Dr. Hynek's Record of UFO Encounters

 

There's a strange relationship between fact and fiction in the UFO business. J. Allen Hynek consulted for the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, had a cameo role, and he also wrote the epilogue for the novelization. The publisher, Dell, also issued the non-fiction The Hynek UFO Report, which is regarded as a classic. Without Hynek, there might not have been a CE3K, and if not for the film, the Hynek book might not exist. Or some other commercial products.

 

Panama City News, March 28, 1966 

Dr. Hynek began working for a consultant for the Air Force in 1948, providing them with explanations for UFO sightings based on his knowledge of astronomy, but did so in relative obscurity. At the Detroit Press Club, on March 26, 1966 Hynek was propelled into the public spotlight, initially unfavorably, due to his remarks about “swamp gas.” Nevertheless, he became the top authority on the UFO topic, and in demand. In a heel/face turn, he went from being the Air Force’s senior debunker to being the most famous UFO advocate. Jacques Vallee, from Forbidden Science Vol. I, his entry for 11 April 1967:

"I miss the days when he was not such a celebrity... The topic has become fashionable entertainment, not serious science. Media men hire Allen as they would hire a guitar player. He rushes wherever he sees a spotlight, and if the spotlight moves he moves with it."

 

Jacques Vallee described Hynek’s gig as a consultant for Stephen Spielberg’s UFO movie in Forbidden Science Vol. II, in his entry for Friday 27 August 1976:

“Allen called me last night, cheerful... Dell is sending two writers to help him with a hurriedly-compiled paperback about Project Blue Book. As for the Spielberg movie, he will indeed have a silent role in it, making his way to the front of a crowd of technical people who surround the first landed saucer. I'd love to see the out-takes: They shot a sequence where Aliens surrounded him, pulled on his beard, took his pipe and poked it into their nose.”

 

Hynek took an active role in helping promote the film and appeared in the theatrical trailer for it.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind theatrical trailer

The book he and the ghost writers cranked out was The Hynek UFO Report, which hit the market in late 1977 to cash in on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and his epilogue for the movie novelization closed with a plug for his Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) and their magazine, International UFO Reporter.  

UFO Encounters: The Record Album

 

Dr. J. Allen Hynek and his Center for UFOs Studies were partners in the production of a double LP audio documentary, Factual Eyewitness Testimony of: UFO Encounters. A news story in The Chicago Tribune, Jan. 14, 1979, told how the project began when Investigative Research Associates approached Hynek at a UFO convention in 1977. Hynek was initially reluctant, fearing it would be “schlocky,” but IRA convinced him of their sincerity, so together they set out to cover the most significant cases and record first-hand testimony about them.

The Chicago Tribune, Jan. 14, 1979

Factual Eyewitness Testimony of: UFO Encounters was a two-disc LP, also released on cassette and 8-track tape. It was released in 1978 on the IRA label.

 

It was reviewed in UFO publications such as the A.P.R.O. Bulletin, but the most comprehensive review was in the MUFON UFO Journal, Feb. 1980,“In Others' Words” by Lucius Farish: 

“A new 2-album record set, "UFO Encounters," presents an interesting selection of testimonies and opinions by UFO witnesses and researchers. Contributors to the album include Kenneth Arnold, Colonel Robert Friend (former Project Blue Book Director), Bill Pecha, Ted Phillips, Travis Walton, Father William Gill, Herbert Schirmer, former Air Force Major Paul A. Duich,

Louise Smith, Leonard Stringfield, Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle, Betty Hill, Marjorie Fish, Stanton Friedman, former astronaut Gordon Cooper, Jacques Vallee, David Saunders, and others. An additional bonus is President Carter's personal recounting of his 1969 UFO sighting. A special section inside the album cover contains 6 pages of UFO photographs, plus photos of most of the persons heard in the records. Some of the material relating to "crashed saucer" stories seem questionable, but all in all, this is a good selection of recorded UFO material. Available from: Investigative Research Associates, Inc., Suite W, 430 West Diversey Parkway, Chicago, Illinois 60614; the price is $8.95.” 

