Contactees – A (short) Review by Adrian Wells

$15.99 at bookstores everywhere. [See press kit in earlier posting here, below]

A book that I couldn’t set aside. Nick Redfern provides relevant information and pertinent minutiae about those now considered to be part of the UFO fringe. I found details that many of us (UFO aficionados) have never read, or heard, before, and all in a serious, sometimes breezy style that makes Mr. Redfern a delicious writer to read.

The flying saucer pantheon of contactees is presented by Mr. Redfern respectfully, even when it is obvious that he doesn’t believe a word of their obtuse tales.

One could have hoped for more photos of the contactee culprits, but since many died long ago, and copyright issues often prevent using photos found in the public arena, Mr. Redfern’s descriptions provide a visual idea of how they appeared, to followers and those suspicious of their elaborate saucer sagas.

Mr. Redfern does offer photographs of locations and artifacts that he’s taken himself, and that fleshes out many of the 22 Chapters (plus) in this entertaining and thoroughly research book.

More importantly, it seems to me, are the common threads that run through the stories related by the Contactee hierarchs: George Adamksi, Truman Bethurum, Orfeo Angelucci, George Van Tassel, Daniel Fry. And one common thread is use of the Planet Venus as the home-base for most of the entities that afflicted these contactees. Another thread is the FBI’s mingling in many of the affairs contrived or related by these men.

The (in)famous Villas Boas case gets several viewpoints – the well-known Fontes account, Mac Tonnies’ observation, and the (possible) CIA contrivance.

Those ufologists who’ve looked into the contactee stories are enumerated and given ample note by Mr. Redfern – Greg Bishop, Colin Bennett, Regan Lee, Adam Gorightly, Jim Moseley, Bob Short, Leon Davidson, and Timothy Green Beckley among them.

Crop circles get a nod, and much peripheral but significant material supplements the contactee gist that Mr. Redfern delineates.

Readers will find much to chew on in this 256 page book, and they will find tasty tidbits along with a UFO entrée that totally satisfies

Mr. Redfern also includes an Index, one thing that many UFO books ignore.

The book is a must for UFO devotees and would make a wonderful Christmas gift for those who like to read about strange behavior by persons with a patina of normalcy even as they create scenarios too bizarre to believe.

Fiction can’t compare to what Mr. Redfern presents in this marvelous book. But are all the Contactee stories really fiction? That’s something you can decide.

Nick Redfern (on his "Contactees" book)

Contactees, Cryptoterrestrials, and Mac [Tonnies]

Nick Redfern's latest book: CONTACTEES

Press Kit

Rest in Peace Officer Lonnie Zamora

Mac Tonnies gone?

Greg Bishop notifies readers of UFO Mystic that the brilliant and young Mac Tonnies has died (of natural causes).

This is a loss to science, science fiction, and ufology that is immeasurable.

We only knew Mac indirectly, but considered him one of the bright stars of ufology and all things avant garde.

This is a great loss.

Rest in peace, buddy…..

Nick Redfern's tribute

In defense of the Socorro hoax hypothesis by Zarkon II

Anthony Bragalia’s recent postings about the Socorro/Zamora sighting of 1964 have raised hackles among the UFO mainstream.

Mr. Bragalia presented a scenario that strikes at the heart of ufology’s belief-system: that UFOs and flying saucers are extraterrestrial craft, piloted by alien life-forms or robotic creations.

When that belief system is questioned, no matter how obliquely, UFO’s “believers” move aggressively to squelch the heterodoxy.

This is what happened when Mr. Bragalia had the temerity to suggest that the 1964 Socorro sighting was a prank promulgated by students at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

Ufologist Ray Stanford became particularly exercised by Mr. Bragalia’s assertion(s). Why?

Mr. Stanford’s “fame” in the UFO community – he has none in the real world – rests on his intrepid “investigation” of the Socorro episode, almost immediately after it occurred.

His book about the sighting has become a UFO Bible of sorts for the Socorro event and its aftermath.

