The Washington, D.C. area was a hotbed of UFO activity in the early 1950s, for news, events, and as a locale for researchers. The flying saucers reports in July 1952 over the nation’s Capital made UFOs a matter of national security and front-page news. The flying saucer fever led to clubs springing up all over, including Washington.
A
major figure in the D.C. area saucer scene was Clara L. John, but her role in UFO history has been largely forgotten, making her one of ufology’s “Hidden Figures.” STTF
set out to find out more about Clara and her work.
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| Clara Louise Colcord, age 19. The Evening Star, Oct. 8, 1907 |
Clara Louise Colcord was born on June 12, 1888, in Scranton, Iowa. In the early 1900s, her family lived in Maryland near Washington, D.C, and her father was the editor of religious publications for the Seventh-day Adventists. At the age of 19, Clara married Ray Albert Leslie, and in the following years, they moved to Michigan. Census records show they didn’t have any children, and she gave her occupation as “none.” Unofficially, Clara Louise Leslie was a writer for general interest articles in magazines and newspapers. Two examples: In “Why Do We Love Mary Pickford?,” for Motion Picture, May 1918, Clara hyperbolically wrote, “Mary Pickford is a fairy! She is not of this world.” Her essay, “An Evolutionary Eyeful,” in Photoplay Journal, Feb. 1919, was on the virtues of movies as a medium for entertainment and education.
After her husband Ray died on July 25, 1924, Clara moved back to the Washington area. She researched and wrote about the invention of the microphone, and who deserved credit for it, as seen in The Radio Home, June/July 1926 “The Man Who Made the Mike: A Brief History of Emile Berliner, the Man Who is Responsible for the Microphone.”
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| Time magazine, May 21, 1928 |
We could find no documentation of Clara’s interest in the occult before 1927, but afterwards, most of what she wrote was on supernatural topics. In the Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), Jan. 10, 1929, Clara’s letter defended against criticism of Spiritualism. She felt the “materialistic world” was at its limit, and the spiritual realm was the new frontier.
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| Reason Quarterly no. 2, 1927, “Analyzing Prayer and Telepathy” |
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| Evening Star, Jan. 10, 1929 |
Clara was in her early 40s when she married Dr. Walton Colcord John (1881-1942) on December 24, 1930, a professor who worked for the United States Bureau of Education. Shortly afterwards Clara published an article about a strange guest her husband had hosted. “Science Studies Pow-Wowing,” was Clara’s article about Jacob Zellers, who claimed to have killed five people with witchcraft. Zellers spoke to an audience at the Graduate School of American University at Washington. D.C., “all advanced students and educators working under Dr. Walton Colcord John.” It was published in Every Week Magazine, reprinted in newspapers such as the Lubbock Morning Avalanche, Jan 23, 1931.
They lived at 4811 Illinois Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. and she continued to write professionally under her old name, Clara Louise Leslie, as in this piece, “Live Ghosts in a Senator’s House” Feb. 7, 1931, in The Evening Independent.
Clara’s letter to the Washington Post, on June 2, 1938, suggesting the planned national memorial for Thomas Jefferson be created as “a planetarium instead of a pile of stone.” Her remarks about the universe and its “orderly energy” may have been a hint of how she’d later feel about flying saucers.
She returned to the topic of ghosts in True Mystic Science, Jan/Feb 1939, for “When the Camera Catches Ghosts.”
Walton Colcord John became ill and was treated at the Washington Sanitarium. He died at the age of 61 on June 18, 1942. There’s not much to document Clara’s life during this time, but her father had died in 1935, she’d lost two of her brothers by 1937, then her mother in May of 1950. Clara was 62 then, and her only surviving family was her youngest brother, Glenn. But Clara was not alone, she had a wide circle of friends and frequently hosted discussions and lectures in her home.
