ARCHIVAL UPDATES: ARE THE INVADERS COMING?

Steven Tyler's hopeful-but-skeptical UFO text Are the Invaders Coming? is now available to read and download at archive dot org! Whither our man of mystery? He wrote one more book on the paranormal and then disappeared into the unknown ...

Courtesy Tower Books, 1968.

THE FLYING SAUCERERS by Arthur Shuttlewood

Arthur Shuttlewood: BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF 'THE WARMINSTER MYSTERY!' If that blurb meant anything at all to you in 1976, you'd be snapping this book right off the rack. The Warminster mystery concerned strange earth sounds heard in 1965 (said to knock birds right out of the sky!) which developed over the years into UFO sightings and photos of varying provenance. 

One photograph of the Thing ...

... and its location in the UK

Arthur Shuttlewood was a local journalist in the small town of Warminster who soon became entranced by the mysterious happenings of the Thing, as the mystery was eponymously dubbed. A series of books followed, and eventually Shuttlewood was fully enveloped in the '70s British UFO scene, dominated as it was by the muddled mysticism of the fascists behind The Flying Saucer Review. This current title is a melange of mystic mumbo jumbo that starts with a soft pedal as Shuttlewood goes over some regular British folk and their UFO sightings:

The bold cover art promises space aged revelations, with a pair of cutting edge F-104 Starfighters engaging a saucer. But soon enough Shuttlewood is delivering the standard mystic saucer stew, citing Brinsley le Poer Trench and Otto Binder for musings on ancient astronauts and their genetic plan for humanity, and quickly blending in hollow earth and polar openings with nary a hesitation. Shuttlewood name checks Kiwi pilot Bruce Cathie and his world energy grid alongside ley lines and supposed ancient Celtic nuclear piles, as he swerves into pyramid power and dense bouts of numerology. Says Shuttlewood:

My own belief is that the great pyramid is a multi-dimensional space-time condenser, the four-triad group of a veritable powerhouse in which every dimensional form of life in the whole universe could, if so deciding, converge and converse by pure mental communication.

There's a WWII sighting of an "egg shaped craft" by Polish fighter Antoni Szachnowski and mention of foo fighters, which sound like the typical nuts'n'bolts American stuff, and then suddenly Shuttlewood is dropping his favorite mystic numerology volume, The Seal of God by one F.C. Payne. Payne's work inspired Shuttlewood to investigate recent history for signs of divine guidance:

The six leaders whose nations were involved in the biggest show of hostilities in the history of mankind were: Churchill, Hitler, Roosevelt, Il Duce, Stalin, and Tojo. Take the initial letters of these names and what have we? Spell it out loud and clear, for it was and is so true! We have C-H-R-I-S-T!

Come page 83 Shuttlewood's quoting a crank letter he got from one Muriel Barker of Southend-on-Sea, which cites his colleague Brinsley le Poer Trench on the fact of Jesus Christ flying a UFO from Gethsemane to Glastonbury, where the Son of God inspires the legend of King Arthur! It's so British it hurts at times, especially with time capsule passages like: "Not many admirers know that vivacious Adrienne Posta, well-known actress and comedienne, saw a UFO on Monday 24 January 1972 at Cambridge Square, London." You're right, I didn't know that!

Ms. Posta looking glam

Shuttlewood's friend and former Warminster nurseryman Jack Harraway sends him translations of Spanish newspaper articles on UFOs, for an informative chapter which is also another time capsule piece, as Harraway is living in Alicante, Spain while serving on the executive committee for the National Farmers' Union in the Common Market. Further Britishisms follow as Shuttlewood quotes UFO witness Ray P. Logan, who hypothesizes that the flying sorcerers (as Shuttlewood's been calling them throughout) are avoiding direct contact with us in the same manner that we'd avoid waltzing right into the gorillas' enclosure at London Zoo, and that they're feeling us out through observation “very much as Dave Sexton, manager of Chelsea FC, will send scouts to watch another team’s style of soccer play before planning his tactics in a coming match.” Shuttlewood references John Keel and Robert Charroux for more ultraterrestrial meddling in ancient mysteries, before relating a strange experience with two college students named Micah and Joeb who demonstrated strange powers on a train - the weirdest part is that Shuttlewood separately receives an account by another experiencer, Marion, who met the same boys!

Shuttlewood relaxing with a cuppa ...

