For two or three years, Paris Flammonde was my right-hand man. And occasionally he would sit in and do one of the all-night sessions as a panelist.
And so it goes, hour after hour, days upon days, years into years. One incredible personality exists and, nineteen hours later, another arrives. A merry-go-round of madness, and I love every minute of it.
I suppose to a few people it may sound a little dull, but, believe me, friends, this is a square count—life is never dull when you’re hearing a man tell you about life on Saturn, or when Jackie Gleason comes swinging through the doors to argue with him. There’s no monotony when this morning it’s a private detective you’re talking to, yesterday it was a psychiatrist, and tomorrow it’ll be an Abe Lincoln—not the delicatessen store owner, but Abraham Lincoln, the former president. Of course, his appearance is made possible through a medium. You don’t buy it? I don’t either.
No, neighbors. It’s never dull! It’s exciting, and always new. I have to be frank with you, I’m a man who loves to do what he does—that is, talk to people. Rational, irrational, serious, amusing, simple, brilliant…they’re all fascinating to me. Each one is a large or small mystery when they come in the studio, and sometimes they’re more mysterious when they go out; but they all leave behind something I didn’t have before…a little bit of knowledge.
You know, I was just thinking that I’m a pretty lucky guy. I can’t honestly say that I’m making a classical buck, but I’ll let you in on a secret: I haven’t skipped any meals—or even postponed any—since I’ve been doing this bit. Yes, it’s very true. I’m a very, very lucky guy, doing something that I get a charge out of, and at the same time I wind up with a shribe for doing it. Just in case you don’t know, a shribe is a check.
And now let’s actually get into the pitch. I’m going to try to tell you about the strange beliefs of many Americans today. The big cons, the little swindles, and in general the things I’ve talked about and have heard from my guests during the past five years. Always bear in mind I’m not a Hemingway, a Gunther, nor a Gehman,—just a guy who uses a single finger to punch the typewriter and the other hand once in a while to press the shift key and space bar. And any credit for perfect spelling or good punctuation goes to Anna Marie Goetz and Paris Flammonde. The grammatical errors you’ll probably find are there because I insisted on letting them remain so you’ll know your author is not a great brain, but a guy who has a thousand stories to tell. And after reading it, if you don’t like it, don’t ask your book dealer for a refund—just stay stuck. But do me one personal favor—don’t let anybody else know that you didn’t like it. Let the other marks get their feet wet. After all, the cost of the book isn’t all the money in the world, and all of the profits go to a very worthy cause. The name of the cause? Oh, now you know? You’re right. The John Nebel Foundation.
CHAPTER 2—FLYING SAUCERS AND UFO
“All we know of the truth is that the absolute truth, such as it is, is beyond our reach.”—Nicholas of Cusa
IT ALL began with Kenneth Arnold, back in 1947, but the groundwork came long before that. Of course, in earlier days they had other names, but UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) have been with us for millions of years, if you believe some saucerologists.
According to the English author Desmond Leslie, a visitor from Venus appeared in the year of 18,617,841 B.C.; his name was The Sanat Kumara, The Lord of the Flame, which you’ll admit is pretty impressive. Accompanied by Four Great Lords, he stopped by to help primitive man become a superior creature. He was only partially successful. Leslie has claimed that later earthians developed a fair civilization of their own—two as a matter of fact: Atlantis and Lemuria. During this far out age the citizens had “air-boats” and “celestial cars,” which were the saucers of their day. Back in those days, they even had death ray weapons. In other words, they were ahead of us, particularly in the science department.
Let’s face it, if you’re going to talk about beginnings, why be pikers? Other saucerites will tell you about later UFO and space ships to arrive on earth, after man got around to writing a little history. Where do they get their information? From Irish, Egyptian, Arabic, Chinese, and almost any other kind of legends you can think of.
