MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: The Harmonic Grid Over New Zealand

Our final post of the year is a trio of maps from New Zealand pilot and ufologist Bruce Cathie (1930-2013), detailing his theories of a harmonic energy grid utilized by UFOs. The maps are from Cathie's book The Energy Grid, a revised combination of two of his earlier books: Harmonic 695, the UFO and Anti-gravity and The Pulse of the Universe, Harmonic 288. Cathie's theorizing is reminiscent of a similar older work, Flying Saucers and the Straight Line Mystery by French ufologist Aime Michel.

Courtesy Adventures Unlimited Press, 1997 (original pub 1990).

WHAT WE REALLY KNOW ABOUT FLYING SAUCERS by Otto Binder

What a difference a year makes! Binder put out this fantastic flying saucer guide just one year before his awful piece of Ancient Astronaut hackwork, Flying Saucers Are Watching Us. I guess a man's gotta eat. This time around Binder quotes extensively from NICAP's "UFO Evidence" report, compiled by Richard Hall, which results in reams of data not normally found in cheapie UFO paperbacks such as Binder's very next book! Some charts and diagrams are also reproduced (see two images below). The full report is available for download on NICAP's website, along with some other classic UFO titles. 

Binder excludes contactees entirely from this volume, and only just touches on the Ancient Astronaut "theory" as one of several UFO ideas floating around. Next year von Daniken's bestseller Chariots of the Gods? would blow the field wide open for copycat cash-ins but for now, in the calm before the storm, sober scientific appraisal appeared to be winning out over the "UFOnuts." That's John Keel's own term for the lunatic fringe, from his introduction. Of course Keel himself was no stranger to the wilder side of the weird, so perhaps this slip-sliding tension was inevitable in the field. For what it's worth here Binder does a capable job sticking to just the facts, ma'am.

The photos included are of mostly indeterminate pedigree, excepting the Trinidade Island sequence recorded by the Brazilian Navy. A few confirmed hoaxes do sneak through, like one of Paul Villa Jr.'s spiffy saucer models and the very respectable McMinnville UFO photographs.

Paul Villa Jr. - too good to be true!

The McMinnville photos - ditto!

Some fringe ideas filter in as well, represented here by our pal Brad Steiger's large format special from Award Books, The Flying Saucer Menace. Binder mentions this text in his chapter on health effects from UFO sightings. Ray Palmer, Maury Island, and the Shaver Mystery are also mentioned for their fringe qualities. Brinsley Le Poer Trench is quoted on prehistoric UFOs, as are Carl Sagan and Fred Hoyle. The 1917 Fatima visions in Portugal come up as possible pre-Arnold UFOs. For the most part though, Binder avoids the wild speculation that was Steiger and Co.'s bread and butter. 

Flying saucer occupants are recorded as reported, including that other pair of Venezuelan dwarfs, merely one of a host of little men popping up in the '50s. Binder notes that reputable sighting reports of saucer occupants are frequently "frustrated" in one way or another, as if the UFOnauts are perpetually just out of reach, and connects this with Vallee's theorizing on the continuity between flying saucers and fairy folk. He does point to Betty and Barney Hill as the single credible UFO contact experience amid a field of contactees. The word "abduction" was not yet in currency, by the way, showing how different the UFO field really was in 1967 from our modern construct. And while the Aztec, New Mexico UFO hoax gets a mention, with Binder rejecting crashed saucers as hoaxes and wild rumors, there's not a word on Roswell. That only makes sense, as that now-iconic lore wouldn't be popularized until the '80s.

The most noticeable difference between this text and Binder's sloppy work from next year is his attitude toward the US Air Force. Next year Binder would present the standard conspiratorial picture of a omnipotent government coverup. Here now Binder is quite perceptive, pointing out the USAF's "vacillation" on the flying saucer question and its almost schizophrenic attitude, sometimes debunking and sometimes encouraging sighting reports. It's a smart appraisal of a gigantic government bureaucracy being pushed and pulled by multiple agendas and occurrences, and a necessary level of analysis if one wants to make any progress at all on UFOs.