... and in the field (left), pointing out a
UFO location for the Marquis of Bath

The author's approach is summed up near the end, when he asks us, “Astrology, Numerology, Symbology: Have these abstract or long-forgotten arts any contribution to make towards slotting the UFO jigsaw pieces together?” The final chapter features some intense numerology, and at this point you're either vibing with Shuttlewood or you've written him off entirely.

Grand old UFO man Hilary Evans made his appraisement clear in his essential annotated UFO catalogue:

Right before his numerological rally, Shuttlewood drops a final anecdote about one Randy Otter's "zoo hypothesis" printed as an article in the Post Office Courier, which is reheated from Charles Fort's terse observation that "we are property." The Space Age calls out to the Golden Age with the musty archives of generations between, and Shuttlewood rallies round the maypole alongside Trench, Holiday, and the rest of the British mystic brigade.

The Flying Saucerers is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Sphere Books, 1976

PREDICTIONS FOR 1974 compiled and edited by Warren Smith

Here's a real load of midcentury occult meatloaf that must have been waiting to spring off the grocery store spinner rack, as working writer Warren Smith assembles 33 psychics of varying pedigree for predictions on the upcoming year of 1974! We get some big names like "PK Man" and all around self promoter Ted Owens, the Countess Amaya (last seen in The Strange Ones by Smith, from 1972), Malva Dee and Beaverton's own Tenny Hale, as well as also-rans and unknowns like "Aquarius" the anonymous college student, the "Black Psychic" Dr. Ernesto Montgomery (who seems ill-served by this reductive label), fake fakir Komar, and a host of others who are lost to the ages, with nary a wikipedia page or archived news article to commemorate them. Regardless of their purported status, we get the expected spread of generic, oddball, infuriating, and just plain wrong predictions about what to expect in '74 ...

Cancer will be cured, as will schizophrenia. Nixon will resign, be impeached, or be totally vindicated. Stuff will get more expensive. Young people will either accept their lot, or raise hell! China, the USSR, or some terrorist group will start a nuclear war ... or bring about world peace! Liza Minelli will divorce, get remarried, and divorce again. On and on it goes, a numbing litany of "predictions" that soon blend together between psychics, to the point where it would be hard to remember who to credit with any actual hits. Regardless, Smith and Award Books are sure to place a disclaimer front and center that NONE of the predictions within are to serve as the basis for any financial decisions!

One of the standout chapters features Leo Martello, a legendary gay rights and wiccan activist and author of an excellent witchcraft primer featured on the blog back in 2020. Martello's predictions seem less ethereally inspired than simply savvy, with a mix of accuracy. Near misses include predicting impeachment for Nixon post-Watergate and farm strikes which were still a decade off in actuality. Dead on predictions include the the implication of the CIA in SE Asian drug trafficking. Silly stuff from Martello includes massacres by psychotic Vietnam vets and "a dubious witch killed in a car crash," (now who exactly was he throwing shade at?) along with the usual celebrity divorces everybody else comments on throughout this volume. Martello is the rare left-wing celebrity psychic, and even predicts that reactionary race baiter Jeane Dixon will face public backlash for her stances.

Martello looking tres sinistre ...

... and a little more approachable!

In line with Martello, Tenny Hale ("looking chic like a model instead of a psychic") predicts that fundamentalists will take over Christianity in America. Again, this is less of an astral vision and more straight observation, though it's better than the piffle some of these other psychics dredge up to fill pages. India/Pakistan and Palestine/Israel are two big geopolitical topics that crop up again and again, with varying pessimism and perspectives. Another hot topic of the time is the status of the American Indian: some psychics are bullish on America's first people gaining full rights and reparations, while others feel the issue will fade from the headlines.

Tenny Hale

Our final chapter is from Ruth Zimmerman, the Illinois housewife who tunes in. True to the era and focus of this volume, she says Jack Paar may suffer a head injury and that Dean Martin should be careful of his nose! The back page ads are solid gold, with Brad Steiger, Brinsley le Poer Trench, and some titans of SF represented.

Predictions For 1974 is available to read and download at archive dot org.

This book was owned by Earle L. Blanton, Jr.

Award Books, 1973

COVER UPDATES: THE FLYING SAUCER STORY

A cool tropical vision for this later UK edition of Brinsley Le Poer Trench's UFO psychohistory The Flying Saucer Story, advertised with new updated material! Courtesy Tandem Books, 1973 (original pub. 1966).

COVER UPDATES: MYSTERIOUS VISITORS and GOD DRIVES A FLYING SAUCER

A very cool Chris Foss style flying saucer on this 1975 edition of Mysterious Visitors by Brinsley Le Poer Trench from Pan ...