Take the late Morris K. Jessup, for instance. His specialty was discovering Biblical “proof” of craft from outer space. In one book he points to evidence in Kings, Exodus, Psalms, Revelations, St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. Luke. The subtitle of his last book tells his story better than I can. It reads: “An original interpretation of Biblical phenomena which shows that miracles, prophets and mystical aspects of Biblical lore are directly related to UFO.” What more can I tell you?
Some ufologists say the great Greek and Roman myths are really about saucers; more prefer the Aztecs and the Incas. Anywhere they find a “sun god,” they have it made. “Moon goddesses” aren’t bad either.
The first “scientist” to talk about space people was a mystic who lived in the 1700’s, named Emmanuel Swedenborg, who wrote about “moon-men” and life on other planets. A few saucerites even claim that Ben Franklin was in touch with spacemen. I heard of another who thought that a man from another world had written the Declaration of Independence.
However, getting into the 20th century, I pass on to Nikola Tesla. This inventor of “alternating current,” and other extraordinary things, is the patron saint of one school of saucer people which includes Otis T. Carr, Margaret Storm, and Norman E. Colton. However, I should make it clear that this is a different kind of saucer group. Its interest is not in visitors from other spheres, but in building “anti-gravitational,” or “electrical propulsion,” or “magnetic force field” space ships to fly to the moon, and similar vacation spots. But more about them in another chapter.
Now we come to the great forerunner of all the sighters, researchers, and contactees—Charles Fort. No man ever collected such a fantastic amount of “evidence” supporting the idea of something “in the sky” as he did. He reported snowflakes “15 inches across and 8 inches thick” and stones, even rocks, falling from the sky. Blue, brown and scarlet moons, and green, blue and black suns were mentioned in his papers. He recorded “masses of jelly” dropping from the clouds, as well as fish, ants, toads, worms, and the like. But the items saucerologists like best are his stories of great black shadows crossing the moon, unidentified shapes against the sun, disappearing stars and flames exploding in the sky. After all, certainly a good percentage of these must have been space ships from Mars, Venus and Saturn.
So now that you have a little of the background material, I can say—
Flying saucers all began with the original Kenneth Arnold sighting of “nine discs” near Mt. Rainier on June 24, 1947. A sighting had been reported near Tacoma, Washington, three days earlier, but this was subsequently revealed to be an admitted hoax, and so serious ufologists date everything from the Arnold episode.
Flying over the 14,000 foot peak, the young businessman claimed he saw nine brilliant circular “things,” about the size of cargo planes, off one of his wing tips. They were in formation and moving at very high speeds in “a diagonal chainlike line.” He estimated them to be about twenty miles away.
Immediately prior to Arnold’s experience the first “skyhook balloons” had been sent up, and they have been offered, by some, as an explanation. Others have said that a group of military planes were improperly seen. The most aggressive of the “sighting debunkers,” Donald H. Menzel, Professor of Astrophysics at Harvard University, dismisses the Arnold incident as tilting snow-clouds or dust haze reflecting in the sun. But, no matter how you look at it, that was the beginning.
The next major event on the UFO calendar was the tragic case of Captain Thomas Mantell, U.S. Air Force. As usually told, Mantell was sent up, with a couple of other pilots, to investigate a crimson-glowing disc which appeared over the Goodman Field Air Base in Kentucky. One report said that the “saucer” was obviously a craft trailing a violent vermillion exhaust. The captain wa
s still climbing at 10,000 feet when he radioed “…it looks metallic and it’s tremendous in size…it’s above me and I’m gaining on it. I’m going to 20,000 feet.” That was the last ever heard from Mantell. His partner pilots saw him disappear into the stratospheric clouds. A few moments later he crashed to the earth and was killed. I have heard that the “saucer” was seen again about three hours later, but the Air Force released an improbable and curious explanation of the affair. They claimed that “Mantell had unfortunately been killed while trying to reach the planet Venus.”
The “Gorman Case” was another interesting bit. This time a young North Dakota pilot, George F. Gorman, was about to land at Fargo. Suddenly he saw a light and moved toward it. It pulled away. After a moment it turned on him in a collision course, scarcely missing him. The attack was repeated, with Gorman just escaping with his life. And then the saucer disappeared, leaving the pilot convinced that “its maneuvers were controlled by thought or reason.”