 Crashed Saucer Investigation

 The red banner across the cover of the album touted “Crashed Saucer Investigation,” and the interior, a described the track:

“Since the 1940s, rumors have circulated indicating the possibility that extraterrestrial spacecraft have crashed on Earth and have been recovered by the American military. Investigative Research Associates decided to pursue these reports…”

The segment is interesting in that it documents the marketability of crashed UFO stories even before the revival of the Roswell incident. I had begun when Robert Spencer Carr rekindled interest in a discredited aspect of ufology in 1974 by reviving the story of little men found in a saucer in Aztec, New Mexico. Leonard Stringfield was the chief crashed UFO researcher, but for the album, even Dr. Hynek got in on the act.

The “Crashed Saucer Investigation” was the next to last track on the album. It opened with former astronaut Col. Gordon Cooper vaguely discussing second-hand rumors he’d heard about saucer crashes:

“There were some accident involving a UFO, and from there it varies greatly. There were occupants and in each of the rumors that I've heard, but from there on, it varies greatly as to whether they were all alive, or some alive, or what the extent of damage was to them, and then as to what happened to them is quite variable. The particular rumors aren't necessarily from people who've been involved, but they come from so many different sources, that it would lead you to believe that it certainly is worth investigating a little further.”

Dr. Hynek shared his view:

“Over the years, these rumors have persisted. Hardly a week goes by without my being asked about the ‘crashed saucer’ stories. My response to these rumors has always been complete skepticism. Recently however, some of my colleagues, Investigative Research Associates, have probed into these stories and some intriguing information has surfaced. I believe it is quite worthwhile to let listeners to this record have the benefit of some preliminary findings.”

Hynek went on to introduce the (now-discredited) story of Robert B. Willingham and his recovery of a piece of a crashed UFO at Del Rio, NM, in 1948.

Next, Herbert Coyer told about a story he heard from an aide to an Army general about a 1951 saucer crash at White Sands where alien bodies were recovered and an autopsy was performed. Both Willingham and Coyer’s stories featured metal from the UFO that was incredibly tough and could not be burned or cut, a detail we’d see hear again when the Roswell crash was resurrected.

The Final Track: Summaries and Theories 

The final segment was “Summaries and Theories,” which featured comments from Stanton Friedman, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Dr.  Jacques Vallee, and Dr. David Saunders. Hynek suggested that UFOs might be from another dimension or a parallel reality rather than being something from another faraway planet. He was the researcher given the last word on the album and drifted a bit into mystic concepts:

“The idea of other intelligences in space is not so radical or new. It's in both the ancient Eastern religions and the more modern faiths. The prophets in the Bible and many philosophers have been telling us for centuries that there are other planes of existence. So why do we find it so difficult to acknowledge that there might be other highly developed life forms or forms of consciousness that might surpass our own? In fact, it is now widely accepted that the universe may well be teeming with life.”

Factual Eyewitness Testimony of: UFO Encounters is worth a listen, for the chance to hear rare recordings with witness and researchers, and for a look at the state of serious ufology at the time it was recorded. The full album is available via YouTube. 

 Another version features each track individually. Factual Eyewitness Testimony of: UFO Encounters

UFOs and science fiction have a complicated history together, and there’s no doubt there has been a mutual exploitative relationship. That’s show business, and it makes for some strange bedfellows. 

Dr. Hynek with characters from Star Wars, and with Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek fame. 

Track Listing and Credits

Below are the track titles and lengths to Factual Eyewitness Testimony of: UFO Encounters, followed by the album’s credits.

Introduction 4:24

Foo Fighters 2:08

Kenneth Arnold Sighting 3:40

Government Involvement 2:04

Simi Valley Sighting (CE-I) 5:08

Pecha Case (CE-I) 5:44

James Richard Case (CE-II) 6:59

Travis Walton Abduction (CE-III) 15:44

Father William Gill Sighting (CE-III) 4:51

Officer Herbert Schirmer Abduction (CE-III) 8:29

Louise Smith / Kentucky Women Abduction (CE-III) 7:20

Charles R McQuiston PSE Evaluation Summary 1:14

Betty and Barney Hill Abduction (CE-III) 7:42

Crashed Saucer Investigation 10:09

Summaries and Theories 4:46

 Credits, as listed on the back cover:

Produced by: Investigative Research Associates, Inc., Chicago, Illinois. 

Producer: Steve Cronen. Exec. Prod.: Ben Christ.