If the Flying Saucers are True…
Like many interested in spiritualism and the occult, when flying saucers made the news, Clara became interested in the mystery – and the hope that they were the craft of friendly otherworldly visitors. The first public documentation of her involvement with UFO topic was in the Times Herald (Washington, D.C.), May 18, 1952, where Clara wrote a letter to the editor:
“If the flying saucers are ‘true,’ it will be the biggest news since Adam. The evidence now seems to be piling up in that direction. One thing beclouds the issue - peoples’ fears of such things - born out of science fiction which in turn is based on war-filled earth history. A moment’s observation shows this fear to be unwarranted. Sightings have been going on for years and not once have these ‘visitors’ done us any harm. Another self-evident thing, whatever or whoever they are, their knowledge of astronautics and propulsion is far ahead of ours. Newspapers easily have the power to remove this tendency to mass fear which, in turn will remove the attitude of ridicule on the part of many (a defense mechanism) so that from here on the subject can be faced open mindedly. I have even heard some of your readers propose a weekly ‘clearing house’ for worthy observations and opinions. This should make interesting reading, to say the least.
Clara Louise John
Speaking of interesting reading… Clara must have read and loved Frank Scully’s 1950 bestseller, Behind the Flying Saucers. A portion of the book discussed Meade Layne and his Borderland Sciences Research Associates, who believed flying saucers were “ether craft come to us from the ’other side,' who’d come with the “intention to prevent destruction of the omniverse by makers of hydrogen bombs.” Clara began corresponding far and wide with others with similar views. As she became more involved, saucers were one of the many unusual topics discussed in meetings she held in her home. T. Townsend Brown was a regular, and his daughter Linda Brown recalled “a childhood memory of a farm in Maryland, the home of a 67-year-old widow, Mrs. Walton Colcord John… [who] indulged an abiding interest in the unusual and esoteric, subjects that today might be considered ‘New Age.’ … Clara hosted some like-minded friends… For one such gathering... Townsend Brown brought his daughter, who mostly remembers that Mrs. John ‘had white ponies in a nearby field.’” (The Man Who Mastered Gravity 2023 by Paul Schatzkin, 2023)
In late 1952 Clara
made contact with flying saucer lecturer George Adamski.
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| Fate July 1951 |
According to Loren Gross in his UFOs: A History, 1952: November–December, even prior to Adamski’s claim of meeting an alien, he had “established a number of epistolary friendships with persons across the country, perhaps the most notable being Mrs. Clara [Louise] John…” and that, “correspondence between Mrs. John and Adamski was extensive before and after November 20, 1952 and that it was no accident Mrs. John was working on the ‘professor's’ crude notes in preparation for a book on the ‘desert contact."
According to Frank Edwards (in Flying Saucers - Here and Now!, 1967), Clara first approached him with the manuscript. “I declined to have anything to do with the mess and she left my office in a bit of a huff.”
A publisher in the UK was far more receptive and packaged Adamski’s tale with a previously completed Theosophical manuscript by Desmond Leslie. Their book was published in the Fall of 1953, the international bestseller, The Flying Saucers have Landed. Clara’s involvement in the book was not public knowledge, and she wanted to keep it that way.
The Little Listening
Post
By early 1954 Clara decided to draw on her connections and sources and produce a newsletter. In it, she did not use her name, early editions were signed as “C.L.J.” Gray Barker’s The Saucerian, Sept. 1954 described her publication.
“THE LITTLE LISTENING POST, published by Mrs. Walton Colcord John… is a two-or-three-page mimeographed bulletin reporting a remarkable volume of saucerdoings and occult phenomena. The bulletin is informative and will keep the reader briefed on the goings-on in those fields. The project is supported by good-will donations, and we' re sure a quarter will bring at least some sample copies your way.”