Binder's so serious about wrangling his saucer facts that he gives us a helpful summary towards the end of the book, allowing us to take an overview of the ideas presented thus far:

As you can see above he also reprints the USAF's form for reporting UFO sightings, another useful thing to have on hand. A rundown of UFO types by Jacques Vallee follows, and Binder finishes the appendix section by summarizing John Keel's "Project B" appraisal of UFO data for 1966. And so we end on an uneasy note, surrounded by scientific data but dogged by the Men in Black - or at least, the man who most popularized them.

Thankfully, this is the book Binder chose to dedicate to his deceased daughter Mary Lorine Binder. It's a suitable honor, because as a UFO reader, as a time capsule, as a fascinating journey, this title is recommended.

What We Really Know About Flying Saucers is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1967

LET'S FACE THE FACTS ABOUT FLYING SAUCERS by Gabriel Green with Warren Smith

Author Gabriel Green is on the scene, and it's time we faced the facts! 

FACT: this is UFO contactee Green's only published UFO book!

FACT: the whole thing was actually ghostwritten by our old friend Warren Smith!

FACT: Green's barely in his own book, as Smith mostly recycles those same old saucer tales!

For shame, Warren Smith, for shame! Green was an interesting guy, most famous for his presidential run in 1960 on "the Flying Saucer Ticket" promising "A World of Tomorrow Today and Utopia Now" via plans shared with him by the Space Brothers:

A book about Green's contactee experience shepherded by the able writer Smith could have been a good read; too bad that's not this book. Smith does feature Green's group the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America and offers readers some general conclusions about UFOs in line with Green's contactee perspective. Otherwise, for the main body of the book we'll have to be satisfied with Smith dipping into his library of Flying Saucer Forteana and such well worn tales as Antonio Villas-Boas, Reverend Gill's sightings in New Guinea, and those phantom Dropa Stones. Smith would later recycle his chapter on the Dropa Stones in his Gods Demons and UFO's with some minor word changes and rearranging. Sighting reports from Australia and Russia, some classic medieval UFO phenomena, and the Condon Committee round things out. Did you know "bludza" is Russian for UFO?

Green may be lacking in his own book, but Smith does give us other contactees and witnesses including George Adamski, dairy farmer Gary Wilcox, the improbably named Mary Zolar, and one Sid Patrick, who was taken on a saucer ride up and down California one morning by a space pilot named Xeno. Smith also relates some more sinister UFO encounters in Brazil from 1962. Some later visitations in 1977 would take an even more frightening turn with purported deaths from UFO rays! Jacques Vallee relates his investigation of this later flap in his book Confrontations: A Scientist's Search For Alien Contact ... but that's not for years to come. Smith keeps up the sinister aura, at strange odds with Green and AFSCA's positive messaging, by bringing in Indrid Cold and the Mothman. He also surprises us with a different Venezuelan vicious hairy dwarf attack from his usual, this one with an attendant craft! 

As a flying saucer sampler this is Smith in top form, it's just a shame about the bait and switch with Green. This title is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Table of Contents:

1.  The Truth About Flying Saucers (5)

2.  The Saucer That Came to a Picnic (8)

3.  The Frightening Florida Alien (11)

4.  The Fathers of Flying Saucers (14)

5.  Scientists Who Changed Their Minds (17)

6.  The Friendly Little Men (20)

7.  On the Trail of Ancient Space Visitors (23)

8.  UFO's That Chase Cars (27)

9.  Flying Saucers Over Russia (31)

10. The Farmer Who Talked with Saucer Pilots (38)

11. Australia's Amazing Saucer Sightings (41)

12. Weird Ride in a Flying Saucer (44)

13. West Virginia's Mothman Monster (47)

14. Things That Go Boom in the Night (49)

15. Brother John's Medieval Saucer (52)

16. Saucers That Spy on Our Space Program (55)

17. The Saucer That Chased a Truck (60)

18. The Flying Saucer Seduction (62)

19. Great Flying Ford Galaxies! (70)

20. Things That Fall from the Sky (72)

21. ... Or Are They Flying Ants? (77)

22. The 5:02 to Mars (78)

23. Ohio's Strange UFO Chase (82)

24. Healing Lights, Heat Waves, and Paralyzing Beams (85)

25. Raiders from the Skies (92)

26. The New Air Force Investigation (98)

27. "UFO's Are Our Biggest Problem" (101)