If someone were to rebuke Mr. Stanford’s “research,” he would be left without the legacy he has accumulated for the past forty-five years. So one can understand his pique and desperate attempts to protect his turf.

David Rudiak, another ET die-hard, also came out of the woodwork to take on Mr. Bragalia’s thesis. Mr. Rudiak is nothing if not thorough in his attention to minutiae of various UFO accounts – Roswell and Socorro among them.

Where Mr. Rudiak goes wrong, and he is off base in his ET bias when it comes to Socorro, is that he overlooks the mundane aspects of the Socorro details as related by Lonnie Zamora: the blue-flame of the propulsion that landed and lifted Zamora’s craft; the “beings” seen outside the egg-shaped craft, wearing white overalls; the flight pattern of the craft as it lifted and flew off; the indentations left behind, in the sand; the “roar” that accompanied the thing, et cetera.

The Zamora craft wasn’t exotic enough to be an alien craft.

Ufologist Frank Warren posted a kind of rebuttal to Mr. Bragalia’s exposé. One of the points made by Mr. Warren was that other egg-shaped UFOs were spotted before and after Zamora’s sighting.

What Mr. Warren didn’t note was that egg-shaped craft have been listed among UFO reports often, but none with an insignia, unique to Zamora’s UFO, nor any that had beings outside them, wearing human-like clothing. And none had produced the “roar” that Officer Zamora heard.

Mr. Warren is offended by Mr. Bragalia’s direct assertion that the Socorro event was hoax, ostensibly and admittedly a premature assertion since Mr. Bragalia hasn’t produced (yet) the person behind the prank or the methodology of their prank.

But Mr. Bragalia has only posed the possibility – one that has been raised before – that the Socorro episode was hoax-oriented, and Mr. Bragalia has mustered some interesting circumstantial evidence to support his hypothesis.

However, the Socorro sighting is so entrenched in the ufological psyche as an extraterrestrial landing (for repairs it seems) that any hypothesis outside the ET one will be attacked viciously and illogically, as is the case when any belief system is challenged.

I suggest Eric Hoffer’s insightful book “The True Believer” [Mentor Books, NY, 1951] to make my point.

And to see how hoaxes work, the Curtis D. MacDougall book “Hoaxes” [Dover Publications, NY, 1940/1958] for details about the mind-set of those perpetrating hoaxes and those who fall for them.

Ronald Millar’s “The Piltdown Men” [Ballantine Books, NY, 1972] also tells how grat men can be duped by hoaxes and hoaxers who are less skilled then they should be when it comes to discovering how a hoax operates.

In the world of ufology and UFOs the gullible are legion. And when it comes to the sacred cows of the UFO literature – the Arnold sighting, the Trent photos, Roswell, Socorro, and even Rendlesham, the UFO believers will do anything to make sure that anyone or anything that undercuts the “extraterrestrial” premise of those sightings should be stomped out and eliminated from any dialogue about UFOs.

The Bragalia hoax hypothesis has legs, of a kind, it is shaky perhaps, but not moribund and not unsound, if what he has uncovered has any merit whatsoever.

And when it comes to UFOs, nothing should be so sacrosanct that it can’t be thrown on the table for review and civil discussion. Otherwise, we shall find ourselves with a fascistic approach to truth-seeking; that is, only the orthodox shall prevail and anything that goes against that orthodoxy should be quelled at all costs – even if it means a diminishment of the truth.

New Zecharia Sitchin book

Zecharia Sitchin’s latest book, “The Earth Chronicles Handbook” (Inner Traditions / Bear & Company 2009) is available

As you know, Sitchin has published numerous books that collectively make up the Earth Chronicles series - a historical and archaeological adventure into the origins of mankind and planet Earth. This latest release serves as an encyclopedic companion to provide a navigational tool for the entire series. Entries are coded to indicate, at a glance, their cultural origin and contain summations and commentaries that reflect Sitchin’s unique insights into the past.

I thought this new release would be of interest to some of our readers.

