IS SOMETHING UP THERE? by Dale White

This is a pretty good UFO primer for kids covering the usual midcentury narrative, from Kenneth Arnold and the Foo Fighters onwards to the Flatwoods Monster and the Condon report. Author Dale White references heavily from John G. Fuller's Incident at Exeter in an early chapter, but oddly enough doesn't mention Betty and Barney Hill despite covering a wide range of cases. White also goes over NICAP's involvement with the issue, Father Gill's sightings in New Guinea and other foreign reports, and explanations of strange weather phenomenon that can be mistaken as UFOs.

White's style is measured, and he does a fine job conveying the scale and layered contradictions of the subject. Good stuff! But the plot thickens: an online listing for the original hardcover edition reveals that White is a pseudonym for none other than Bigfoot authoress Marian T. Place!

Did she or original publisher Doubleday think young boys wouldn't read a UFO book by a lady? She didn't publish her Bigfoot work under a male pseudonym! Her papers are in a collection at Arizona State University, and offer some information on that front:

Place has written under her own name and under two pseudonyms. She recalls that "I began writing [about such subjects as] hunting, fishing, Forest Service and other state and federal fish & wildlife, grazing, [and] water projects, to mention only a few. I studied my markets before submitting and observed [that] the kind of ... subjects I was interested in were done by men. So, I chose to use the pen name of Dale [my uncle] and White [a portion of my middle name, Whitinger]. For about 10 years or more I was known as Mr. White. The other pseudonym, R. D. Whitinger, was used briefly only for westerns - i.e. bang-bangs, pulps. I was experimenting with several kinds of writing, and this one was not for me."

That online listing for Is Something Up There? also includes some promotional writing on Place, dating to the early '80s:

Scholastic Book Services, 1969 (original pub. 1968)

ULTIMATE ENCOUNTER by Bill Barry

The true story of a UFO kidnapping ... the ULTIMATE ENCOUNTER! Author Bill Barry delivers a credulous account of Travis Walton's 1975 UFO abduction, released the same year as Walton's own The Walton Experience. Barry primes his book with heady quotes from giants like Twain and Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and John Milton, and brackets Walton's supposed saucer snatching with the groundbreaking Voyager probes launched in 1977, cutting edge developments pushing the boundaries of the unknown.

The man himself, Travis Walton

Unfortunately, the saga itself is looking thin as tissue paper 40+ years on, and Barry's attempts at downplaying any critical appraisal read as very clumsy. Say what you will about arch-skeptic Philip J. Klass, for example, but Barry's retort that Klass is the "real UFO buff" because he has the temerity to write skeptically on Walton's story instead of just accepting the tale comes across as weak, as does sniping about Klass's financial motivations for writing on UFOs in some feeble tit-for-tat against accusations of Walton and crew boss Mike Rogers' possible hoaxing for National Enquirer prize money. 

The Walton story has come back into the limelight recently due to a startling admission of hoaxing by Mike Rogers, which Rogers has since retracted! The critically minded UFO website Three-Dollar Kit features an in-depth reexamination of the Walton case which lays out some very convincing motivations for an abduction hoax committed by Walton and Rogers, with the other crew members as unwitting accomplices. It's worth noting that several "pro-UFO" researchers such as Karl Pflock, Raymond Fowler, and the group NICAP were doubtful of the case from the start and this isn't a simplistic split between so-called skeptics and believers. But as Barry presents things anyone doubting the ultimate encounter is either blinkered, mendacious, or just small minded - after all, isn't the universe enormous and unknowable? This is a time capsule presentation of the UFO mystery akin to In Search Of ... where answers are just around the corner and doubters need to get out of the way! Barry brings in cattle mutilations and fellow abductee Charles Moody for some more period flavor. It's an impressive edifice of mystery, provided you don't look too close ...

This book was owned by Marv or Mary Taylor.

Pocket Books, 1978

ABDUCTED! by Coral and Jim Lorenzen

Influential UFO researchers Coral and Jim Lorenzen give us this summary text of a few wild years when multiple people across America found themselves ABDUCTED! The Lorenzens and their UFO group the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization were among the first to pay serious attention to tales of flying saucer occupants, in a time when other researchers were writing close encounters off as contactee-level drivel. Persistence pays off though, and by the 1970s the UFO field was shifting to an acceptance of close encounters and a new term entered the lexicon: the alien abduction. Much of the foundation for these cases rests on hypnotic regression as practiced by doctors such as Leo Sprinkle, which is to say that things are off to a shaky start at best. But let's see just what the Lorenzens have to say about these astonishing, documented accounts of confrontations with beings from outer space ...

Jim and Coral lookin' fly

The abductees are:

George Wheeler, Wisconsin 1976. Police officer abducted while investigating a strange light he thought may have been a fire. Multiple witnesses testified as to something strange happening that night. Wheeler initially blocked out the memory of his experience, which the Lorenzens note as an emerging theme in alien abductions of the time, also mentioning the Hills and Antonio Villas-Boas.

Pat Roach, Utah 1973. Abducted with her children by medically minded aliens. Anonymized as "Patty Price, from a midwestern state" as Roach did not originally want publicity for her experience. Next year however she would appear on an episode of In Search Of. Longtime UFO researcher Kevin Randle takes some issue with her case, or more properly with her hypnotic regression performed by APRO investigator Dr. James Harder. According to Randle, Dr. Harder discussed details of the Hill's experience with Roach during her session, unduly influencing her recall. Randle was Harder's assistant on the case, but if he had these misgivings at the time the Lorenzens did not include them in their summary! Incidentally, Isaac Koi's website for Ufology has a very useful index for references to this case in the UFO literature.