Scientific Consultants: Center for UFO Studies, Evanston Illinois, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Sherman

J. Larsen.

Investigation, Research, Writing: Peter Bordwell, Steve [Thom].

Narration: Walt Peters.

Music: DeWolfe Music, Inc. 

Music Coordination: Walt Peters. 

Musical Effects: Ron Figura.

Recorded at: Starbeat Recording Studios, Deerfield, Illinois. 

Engineering, Editing & Mix: Steve Cronen.

Album Design: Steve Schaul.

Album Cover Trifid Nebula Photo: Copyright by the California Institute of Technology and the Carnegie Institute of Washington. Reproduced by permission from the Hale Observatories UFO Photos & Documents: Center For UFO Studies.

 

 . . .

Close Encounters: The Slide Show

Dr. Hynek had been involved in some other commercial enterprises before the Spielberg movie. In 1976 he had produced a set of UFO slides and audiotapes for Edmund Scientific, but with release of CE3K, it was a hotter item.

It was advertised in Popular Science and was featured in an article in the April 1978 debut issue of Future magazine (the companion to Starlog). Below is a YouTube video of the Hynek audio, sadly without the accompanying slides shown.

Tracing the UFO Mothership Connection

The term “mother ship” dates back to at least the 19th century to describe the home sailing ship from which the smaller boats were launched. The military adopted the concept and terminology, as  in a 1922 issue of Aviation magazine that quoted an officer describing plans to use an airship as a flying aircraft carrier: “Just as the aircraft of the Navy are cared for by a mother ship or airplane carrier, so must the Army craft be supplied from an aerial mother ship.”

Legendary science fiction author E. E. "Doc" Smith adopted the mother ship concept for interplanetary space ships in the pages of Amazing Stories around 1930.

Illustrations from E. E. Smith's Triplanetary, 1934

Where science fiction goes, flying saucers are sure to follow. Early July 1947 saw several “sightings of ‘companion ships’ associated with larger ‘mother discs,’ according to news stories cited in Alfred Loedding and The Great Flying Saucer Wave of 1947 by Michael D. Hall and Wendy A. Connors.

Project Blue Book files contain a report, “Appendix D,” from J. E. Lipp of RAND Corporation Missiles Division to Brigadier General Putt of the Air Force, dated December 13, 1948

“This present letter gives, in very general terms a description of the likelihood of a visit from other worlds as an engineering problem...” In discussing the propulsion of space ships, Lipp wrote:

“Two possibilities thus are presented. First, a number of space ships could have come as a group. This would only be done if full-dress contact were to be established. Second, numerous small craft might descend from a mother ship which coasts around the Earth in a satellite orbit. But this could mean that the smaller craft would have to be rockets of satellite performance, and to contain them the mother ship would have to be truly enormous.” See the file at https://www.fold3.com/image/1/11885469  

Donald Keyhoe’s 1950 article in True magazine, Jan.1950 didn’t mention the term mother ship, but touched on the concept: “The sudden spurt of sightings in 1947 might indicate that we have attracted attention.... and that an orbiting satellite base has been established, or re-established after an absence.”

In“Hawthorne People All Saw Something; and Say It Must Have Been Flying Saucers!” from Nevada State Journal April 7, 1950,the story reported that “two of the strange aircraft made their appearance and performed for almost ten minutes high above the town.

“... Most observers expressed the belief that the ‘disc’ planes are radio-controlled because of the tremendous speed and maneuverability would make it almost impossible to have the operation directed by a human pilot. Carrying this theory farther, these observers expressed the belief that the conventional plane which appeared at the same time as the two unidentified objects could be a ‘mother’ ship for the smaller units or at least was associated in the radio control of the flight and maneuvers.”

Harmon W. Nichols, a staff correspondent for United Press, wrote a story about John Matthews, a sales manager for the A. O. Smith company and his thoughts on flying saucers. Matthews had built a few flying saucer models, and Nichols described him as a scientist. From the La Grande Observer June 28, 1950. Mathews thought the objects were vehicles under intelligent control, possibly from Mars from a larger space vehicle:

“People have seen what they thought were flying saucers in the sky, but none has ever landed. My theory is that they are brought down from one of the planets and dropped from a ‘mother’ plane. The up-pressure is so great that instead of falling where we can look at them they go back to the mother ship. Sounds silly, but that is what I think.”