During this time, according to noted ufologist Major Donald E. Keyhoe, the Air Force established agencies to investigate saucers and UFO (Unidentified Flying Objects); among them were “Project Sign,” “Project Saucer,” “Project Grudge,” “Project Twinkle,” and “Bluebook.” Over the years Keyhoe has taken the position that the Air Force has been withholding vital information regarding UFO from the public. There seems to be evidence on both sides of any argument, since the Air Force has both admitted OFU may exist and denied the possibility.
Possibly the high point in flying saucer history from the conservative point of view was the month of June, 1952. Sightings around the world increased considerably and particularly in our own country. First “discs” in Washington, where it all started. On the 12th another sighting. The next evening several thousand people claimed they saw a big oval craft, trailing a fiery exhaust, over Indianapolis. Captain Richard Case, piloting an American Airlines Convair, is quoted by Major Keyhoe as reporting that it was “a controlled craft of some sort.”
Later that night two Pan American pilots, with more than ten years flying time, spotted six “disc-machines” glowing red-hot. These flew in tight formation and moved at about 3,000 miles per hour. A few days later six saucers were seen over Veronica, Argentina.
Three days later reports came in from Boston; a couple of days after that a great silver disc was seen over East Germany; and on it went. Then it really struck home.
Very early on the morning of July 20th, seven “blips” were caught on the radar screen at Washington National Airport. Jets were ordered up to investigate when the radarscope saw the “blips” accelerate from 125 miles per hour to 500 m.p.h., turning at 90° angles as they went. At one point they just stopped in mid-flight and shot off in the opposite direction. One high speed checking device registered them at more than 7,200 miles an hour, for a brief time.
All of this extraordinary activity continued for more than two hours before the jets that had been ordered up arrived, during which time the saucers swept back and forth across the American capitol. When the planes finally arrived, the “things” disappeared; when the ships departed, the saucers returned. At last, at dawn, they left permanently. Permanently?
On the evening of June 26th, the late Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, former Head of United States Air Force Project “Bluebook,” says it was about 10:30 P.M., the saucers returned. For an hour they were tracked by radar and then the orders went out for a jet group to investigate. Again, there was considerable delay in getting the ships airborne, and by the time they got up the saucers had gotten lost.
There was a furor, but the Air Force dismissed the events, at least to the public, as natural phenomena, mass hysteria, misidentified orthodox craft, clouds, dust, and whatever else came to mind.
All kinds of people had all kinds of opinions. One of the more interesting ones was expressed by Dr. Herman Oberth, father of German rocketry and co-creator of the famous “V” rockets of World War II. His position was that flying saucers do exist and that they are intelligently controlled, possibly being interplanetary, probably being interstellar. The noted news analyst Frank Edwards also supported this argument.
The years went by and thousands of sightings were reported in this country; tens of thousands around the world. The vast majority always seemed to have logical, even obvious, explanations; but there were inevitably a number left which defied the debunkers.
In 1956, reports Major Keyhoe, the crew of a westbound Navy Super Constellation, crossing the Atlantic, had an amazing experience. Piloted by a naval commander with more than 200 Atlantic crossings and ten years’ flight time behind him, the ship was returning to the U.S. some thirty airmen who had been stationed in Europe. Without warning, a cluster of lights was seen below on the ocean surface. Suddenly, one of these lights broke away from the formation beneath and hurled upward towards the plane, flashing past it by inches. Revolving, it began to pace them some hundred yards away, and they saw that it was a monstrous craft, in diameter some four times the breadth of the Constellation’s wing span. Constructed like two facing saucers, its center measurement seemed to be about thirty feet, and the rim glowed scarlet as the surface shone metallically. After a short time the enormous saucer accelerated upwards and disappeared, and when the men looked below they discovered that the others, on the water, had also gone. The officers and men were later questioned exhaustively; but neither they, nor the public, ever received one word of explanation. What can I tell you but to draw your own conclusions.