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| The Little Listening Post 1954-1965 Collection at Archives for the Unexplained (AFU) |
LLP reached a small but devoted audience of devoted flying saucer fans, and provided news on saucer sightings, clubs, conventions, literature, ESP, ghosts, spirit radio, and other associated paranormal topics. Her sources? Often anonymous, they included mainstream reporters and broadcasters, UFO witnesses, Contactees, government insiders, and psychic channelers. The tone was often fervent and hyperbolic with big saucer news perennially coming soon, typed lots of things in ALL CAPS and underlined for emphasis!!!
In Clara’s Feb. 1954 article, “Need for Unity between Science and the Occult,” she talked about how UFOs might be an indication that “our familiar old three dimensional world is in some sense bursting its shell… Patience will be needed… And enough humility to lay aside old vaunted traditions…”
In LLP Dec/Jan 1954-55,
Clara showed her devotion to George Adamski and quoted from his recent letter
to her. She believed as he did that, “for the first time in this civilization
we are becoming alerted to the reality of other inhabited planets and growing
into a greater consciousness and understanding of the vast universe…”
Clara said that ufology had become “practically your life’s work now.” Jessup replied, “I’m not doing anything else…” and she said, “Well the subject owns us it’s so, so much bigger than we are, I don’t blame you.” Jessup said, “That is certainly the truth, and this subject takes hold of you, and you practically become a slave to it. It’s a little hard to explain, but once you get into it, you recognize the length and the breadth and the depth of it, to a point where it is not only amazing, but perhaps a falling as well.”
Later, promoting Jessup's book in LLP, she wrote; “Saucer Fans, here is a weapon to use in convincing the Skeptics.” It became famous for something different, however. Gray Barker was one of many paranormal researchers Clara kept in touch with. Writing in his 1963 book, The Strange Case of Dr. M. K. Jessup, Barker tells how he got a call from Clara:
“I first learned of the annotated copy [of The Case for the UFO] when… over the telephone, Mrs. John told me of a strange rumor going around, to the effect that somebody had sent a marked-up copy to Washington and that the government had gone to the expense of mimeographing the entire book, so that all the underlinings and notations could be added to the original text. This was being sent around rather widely, she told me, through military channels. She… seemed to connect it with an alleged Naval experiment wherein a ship had completely disappeared from sight. I couldn't make too much out of all this until later I had also heard about the strange Allende Letters, which told of such an experiment in a most horrifying way.”
That was the infancy of the legend that became known as “the Philadelphia Experiment.” Over the years, LLP endorsed just about every claim, from Frank Scully’s crashed saucer story, to the schemes and yarns of Otis T. Carr and Reinhold O.Schmitt. Spiritualist Enid Brady, who channeled aliens, called Clara, to tell her about her work. She published an announcement about it in the LLP Dec 55/Jan 56 issue, saying Enid “gave much intimate ‘contact info’” from Venus, and also had formed the Daytona Beach (Florida) Flying Saucer Research Club.
From the Saucer Group to NICAP
Clara decided to turn her own gatherings into the Flying Saucer Discussion Group.
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| Classified ad, possibly for Clara’s group. Evening Star, March 04, 1956 |
Clara John’s notes from
the group’s fourth meeting on July 20, 1956, stated:
"Today there are great thousands of little research groups all over the world, as well as people working singly on this thing. The time has come to coordinate their activities into a pattern that will prepare humanity for this startling new event in human existence.”
The idea went over, and soon T. Townsend Brown came up with a prospectus for what was soon named the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP).
By 1957, UFO author Donald Keyhoe took charge of the organization. Curtis Peebles in Watch the Skies! (1995), “Given the anticontactee stance NICAP took under Kehoe, the involvement of Clara L John in the group's founding is, to say the least ironic.”
Although she was supportive of NICAP, Clara was not an active part of it. When Donald Keyhoe stepped in as director, he purged the group of any connections with the Contactees. Nevertheless, Clara continued to report on Don Keyhoe and NICAP’s crusade and urged readers to support it.