If you'd like more information, you can contact: http://www.sitchin.com/

A New Nick Redfern Book

Our Friend Nick Redfern has a new book we highly recommend. Go to Nick's site for more about the September release:

Science Fiction Secrets

UFOs: A change of scenery

Elsewhere (http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com) we hinted that some UFO notables (Kevin Randle, Dick hall, Jerry Clark) seem to have abandoned UFOs for other interests.





Mr. Randle said, No, he just had other interests, and Jerry Clark said he wasn’t obsessed with early Christianity as we stated but had other “intellectual” interests, which included The Old West, that Mr. Randle also took an interest in, which spurred our asking him if UFOs had lost their cachet for him and other UFO researchers.



We note that Hall’s Civil War studies and the Clark/Randle slippage into stories of cowboys and the Old West have got to detract from their UFO research; it just has to since, one can’t study all things or many things and do well by that which they have hung their reputations upon….in this case UFOs.

We find that the UFO old-guard, except for Stanton Friedman (and a few others), have pretty much thrown in the towel as far as the UFO phenomenon is concerned.



We can’t blame them. UFOs are a non-issue for almost every normal person on the planet. UFOs just don’t factor in anyone’s life, if they have one.

UFOs are unsatisfactory as a scientific pursuit or even a hobby. They (UFOs) have become boring and saturated by their past – what they may have been, not what they are.

Flying saucers once awakened a curiosity that was commensurate with other mysteries that intrigue mankind, but since the elusive flying thingies didn’t provide a denouement, much as the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot haven’t, UFOs (flying saucers) have become and are an idle interest for only the most inane truth-pursuers.

The newer UFO guard, Paul Kimball, Nick Redfern, Greg Bishop, Mac Tonnies, et al. have also moved on, to other interests or life-styles.



So, the seeming abandonment of UFOs as an intellectual pursuit by Kevin Randle, Jerry Clark, and Richard Hall -- despite their enervated objections – makes sense to us, and others who know that life is short and UFOs are long….going nowhere, just circling our skies and lives, in a meaningless pattern that hasn’t made sense and isn’t about to, as far as we or anyone can tell….

The Unexplained Mysteries Web-site

One of our favorite sites is Vinit’s Unexplained Mysteries, and many of you also visit the extremely interesting and unique internet venue.

Here’s a link to get you there, just in case you haven’t visited it lately;

Unexplained Mysteries

The Immortality Conundrum

At death, theologians state that the soul of man transmutes to an immortal state of existence.

Humans, when they die, transform from matter to non-matter or spirit.

Science states that humans, when they die, cease to exist, eschewing the conservation of energy theorem that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, just transformed.



Religion touts the perpetuality of life after death.

But what happens when the Universe ceases to exist?

Do religion’s souls also cease to exist then?

Is there a pocket of the Universe or a dimension that doesn’t cease to exist and souls of the departed are shielded from a second death – non-existence?



The issue is unclear obviously.

The trauma of death must surely affect a living soul, if there is such a thing as life-after-death.



What happens to humans who lose the sense of taste for instance? Or the sexual pleasures that human bodies experience in mortal life but would certainly be lost when the body is shed?

What trauma would those who never read about or studied philosophy, death, or related matters experience when they moved from matter to non-matter?

Is the shock of the after-life a kind of Hell or Purgatory, as theologians have it?



Or does complete non-existence occur so that theological matters are moot, inane even?

Let’s assume that there is a life of some kind after death of the physical human form.

Then we are back to our question of what happens when the Universe itself no longer exists.

Or does the Universe or parallel universes become re-invigorated, as Hindu theology proclaims, and a rejuvenation from scratch, as it were, occurs?



Would not a collapse of the Universe (or universes) and a Big Bang Redux be profoundly traumatic, to anything that was sentient?

How would any soul – intellectual soul or vapid soul – handle anything as cataclysmic as a Universe collapse and rebirth?

The idea of an immortal soul, or transformed being (after death) is shackled by the reality of the physical Universe, itself changing, and dying, unless the Big Bang Theory is wrong, and Hoyle’s steady state theory is the reality after all.



But that for another time…

The Philadelphia Experiment [REDUX]

Prelude to the Past

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