And a hazy portrait of the heavens for this 1971 edition of God Drives a Flying Saucer by R.L. Dione from Corgi Books. UK publishers loved lavishing lush paintings on their paranormal cheapies!

NEW UFO BREAKTHROUGH by Brad Steiger and Joan Whritenour

Brad Steiger and partner in crime Joan Whritenour deliver a tight little text, presenting the more conspiratorial side of Ufology circa 1968 as a NEW UFO BREAKTHROUGH!

The main threads entwined are Gray Barker's Men in Black, Carl Allen (alias Carlos Allende) and his Philadelphia Experiment, and the sinister Shaver Mystery, with additional color provided by Brinsley Le Poer Trench's hippy dippy Sky People and those dear old Dropa Stones. Brad and Joan highlight more than a few people who were threatened or silenced for their attempts at UFO truth, including Carl Allen, Ufologist Morris K. Jessup, and superstar writer of the "Strange" Frank Edwards. Something strange is definitely going on ... Shaver's deadly Deros almost got to me today, and prevented this update entirely! Allen said that the lack of evidence for his teleportation story was actually proof of the Navy's coverup, naturally, while Jessup's death by suicide was really a hit job because he was getting too close to the truth. Ditto for Frank Edwards' death by heart attack. Edwards himself claimed that government pressure forced sponsors to drop his successful radio show after he began focusing on UFOs. Interestingly enough editor Ray Palmer, who popularized the Shaver Mystery as a true story and stands as one of the major figures on the darker side of Ufology, tells Steiger and Whritenour that he doesn't believe in the mysterious Men in Black, having been visited many times by government agents who were always upfront with their credentials! John Keel rails against Ufology's failures in the face of government stonewalling, claiming that he's been two steps behind the MiB multiple times while chasing UFOs.

Barker, Allen, Jessup, and Keel

After outlining the sinister saucer silencers and their brave critics, Steiger and Whritenour quote one Bob Stiff, reporting staff at Whritenour's Florida based UFO newsletter Saucer Scoop, on the "tragic case" of one Mary R., a young Oklahoma girl terrified into catatonia by a UFO sighting. Her mother then receives threatening calls from the silencers! Stiff gets too close to the case and ends up threatened himself! High drama and high strangeness, as twisted as anything penned by Gray Barker or John Keel.

The authors wrangle Wilhelm Reich and his bogus Orgone energy into their UFO coverup based on his arrest by the FBI and his later troubles with the FDA. The FBI claims mistaken identity, saying they only took him in because they mixed him up with a communist bookstore owner with the same name. Glad that's cleared up! The authors tread on dangerous ground defending Reich against charges of sexual impropriety, casting him as a liberated genius striving to better humanity ... an alternate view might be that he was a sex creep cultist using "liberation" as a cover for abuse. For a slim little volume, Steiger and Whritenour pack in a lot of dense material, and pulling a single thread can lead down a dangerous number of rat holes.

Co-author Joan Whritenour (1937-2014)

More saucer attacks follow, including Snippy the horse, with quotations from NICAP and more reporting from Bob Stiff. Next, the Dropa Stones are dusted off to support ancient UFO visitations, along with those fake quotes about nuclear war from the Mahabharata. The authors are kind enough to explicitly cite Paulwels and Bergier, as opposed to von Daniken who simply plagiarized their groundbreaking work. Some great Bigfoot/UFO cases follow including the Florida Sandman that Steiger and Warren Smith use in some of their other books. We get into some truly weird Biblical interpretation courtesy Brinsley Le Poer Trench, who decodes Genesis as a creation story for galactic humanity. The destruction of Atlantis and Velikovsky's catastrophism tie in too, as does Olaf Jansen's The Smoky God, another story of the inner earth a la Shaver. This is another bit that Steiger (and Smith) would recycle many, many times. 

We're getting towards the end, and Steiger and Whritenour toss in a random chapter on alchemy to fill things out, with a dialogue between the authors and an invented alchemist character, Augustus Magnus. Weird. Joan Whritenour finishes with a chapter on "psy-war" and the "mental rape" some contactees are experiencing via voices from the void. Whritenour joins with John Keel and Jacques Vallee in doubting these experiences are extraterrestrial at all, and fears that someone very earthly is planning something sinister ...

Above, a 1974 edition by Tandem for the UK. What a grueling grind! Compelling but draining, pure nonsense but skillfully arranged, Steiger and Whritenour at the top of their game. Recommended for a window into the vintage dark side of Ufology.

New UFO Breakthrough is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Award Books, 1968