Controversies
and Exposures
It went largely ignored for years, but Flying Saucers Have Landed included George Adamski’s recognition of a key contributor:
“With grateful thanks I acknowledge the sincere co-operation and untiring efforts of those who have helped me make this book possible. And without the editing and helpful encouragement of C.L.J. this book in its present form and at this time would have been impossible.”
Lonzo Dove was skeptical of Adamski and quoted correspondence that revealed Clara’s role in his book, and he also found material that suggested Adamski had hoaxed UFO photographs to just for the book. Uranus Dec. 1956, Vol 03 No 3, “Adamski - The Last Nail?” quotes her Jan. 23, 1953, letter to Dove, where Clara said while working on the manuscript: "Things are all mixed up, publicity not handled right, pathetic and his [Adamski] story is too prosaic, not put together right. Please don't mention my name in any of this."
Leave it Jim Moseley. Clara was “outed” by name in his Saucer News Feb-March 1957.
The scandal continued in Lonzo Dove’s “Open Letter to George Adamski’s ‘C.L.J.’ in Saucer News April/May 1957. Working from Dove’s evidence, Adamski Critic David Wightman, implicated Clara in "The Adamski Photographs, Where And How?" in Flying Saucer Review. 6:3 May-June 1960.
Clara did not seem to respond publicly, but maybe this was her indirect response from LLP Aug-Oct. 1958:
“Within the ranks war continues between those who accept the contact stories and those who don't. Dif[ferences] of opinion O.K. but in a subject as big.as this one it is SMART to keep openminded. Also POLITE. YOU ARE DEALING WITH A MYSTERY. A SITUATION FOR WHICH THERE IS NO PRECEDENT! “Judge not!" IT IS A SERIOUS THING TO BRAND ANOTHER AS CROOKED, or A FAKE.”
Clara was branded as a fake to the FBI. Page 21 of the FBI file on Otis T. Carr contains a letter from sent to them by Dan B. Haber page that included an ad 1958 from a 1958 LLP announcing the publication of Margaret Storm’s (Contactee biography of Nikola Tesla) Return of the Dove. Haber’s handwritten notation stated: “This page was written by Clara Johns… [who] wrote George Adamski’s first book, ‘Flying Saucers have Landed!’ She seems to be the center of much fiction that is branded as fact.”
If the FBI had come after Carla, she would
have thought it was part of the government’s saucer silencing policy, a crime
against the Cosmos! In LLP Jan-March 1959, she said that for their
saucer cover-up, someday the Air Force would face a reckoning!
The 1960s and the Final Issue
Clara was eternally cheerful and optimistic about what tomorrow’s promise for the saucer scene. In LLP Mar./Apr./May 1963:
*SAUCER FRONT: U.S.A.F. trying doggedly to sink the Saucers, but public won't be hoodwinked! NICAP official tells LLP that interest in UFO's is now at an all-time high; a great expectancy is felt across the land----"people are waiting for SOMETHING!"….. O'er the ramparts we watch, the Saucers still zoom….”
However, after ten years, the Contactee era was on its way out. While the notion had been popular, it just wasn’t taken seriously by many for very long.
Nevertheless, Clara continued to zealously believe, and sometimes to preach, as in LLP Jan/Feb 1964:
“In our skies are VISITORS… today, most of the world is blind to the glorious ‘GOSPEL’ - - the ‘Good News’ - - being WRITTEN OUT BEFORE THEIR EYES by swift, shining, unearthly ‘messengers’ world-over in our skies.”
The Little Listening Post continued publication until 1965. The May/June/July issue announced the death of George Adamski, and the following Aug./Sept./Oct. issue was its last. On January 29, 1968, Clara died at the age of 79. She was buried next to Walton in Glenwood Cemetery, Washington, D.C.
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| Flying Saucers International, March 1968. |
Clara John was a pioneering woman in the UFO field, a well-connected advocate who published an influential periodical, and helped create one of the most respected saucer organizations of all time. Her work forged the UFO topic into what it is today, and she deserves to be remembered for that.
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