The Seventh-day Adventist Church's UFO Investigation

An unlikely source for UFO history that time forgot... a six-part series from 1961 in a religious magazine, the Seventh-day Adventist Church's Review and Herald. It was written by the editor, Francis David Nichol, in his attempt to find answers for his readers. 

In addition to the motley array of saucer club enthusiasts, mystics, and spiritists, there are other people, genuinely good people, sincere, hard-working citizens, some of them religious folks—a few even in the circle of our church—who are greatly impressed by the reports of UFO's and who think that they may be manifestations of evil spiritistic power, a proof of the nearness of the end of the world. For such people we have a sympathetic concern, and wish to make explicit that we consider them in an entirely different category from the run-of-the-mill flying saucer enthusiast. In fact, it is because of the letters of inquiry from some of our subscribers that I have made this investigation and here publish the report of my findings. 

Nichol's quest to get to the bottom of the flying saucer mystery caused him to to travel to interesting places and meet memorable people from UFO history. Nichol examined the Contactee tales, travelled to NICAP headquarters, the Pentagon, and in Ohio, dug through the filing cabinets of Project Blue Book. 

Bellow is a listing of the articles and links to PDFs of the Review and Herald issues where they are found. 

March 23, 1961 Part 1 
"What About Flying Saucers?"

March 30, 1961 Part 2 
"An Interview With a Flying Saucer 'Traveler'" 
Nichol interviewed Contactee, Dan Fry, and also discussed the "weird claims" of George Adamski. 

April 6, 1961 Part 3
"The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena"
Nichol traveled to the NICAP HQ and met Richard Hall. "I can frankly say, after visiting them in their office, that they seem like very normal people who are honestly seeking to do a job they think needs to be done. Unfortunately... very fine people can honestly proceed on mistaken premises, and this I think is the case with NICAP. "

April 13, 1961 Part 4 
"Air Force Intelligence and Flying Saucers"
Nichol visited the Pentagon, then Wright-Patterson AFB to meet with Major Robert Friend and examine Project Blue Book case files.

April 20, 1961 Part 5
"Air Force Explanations of Flying Saucers"

April 27, 1961 Part 6
"Some Flying Saucer Cases Examined" 
In the final installment, Nichol discusses some cases and end with his The present series of articles has sought to answer the one prime question:
"Are the UFO's supernatural, interplanetary entities? The answer I must give, in the light of present
knowledge, is that..." For the rest of that thought, you'll have to read the article.

Epilogue: 1966

May 26, 1966 
"From the Editor's Mailbag" 
Nichol returned to the UFO topic in reply to a reader's question about recent sightings.

Francis D. Nichol died in June 1966. 

There were no further Review and Herald articles on UFOs until 1969.

Epilogue: 1969

February 27, 1969
"UFO's - P.S." 
In an editorial following the conclusion of the UFO study led by Dr. Edward Condon, Review and Herald returned to Nichol's UFO study. Editor Kenneth H. Wood examined what relation UFOs have to Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy writings, but left us wondering saying, 

"Soon enough the mysteries that here perplex us shall be made plain." 

After the UFO Crash of 1969

The Dark Days after 1969

The flying saucer fever of 1947 created a big problem for the Government, and the United States Air Force was stuck with the job of handling it. The fact that there was an official investigation was exploited by believers (and opportunists) who insisted that if the USAF was spending time and money investigating UFOs, that must prove that flying saucers are real - and that they were hiding the evidence. Two decades later, the Air Force finally got out of the saucer business, as briefly stated in their UFO Fact Sheet:

From 1947 to 1969, the Air Force investigated Unidentified Flying Objects under Project Blue Book. The project, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was terminated Dec. 17, 1969... The decision to discontinue UFO investigations was based on an evaluation of a report prepared by the University of Colorado entitled, "Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects;" a review of the University of Colorado's report by the National Academy of Sciences; previous UFO studies and Air Force experience investigating UFO reports... 

Following the closure of Project Blue Book, public interest in the UFO subject took a nosedive. 

