moss

William Blake

This book, THE BOY WHO DIED AND CAME BACK TO LIFE, is somewhat autobiographical in that Moss makes use of key events in his life, beginning with his NDE at age 9, to describe how turning one’s mind away from mere material perceptions and toward the wider spectrum of consciousness can result in marvelous, breath-taking adventures.

Moss uses the term “dream archaeology” to describe a method researching our past that involves accessing ancient times and the actual minds and souls of long-dead people so that we an learn from them directly — it’s a way to go beyond mere historical facts to uncover the broad, psycho-social, spiritual and — well, I guess the larger cosmic context of historic events.

It’s an amazing book. It’s too rich in scope and detail for one short review to encompass here, so I won’t try. I’ll just say that this work gets my top recommendation — it’s a rich feast providing not only food for thought, but a veritable banquet for thought. Moss is an elegant writer who commands a silky flowing prose which often borders on poetic, yet remains clear and accessible for any reader.

One last thing: My theory is that Robert Moss is the reincarnation of the 18th Century English painter, poet and print maker William Blake. If you don’t believe me, read up on Blake, study his work and visions, and also Google a picture of Blake. Compare Blake’s images side to side with that of Robert Moss. They even look alike.

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Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

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Aliens in the Forest a Fascinating read despite clunky prose

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Review By KEN KORCZAK

If you are a true student of Ufology, this book will be a fascinating addition to your collection. I give the authors great credit for not only reintroducing to the public a sensational case of UFO/alien encounter, but setting the record straight about a story that has been much maligned and misreported over the years.

Even UFO-lit legends such as John Keel (The Mothman Prophesies) botched the story, as did other high-profile UFO investigation groups, according to the authors.

The authors also claim to be the first to identify the key experiencer in what is certainly among the most amazing UFO confrontations in history. California man, Donald Shrum, has not only come forward to tell his tale, but also provides photos and sketches of an event that forever changed his life.

The events took place in 1964 in a remote area of the Sierra Nevada mountains when Shrum was 26 years old. He was 73 when he sat down with the authors to tell his story. It’s a frightening saga indeed! Is the story authentic and true? For what it’s worth, I’m satisfied that it is.

Another terrific aspect of the book is the engaging artwork of illustrator Neil Riebe, from the beautifully imagined front cover to the pen-and-ink drawings inside which gave me a kind of nostalgic remembrance of the kind of UFO art one used to see in mainstream magazines from the `60s — such as SAGA, TRUE, REAL, ARGOSY and MAN’S WORLD.

The books fails to get a five-star rating from me, however, because the writing is clumsy, at best. The rendering of the information is repetitive in a way that makes it seem like Noe Torres and Ruben Uriarte realized they didn’t have enough information for a full book-length manuscript, and so they padded wherever they could.

In fact, the meat of the book ends a little over halfway through the document. The rest is appendix material and bibliography, and these latter materials don’t add a great deal.

The authors could create a much more powerful effect if they reissued this book perhaps as a Kindle Single, lowered the price and tightened up the writing, including editing out a lot of obvious wordy dross. I bet they’d sell even more copies and create a much more vibrant, punchy document that would be a thoroughly satisfying read.

Still, all in all, this is an important addition to the record of American Ufology.

Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

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Tag Archives: Aliens

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The Long UFO Journey of Greg Bishop “Defies Language”

Diary of a mad man: Aerospace engineer Bill Tompkins bizarre ramblings about aliens and UFOs damages respectable ufology

Lawyer turned psychic Nancy du Tertre fascinates with “How to Talk to An Alien” going where few other UFO books have gone before

Web-based movie series “Milgram & The Fastwalkers” Out-Xs the X-Files

Michael Siemsen’s new novel “Exigency” is a thrilling science fiction romp

The Boy Who Died and Came Back by Robert Moss is a rich, extraordinary journey through the multiverse

Aliens in the Forest a Fascinating read despite clunky prose