United Press ran a news story carried in many papers on July 6, 1950 about John Keller of Dowagiac, Michigan, reporting that “he saw a low-flying air force C-54 launch a flying saucer.” Most versions ended with a mention that his two young sons also witnessed the event, but the Statesville Daily Record, carried two extra paragraphs with some speculation:

“This report would seem to bear out recently reported theory that the saucers were being launched from a mother ship. The observer expressed the opinion that the saucers never came to land because, in some way, they nullify gravity and thus can allow return to ship which they were launched. 

Keller’s report would appear to be the first of an eye-witness of such a launching. It would also appear to cast doubt on the theory the saucers are interplanetary vehicles.”

The UFO Experts Speak

In Donald Keyhoe’s 1950 book, The Flying Saucers Are Real, he mentioned the concept of a mother-ship, but in the terrestrial military sense, while discussing the possibility that saucers were controlled by the British, based on  captured German technology at the end of World War II:

“Some of the disk missiles were supposed to have been launched from a British island in the South Pacific; others came all the way from Australia. Still others were believed to have been launched by a mother ship stationed between the Galapagos Islands and Pitcairn.”

In the months after the book was released, Canadian scientist Wilbert Smith met and corresponded with Donald Keyhoe, later described in Keyhoe’s 1953 book, Flying Saucers from Outer Space. Of Smith’s saucer notions, Keyhoe said:

“Though he admitted it was pure speculation, Smith also had sketched his ideas of how discs could be berthed on the larger craft. Each mother ship could have small cup-shaped niches in its sides, into which the disc turrets would fit, with the rest of the saucers lying flat against the parent ship's side.”

In the bestselling (but later discredited) 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers, Frank Scully discussed the information he’d derived from Meade Layne’s Borderland Sciences Research Associates (BSRA):

“A widely circulated story that these saucers originated from a mother ship at least ten miles long and more than five hundred miles above our earth, a giant airship thought to be revolving around the earth at enormous speed, but slowing down even so, seemed to derive from Oahspe, according to borderland scientists. This is a book which described Etherians as ancestors of both the Chinese and Aryan races-originators of the Sanskrit language, but long removed as taxpayers on this earth.”

Is Another World Watching? was the US title for Gerald Heard’s The Riddle of the Flying Saucers published in the UK in 1950. Heard thought that a mother ship might be responsible for the tragic death of captain Thomas Mantell in 1948:

“This was a very mother of disks, and perhaps that poetic phrase may be quite near being an exact description — perhaps it was the mother ship in which the smaller craft, like dinghies hauled on board a schooner, can take refuge after their exploratory flights, as Noah's dove came back to rest in the Ark. It may have been anything between seven hundred and perhaps a thousand feet across.” 

Speaking of arks, perhaps the first melding of the mothership concept with saucers was in the comic book, Airboy #88, June 1951, which features a little-known UFO story, "The Great Plane From Nowhere!" The 13-page story is about a plane-shaped interplanetary spaces ship that carries a fleet of smaller saucer-shaped scout ships.

For more, see Earth vs the Flying Saucers: Airboy #88, June 1951

“Cool Weather Chills Flying Saucer Reports” from Product Engineering magazine, 1952:

“Another expert figures that the saucers are from outer space, visitors from another planet. In his opinion, they are guided missiles controlled from a mother space ship that operates in outer space— much like our idea of a satellite vehicle.”

In the movies, there was a mothership of sorts in the 1953 film The War of the Worlds adapted from H. G. Wells' novel. A meteor turns out to be the interplanetary delivery device for invading Martian war machines. In the photo below, the invaders rise from the crash site.

The 1953 book, Flying Saucers Have Landed by Desmond Leslie and George Adamski firmly established the mothership connection with UFOs. Leslie talks about information received from BSRA:

“Lastly, Meade Layne’s group gives a brief account of an immense torpedo-shaped carrier- craft, or mother-ship, a kind of interplanetary aircraft carrier which brings the smaller saucers through space, releasing them when it has entered the atmosphere. Its length they give as about 7,000 feet, with a crew of 2.000; figures which sound quite fantastic.”

In Adamski’s account of his talk with the man from Venus, he states that:

“I laughed with him, and then asked if he had come directly from Venus to Earth in that? 