Carl Higdon, Wyoming 1974. Abducted while hunting elk by Ausso the Alien, and given a tour of Ausso's craft. Ausso acts like a classic contactee Space Brother. He was able to stop one of Carl's bullets in midair before revealing himself. Leo Sprinkle investigated and arranged a polygraph for Higdon.

Higdon with wife Margery ...

She wrote the book on him!

Charles Moody, New Mexico 1975. Airborne Sergeant Charles Moody was abducted from Alamogordo after watching a meteor shower. His case includes classic features such as a car that dies or won't start, missing time and amnesia, and lingering health effects with a "heat rash" on his lower torso that developed afterwards. His case was investigated by the Lorenzens simultaneously with Travis Walton's. Moody's aliens would not use his nickname Chuck and insisted on calling him Charles - proper little fellas!

Moody and his friends

Sandra Larson, North Dakota 1975. Abducted while driving with her daughter and boyfriend. Other contemporary reports played up the bizarre beings, which Larson described as "mummy like" creatures with jointed arms like an erector set. They performed weird medical procedures on her such as rubbing her body with a clear fluid! Larson was hypnotized by Leo Sprinkle and the transcript is included herein.

David Stephens, Maine 1975. Also abducted while driving with a friend. A gigantic UFO shot a beam at their truck and then ... missing time, missing memories. Dr. Herbert Hopkins, who preformed Stephens' hypnotic regression, would later claim a visit from the Men in Black! An emotionally fraught case if there ever was one.

Travis Walton, Arizona 1975. This is the big one, the whole enchilada. Out of all the cases in this book Walton's had the staying power, and if you're not already familiar then I doubt I could do it full justice in this rundown. The Lorenzens are fully convinced of his truthfulness, while skeptics such as Philip J. Klass disagreed. My opinion? However you appraise Walton's character, actual evidence seems rather thin on the ground ... (Edit: see Charlie Wiser's convincing analysis of the case which concludes hoax.)

Two books on the Walton case

APRO was all in on Walton

Louise Smith, Elaine Thomas, and Mona Stafford, Kentucky 1976. A truly strange triple abduction! The ladies were taken while driving at night, and their case caused such a stir that THREE major UFO groups wound up tussling over the investigation: APRO as represented by Leo Sprinkle, Hynek's CUFOS, and MUFON! Eventually Sprinkle was able to hypnotize Mona Stafford and arrange a polygraph for all three ladies.

Louise, Elaine, and Mona

Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, Mississippi 1973. The famous Pascagoula abduction. The Lorenzens saved it for last in order to trace the possible effects its major publicity had on the other cases. The next chapter starts to collate everyone's experiences, with the Lorenzens theorizing a plan of human experimentation by the UFO occupants. The authors are bullish on UFOs being nuts and bolts craft for ET, and poo-poo talk of interdimensional travelers - man has been to space, after all, but not yet to "another dimension," whatever that might even mean! Point taken, Jim and Coral.

We get two beefy appendixes, with a transcript of one of Travis Walton's polygraph tests and an article by Leo Sprinkle on using hypnotic regression for UFO cases. A long list of references follow, and what should catch my eye but a citation for Eric Norman's Gods, Demons, and UFO's? That's not a very reliable source, you guys! It seems we just can't escape the pulp origins of Ufology no matter how high we set our sights. We're dreamers in castles made of sand ...

A Berkeley Medallion Book, 1977

 

THE U.F.O. REPORT by Irving A. Greenfield

The meat of Greenfield's book is his investigation of a series of UFO sightings in Sag Harbor, Long Island, not to be confused with the much more famous Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia UFO incident the same year of 1967. Greenfield beats feet around town, interviewing locals and dropping in at the famous (and now long shuttered) Black Buoy Bar. Among the witnesses is 11 year old Susan, who describes a craft similar to the Socorro, New Mexico sighting of Lonnie Zamora. Greenfield places a lot of weight on her sighting syncing up with Zamora's, as they occurred thousands of miles apart and almost contemporaneously.

The gumshoe routine is some good stuff, but we also have to slog through the standard UFO history lesson with Kenneth Arnold, the Air Force, Contactees, etc. We've read all that before! And Maury Island too! Poor Captain Thomas F. Mantell's crash is gone over again, with Greenfield convinced that the Air Force is withholding evidence of otherworldly destruction. The evolution of phantom airships to "modern" flying saucers is explained by Greenfield as the aliens keeping pace with our own technological progress. The year 1967 sure was a busy one for UFOs. Between the writing and publication of Greenfield's book, the University of Colorado was revealed to be behind the Air Force's new study on UFOs. The Northeast blackout of 1965 is pondered as possibly UFO related, thoughts shared by Allen Louis Erskine in Why Are They Watching Us? also published in 1967. (Update Sept 3 2023: according to Hilary Evans in his catalogue of his personal UFO library, Erskine was a pseudonym used by Greenfield!)

Typos and misprints abound. Socorro is misspelled as "Sorcorro" and poor J. Allen Hynek has his name misspelled as "Hynke" throughout the first half of the book before the editor notices and corrects it in the second half. This is before Hynek's change of heart on UFOs, and Greenfield excoriates him for the infamous "swamp gas" explanation Hynek gave for a series of sightings over southern Michigan in 1966.

Lancer Books, 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!

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