Almost since the beginning of saucerology the rumors of Air Force and governmental suppression of information have persisted, although you constantly hear that people in the highest places are “in contact” with the UFO. A letter expressing interest in the subject, from Vice President Johnson, was published in the November, 1960, issue of Fate Magazine by Curtis Fuller.
The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, headed by Major Donald E. Keyhoe, has an executive board crowded with notable persons. The late psychologist Carl Jung expressed some acceptance of them. But all of these advocates for either the open-minded approach to, or the acceptance of, flying saucers have had to face the “official” stand, well supported by the press, that “there ain’t no such aerial phenomena.”
Gray Barker, the ufologist, has asserted that great pressures have been brought to bear on certain of the saucerologists, his most famous story being about the “three men in black” who supposedly silenced forever the considerable activities of the noted saucer researcher Al Bender.
What can I tell you, neighbors? When you listen to some of the distinguished promoters of ufology, you wonder. When you listen to their opponents you wonder again. It would be easy for me to say to you—“who’s got an opinion?” But as we now move from the incredible to the fantastic, I’ll admit for neither the first, nor the last, time—I don’t buy it.
By now, I should have made it clear that there are two different kinds of flying saucer people. The people I’ve talked about in the last few pages, such as Major Donald E. Keyhoe and Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, people who might be called the “serious saucer investigators,” make up the first type. The second group comprises the ones I’m going to tell you about now; they are the saucerites who claim to have made contact with craft and beings from other planets and galaxies. They’re usually called “contactees.”
In 1949 a couple of rather vague, half-hearted claims were heard in the UFO circles, but the first important “contact” report came from Daniel W. Fry. It went something like this when he told it to me.
On the Fourth of July, 1950, Dan Fry was working at the White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico. Getting a little restless during the evening, he took a long walk out into the desert. After about an hour he thought he saw stars disappearing, and, staring at the part of the sky where this was going on, he began to realize that “an ovate craft about thirty feet in diameter” was approaching him from that direction. Its flight was silent and its color silver-violet. Moments later it la
nded and Fry went forward to investigate, but a voice from inside told him not to touch the ship as it might be dangerous. Also, and I must admit this is pretty far out the voice referred to him as “pal.” As the “conversation” continued, Fry became aware that they were communicating telepathically, which was perfectly natural. The invisible space person reported that the ship was a cargo carrier, remotely controlled from a “mother ship 900 miles above the earth.”
“Alan,” as the voice was called (as a matter of fact this is the favorite spaceman name), mentioned two reasons for being near the earth. One was to “collect atmosphere,” and the second was to contact properly receptive people so that ideas could be exchanged. By this he meant so that he could show these particular earthians how stupid they were and how great all of the space people were. Let’s face it, neighbors, the sad truth is that all space people are always superior.
Dan Fry apparently made a great impression because he was invited on a stratospheric joy ride. Entering the saucer, he found an oval room about seven by nine feet, with four contour chairs. Seating himself, he was immediately on his way to New York, which, according to Alan, was about a half-hour trip. In other words, they would be travelling at some 8000 miles an hour. The trip itself seems to have been on the dull side, but his host filled him in on some interesting “historical facts.”
Alan told Fry that originally there were two great civilizations on Earth—Lemuria (Mu) and Atlantis. Both were very advanced and very competitive, and eventually approached the verge of war. Neither could win, but they fought anyway and the world was almost brought to an end. The handful of people left divided into two camps. One group gathered at the top of the world and began to build again; this became Tibet, birthplace of all modern civilization. The second camp took four of the most advanced space craft, and although none of the ships had ever gone higher than a thousand miles above the earth, they were used in an attempt to reach another planet. According to space history, three made it, but one was lost forever in infinite space. And, as Dan Fry tells it, the second group drops back to visit the first now and again, which after all is the neighborly thing to do.
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