28. Why the Big Saucer Cover-Up? (103)

29. ... Or Was It a Pseudosaucer? (106)

30. Are You a Believer? (107)

31. Crowds Who See Saucers (110)

32. Battle with a Bristly-Haired Dwarf (115)

33. The 1967 Iowa-Illinois UFO Circus (117)

34. What Happened at Erie? (119)

35. The True Facts About Flying Saucers (122)

Popular Library, 1967

WHY ARE THEY WATCHING US? by Allen Louis Erskine

FIFTEEN YEARS IN THE MAKING! Clocking in at a slim 124 pages with some very large text, it's hard to imagine how author Erskine spent all that time. This meager volume delivers all the same old midcentury UFO meatloaf, barely reheated despite the blistering ad copy about "frightening facts" and how this book might just save the entire planet. At least you can't say that Tower Books didn't know how to dress up a piece, as they give us another one of those fun covers with a menacing model UFO.

Those flying Swedish jelly bags are back, as is Antonia Villas-Boas and his very close encounter ... although perhaps out of modesty for his sake Erskine leaves him anonymous, decent chap. By now we should know the Hill's story by rote, and all the back and forth between J. Allen Hynek, debunkers like Philip J. Klass, the USAF and the Condon Committee. Things like the Mystery Airship flap of 1897 and Mantell "dogfight" crash of 1948 are trotted out again, we get a quick sidetrack to Ezekiel's Wheel, and by the time we're begging for some reprieve Erskine finally shakes it up and blames the great Northeast Blackout of 1965 on UFOs! 

(Update Sept 3 2023: According to Hilary Evans in his enormous catalogue of his personal UFO library, Erskine was a pseudonym used by Irving A. Greenfield which accounts for their shared interest in the Northeast Blackout of '65 being UFO related.)

In 1975 Tower Books put this title out again with a Chariots facelift, which must have been de rigeur judging by the frequency of reissued bold text plain faced covers we've seen!

This title is available to read and download at archive dot org with its original groovy cover art.

Table of contents:

1.  UFOs Swarm Over the Northeast (5)

2.  UFO Overflights (20)

3.  From Beyond (41)

4.  The 1947 Flap (63)

5.  Fighter Pilot Dogfights UFO (69)

6.  The Ghost of Mantell (71)

7.  UFOs at White Sands (75)

8.  UFOs - The Illusion Becomes Real (77)

9.  "The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth" (83)

10. They Have Landed and Made Contact (89)

11. What Caused the Blackout? (98)

12. Yes, We Have Pieces of a UFO (103)

13. What UFOs Are Not (107)

14. The $300,000 Snow Job (110)

15. A Touch of Human Interest (114)

16. What's the Answer? (121)

Tower Books, 1967

COSMIC DEBRIS: All the Saucers Fit to Print

A goldmine of flying saucer titles are listed in this ad from the December 1958 issue of Flying Saucers: The Magazine of Space Conquest.

MYSTERIOUS VISITORS by Brinsley Le Poer Trench

Is there proof? Brinsley Le Poer Trench says "Yes!" All will be revealed, as the Sky People are coming to usher us into a New Age of enlightenment. The children of today, with their long hair and freaky clothes, are the Homo superior, and after their ascension we'll be plugged in to the Cosmic Lattice giving us access to all time and space! All this and much, much more!

Trench is no light weight, anyways, and gives us plenty to chew on. His Biblical section for example doesn't just trot out Ezekiel's wheel but assures us that Elijah, Enoch, and Moses also all had UFO experiences, and that Christ our Lord Himself was brought to heaven via flying saucer! This blockbuster Bible study is followed by a series of chapters focused on the weird behavior of modern day UFOs, with many references from the always dependable Flying Saucer Review. Next we get an abbreviated history of the modern UFO era, from the mystery airships to UMMO, and finally Trench buckles us in for his astounding revelations of our "tremendous tomorrow" among the Space Brothers.

There's some nice illustrations by one Kiril Tirzier and two appendices: a list of UFO shapes and a directory for Trench's organization Contact International.

Available to read and download at archive dot org.

Day Books, 1978 (original pub. 1971)