He shook his head in the negative and made me understand that this craft had been brought into Earth’s atmosphere in a larger ship... So I asked if the large craft might be called a ‘Mother‘ ship? 

He seemed to understand the word ‘mother ‘for now his nod of affirmation was accompanied by an understanding smile." 

Donald Keyhoe’s 1953 book, Flying Saucers from Outer Space contained several passages discussing mother ships seriously besides Wilbert Smith’s comments:

“Mother ships, large rocket or ‘cigar-shaped’ machines usually reported at very high altitudes. Sizes estimated by trained observers, from 600 feet to more than 1,000 feet in length; some indications they may be much larger. Color, silvery. Speed recorded by radar, over 9,000 m.p.h., with visual estimates of more than 20,000. No violent maneuvers reported.”

George Adamski claimed to have photographed a Venusian mothership releasing saucers on March 5, 1951, but waited until the release of his 1955 book, Inside the Space Ships to disclose the images to the public. He also revealed an alien told him how their scout ships operated:

“These smaller craft are incapable of generating their own power to any great extent and make only relatively short trips from their carriers before returning for recharge. They are used for a kind of shuttle service between the large ships and any point of contact or observation, and are always dependent on full recharging from the power plant of the Mothership.” 

With George Adamski and Donald Keyhoe both supporting the same flying saucer concepts, the interplanetary mothership took its place in UFO canon. Stephen Spielberg found the idea interesting enough that he used the appearance of massive mothership UFO as the climax of his 1977 film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. From there, the UFO mothership has become a cultural mainstay.

A few motherships from the music business

UFO and Alien Movies: It Came from Hangar 18

Continued from Roswell Reborn: The Hangar 18 Legacy

Epilogue: The Hollywood Legacy, Hangar 18 to Close Encounters and Back Again

Robert Spencer Carr’s resurrection of the Aztec legend paved the way for Leonard Stringfield’s UFO crash/retrieval studies, and the revival of Roswell by Stanton Friedman, William Moore and Charles Berlitz. Carr’s crash story was part of the UFO revival that led to a boom in space-based science fiction movies such as Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and also was exploited in the movie Hangar 18 which was based on the Aztec legend itself.

UFO Crashes and The Movies

The first saucer crash movie was based on John W. Campbell, Jr’s story “Who Goes There” from Astounding Science Fiction, August 1938. It was adapted into the 1951 movie The Thing from Another World where the spaceship in the story became a flying saucer for the film. The Thing, in the first half, has a few similarities to the premise of Frank Scully’s book, Behind the Flying Saucers; the military’s attempt to recover a crashed flying saucer from a remote location, the retrieval of an alien body from it for scientific examination, and the premise that there’s a UFO cover-up. Like Scully’s book, the film also gets in a few jabs at the Government’s denials of flying saucers.

The Aztec story doesn’t provide the kind of exciting storytelling opportunities that Hollywood likes, though. It starts off dramatically, but essentially, it’s the story of entering a tomb, so the movies focused on the UFO stories with live aliens. One notable exception was The Bamboo Saucer was a 1968 film but based on a script from the 50s. It’s a Cold War parable about two teams from the US and Russia fighting for possession of a flying saucer that landed in China. The crew died off-camera and were cremated by locals before the action begins, so we never see the aliens, just the technological wonder of their saucer. There’s no Hangar 18 in sight, but the story has some Aztec in its DNA.

The 1968 novel, The Fortec Conspiracy by Richard M. Garvin and Edmond G. Addeo featured a plot that had many similarities to the Aztec legend. Bodies from a flying saucer crash were hidden in a laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Unlike Carr’s version, in the book, the alien bodies weren’t frozen, but pickled in glass tubes. Carr claimed not to have read the book, but said it was based on a true story. He was a Hollywood veteran, and may have kept up with the industry news to know of the development of the novel as a motion picture.

Daily Independent Journal (San Rafael, CA) December 27, 1973

Richard M. Garvin of Mill Valley, an advertising agency executive, will have his novel “The Fortec Conspiracy,” made into a major motion picture. Both he and his collaborator, Ed Addeo of Mill Valley, will be given bit parts in the film. Garvin’s novel, a science fiction work dealing with UFO’s, was published in 1968 and has sold a quarter million copies in paperback. It will be filmed by Cine Arts Studios in Hollywood and released through 20th Century Fox. Garvin is a vice president at Richardson Seigle Rolfs & McCoy Inc. advertising firm in San Francisco.