Empty Space

UFOs and outer space were out of fashion in the entertainment industry as well. Paranormal, ESP and psychic topics were what the public was buying. Shows like Night Gallery and The Sixth Sense had memorable runs on television and in 1973, The Exorcist was the top grossing film of the year. Entertainment was coming out of period barren not of just UFOs, but of science fiction, at least of the outer space variety. In the movies, about the closest thing to space aliens was The Planet of the Apes movie series. On television, NBC’s Star Trek series had been cancelled back in 1969, but was popular in syndication and alive as a Saturday morning cartoon. On prime time, The Six Million Dollar Man was about as "far out" as TV got.

"Somewhere in the universe there must be something better than man."

The Literary Front

There were a few important UFO books published in those days, some in response to the Condon Report that enabled the Air Force to shut down Blue Book. Dr. J. Allen Hynek and his 1972 book were profiled by Ian Ridpath in New Scientist,  May 17, 1973, “The man who spoke out on UFOs”:

He is highly critical of the report called The Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, produced in 1969 by a University of Colorado team led by Dr Edward U. Condon and based on US Air Force Project Blue Book files. He has since written his own book, called The UFO Experience, which has been called "Hynek's version of what the Condon report should have been." The book is now in its fourth printing in the United States. 

In 1973, Major Donald E. Keyhoe, the man who had written the first non-fiction book on flying saucers, wrote his last, Aliens from Space. He also blasted the Condon Report, depicting it as part of the Government’s UFO cover-up policy. Keyhoe closed the book with a more optimistic note, proposing an ambitious plan to build a facility at a remote location that would attract extraterrestrial visitors, lure them into a landing where a peaceful close encounter would establish formal contact.

Flying saucers were out of fashion, though. About the closest related matter to the UFO topic that the public really cared about was the ancient astronauts theory as popularized in the Chariots of the Gods? book and its sequels. In 1974, Chariots was in it’s 27th printing and still on the bestseller lists. Publishers Weekly, describing the paperback of its second sequel.

“The Gold of the Gods" ($1.75, Putnam), the latest best seller by Erich von Daniken, is getting a cover stamped with gold metallic letters for its paperback edition — the first time that Bantam has used that process, usually reserved for deluxe editions of hardcover books... will have a first printing of 800,000 copies...

Putting UFOs Back in Business

In late 1973, UFOs made a big comeback in the press, jump-started by the media frenzy surrounding the alien abduction case on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, making 1974 a very good year for the UFO business. In Michael Rasmussen’s 1985 book, The UFO Literature: A Comprehensive Annotated Bibliography of Works in English, he describes the resurgence:

By 1973, a major new wave of sightings was developing in the U.S. and around the world, and public interest in UFOs again began to swell... By 1974, UFO-mania was again in full swing. Ralph and Judy Blum's Beyond Earth — Man's Contact with UFOs was a national bestseller, signaling the dawn of a new boom in commercial UFO literature. The Blums surveyed the recent history of UFOs, and summarized the sensational sightings of the year before, including the Pascagoula abduction claim of Calvin Parker and Charles Hickson.

At the end of 1974, NBC broadcast “UFOs: Do You Believe?” It was a one-hour special that featured UFO witnesses such as Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, experts such as Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Jim & Coral Lorenzen of APRO, Stanton Friedman, and Walt Andrus of MUFON. The ratings broke records. UFOs were a viable commercial property once again, and there was an explosion in sightings, hoaxes, news coverage, and also an uptick in UFO lectures and conferences. It was a UFO Revival of sorts. 

In the special STTF series that follows, we’ll examine how a particular chain of events in 1974 changed UFO history. Chapter one begins with a paranormal conference in the Tampa Bay area by promoter Lawrence Brill.

UFO Promoter, Lawrence Brill: From Crime to Conferences

 . . .

Acknowledgements

Thanks and acknowledgements to those who provided support, materials, and background detail for this project.

Claude Falkstrom, my co-author, for his work in digging deeper and finding the stories behind the stories, particularly in the case of Lawrence Brill.

Martin Kottmeyer for reference materials from his own Hangar Minus One.

Isaac Koi, for his dedication to the preservation of UFO literature, which helped greatly in the research of this project.

Also, thanks to those who provided other details, materials and verification:
Lance Moody, Brad Sparks, Roger Glassel, Robert Sheaffer, and Rich Hoffman.