The news was also reported Publishers Weekly and in science fiction magazines such as the Monster Times and Luna Monthly #349, Autumn 1973, which also said, “Top actors selected for the lead parts include one of the of the major names from Star Trek.” Fascinating, but like many optioned film projects, The Fortec Conspiracy died in development without ever being made, but it was just one of many saucer movie projects gestating.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

The renewed interest in UFOs started by the 1973 Pascagoula abduction case led to the Flying Saucer Symposium, which gave Carr the platform to thrill the public with a sensational UFO cover-up story. The energy spilled over to reinvigorate the entertainment industry’s interest in flying saucers, and provide Steven Spielberg the chance to fulfill a dream.

As a teenager in 1964, Steven Spielberg had made a full-length amateur science fiction film about UFOs, Firelight. As a professional director he returned to the topic in the early 1970s when he had enough clout to begin choosing his own projects.

“Before he started filming Jaws, Spielberg had signed a development deal for something called Watch the Skies (the closing words from The Thing from Another World, 1951), based on a short story he wrote in 1970 called “Experiences.” In the summer of 1973, producer Michael Phillips (The Sting) started talking about science fiction films with Spielberg, and it was Phillips and his wife Julia who set up the deal with David Begelman at Columbia Pictures. Paul Schrader was hired to write the script in December 1973.”

America's Film Legacy by Daniel Eagan (2009)

However, production complications led Spielberg to choose to direct Jaws before Close Encounters of the Third Kind, chiefly because his “UFOs and Watergate” concept had yet to be developed into a finished story. In an interview in the July 1982, Esquire magazine, Paul Schrader discussed working on the screenplay for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. “I was the first of a series of writers. Steve was the last. When I was first approached, Steve had in mind to do a Watergate-like expose of a government cover-up of the fact that flying saucers existed.”

1973 was the year Maj. Donald Keyhoe’s book, Aliens from Space was published, the book that climaxed with Robert Spencer Carr’s plan for initiating a close encounter. Steven Spielberg and his team were aware of the current UFO literature, and influenced by recent events which would have included the headline news that Robert Carr was making in 1974. Carr talked about the UFO situation as being “Saucergate,” and the finale of Close Encounters appears to be the Hollywood version of Carr’s Operation Lure concept.

In Paul Schrader’s first version of the CE3K script, the protagonist, Paul VanOwen, discusses an idea to contact UFO occupants:

“Well look, we haven’t had any success trying to communicate. We beam radio signals, math problems, tonal scales; no response… Well, we’ll have to entice them to come to us. Stop chasing them. Lure them close enough so we can observe and decipher.”

With this idea, “Project Entice” was initiated, a decoy saucer and lighted panels are built at a remote location to lure UFOs into contact. Schrader’s story was scrapped in favor of a new script, but the concept of Project Entice was reworked, incorporated into the climactic scene in the final film.

In a July 23, 1976 interview with The Clearwater Sun, Carr once again described his vision for Operation Lure:

“I believe we should build a safe landing zone on the highest mesa... and assure the aliens it is not an ambush. I feel confident they would land. I’d like nothing more than to see... intelligent conversation, with the immensely wise little beings that pilot flying saucers.”

Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released in December 1977. There’s no public record of what Bob Carr thought of the Spielberg movie, but he must have loved it. Carr’s Operation Lure dream come true, at least in theatres, peaceful contact with "our friends from space.”

Contracts with Ufologists

In 1977, two film companies, Sunn Classic Pictures  and Scotia American Productions, were researching projects for documentaries based on the UFO crash story. An article in the newsletter of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) by editor by Todd Zechel showed how Hollywood seemed to be having an influence on UFO research:

Just Cause, April 1978 Vol. 1, No. 1 “Nuts and Bolts Making a Comeback”Despite the steady drift toward (and off) “The Edge of Reality,” physical evidence cases have been making a strong bid for the spotlight of late. Just as everyone was concluding crashed saucers were as much an anachronism as Venusian scoutcraft, suddenly Scully-like stories have reared their nasty heads. Apparently, motion picture companies such as Sunn Classics and a lot of loose dollars have encouraged a revival of “Wright Field" rumors.

The Scotia American Productions film was to have been Skywatch. A piece of art promoting it appeared in the May 1978, UK magazine Starburst.

T. Scott Crain wrote a letter to the Jan. 1981, MUFON Journal about his research contribution to the motion picture industry’s saucer efforts:

Back in March 1977, the production managers of Sunn Classic Pictures contacted a number of selected UFO researchers around the country to do research on various UFO related topics, mainly where, if it exists, is the military holding UFO hardware, and who has the inside facts about what has been going on. UFO researcher Leonard Stringfield, I, and several others were asked to sign a contract to do exclusive research on those questions for Sunn so they could produce a nonfiction film based on the facts showing how the military has captured a UFO and kept this information from the public.

Richard Hall (editor of the MUFON Journal) replied with further details:

Sunn Classics also contacted me, Walt Andrus, Larry Bryant, and others at various stages of researching a UFO movie. Originally it was to be a general documentary. At that stage, I signed a contract and provided material on a number of CE-II cases. Gradually, Sunn Classics saw "sensation" value in the "crashed saucer" stories and focused on them. Meanwhile, Scotia American Productions, New York, was working on a rival documentary (with Todd Zechel as research director). I did considerable research in the National Archives for Scotia. Later, Scotia also began seeking "sensation," and Sunn Classics negotiated with them to take over the film altogether. I do not know the exact deal that was struck, but do know that Scotia acquired the Sunn Classics research files. The Scotia film, also tending toward fiction last I knew, never was completed.

Hangar 18: The Motion Picture

The product that emerged from the documentary research was instead a fictional film, Hangar 18. However, it was advertised as an exposé of a true story, and the film opened with the statement:

“In spite of official denials, rumors have continued to surface about what the government has been concealing from the American public at a secret Air Force hangar. But now, with the help of a few brave eyewitnesses who have stepped forward to share their knowledge of these events, the story can finally be told.”

The Cover-up Classic Ingredients:
Crashed UFO, Space Hieroglyphics,
ET Bodies, and an Alien Autopsy 

Hangar 18 updates the Aztec story to the present day of 1980, with a US Space Shuttle launch of a satellite colliding with a UFO, causing it to crash. The news is too hot to release, but in the movie, it is because the turbulence might derail the re-election of the US president, so it’s covered up. The flying saucer is recovered in secret, and taken to Hangar 18 (in the southwest, not at Wright-Patterson) where they open it to find the alien bodies - there’s even an alien autopsy. The aliens are full sized, but like Carr’s little men, these aliens share our DNA. They are ancient aliens, our ancestors.

In the end credits:

“The producers wish to express their appreciation to the following persons and organizations: Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, The Center for UFO Research, Ground Saucer Watch, NASA, Rockwell International, City of Big Spring, Texas.”

Like with Close Encounters, Robert Spencer Carr’s story lives in Hangar 18, but only the darker portions of it. The movie was awful, but was financially successful… and had a huge advertising campaign, so almost all consumers were aware of the premise of the film:

“The government is concealing a UFO and the bodies of alien astronauts. Why won't they tell us?”

Where Credit Is Due

The most powerful legacy of Robert Spencer Carr is in the Roswell UFO crash story, which millions saw depicted on NBC’s Unsolved Mysteries presentation of September 20, 1989, “Legend: Roswell Crash.” The story was later dramatized for the first time as a Showtime TV movie Roswell on July 31, 1994. Another notable TV production was the 1995 Roswell “Alien Autopsy” film, a hoax with roots that reach back to the stir caused by Carr’s 1974 radio interview.

As Seen on TV.

Much of Carr’s early success came in his motion picture writing, but since most of it was behind the scenes as a researcher, he felt he did not receive enough recognition or credit for his work. His UFO concepts of Project Lure, Hangar 18, and the UFO crash cover-up were the foundation for countless television and movie projects. Sadly, none of them give Robert Spencer Carr a word of credit.

Just as the Aztec and Hangar 18 legends were endlessly are told and copied in ufology, once they were assimilated into Hollywood, the same thing happened with the celluloid versions. Storytellers may die, but the tales live on.