Early UFO Radio Host: Hugh McPherson

Saucers yes, but what about: The Ufologists That Time Forgot? 

Many researchers, investigators, authors, broadcasters and even witnesses made a significant impact in their day, but were overshadowed by newer, more popular personalities. We've spotlighted some of these pioneers in the past, and will continue to remember them and their work.

The Feb. 17, 1991 showbiz magazine Variety carried an obituary:

Hugh McPherson, 77, bandleader, jazz enthusiast and veteran broadcaster, died Feb. 3 in Charleston, W. Va., after a short illness. In his early years, McPherson toured the U.S. with his band in New York, New Jersey and on the west coast. In the 1940s, he turned to broadcasting, joining radio station WOAY Oak Hill, W. Va., and later to WGKV, WCAW, WCHS and WTIP, all AM stations in Charleston.

His show “Rehearsin’ With McPherson” featured interviews with leading band and jazz musicians in the country. Later, he left commercial radio and joined West Virginia Public Radio with a jazz program that aired from 1980 to 1987. When the station decided to drop his program, there was an outcry from fans who regarded McPherson as a music historian and as a jazz institution. Survived by his wife, Myrtle, who used to sing with his band.

What Variety failed to disclose: Hugh McPherson was interested in the UFO mystery, and hosted a radio program exploring the topic. Bob Jones added a comment to the story on Oct. 25, 2017:

When I worked in Charleston, WV, radio in the late 50s to late 60s, Hugh McPherson ruled late night jazz/talk radio on WCHS. His voice was unmistakable and his easy-going manner drew thousands of listeners..(friends, really) I, along with other jocks in the area, would stop his show after our shifts. One of the primary topics was the existence of flying saucers and other space talk. His phone guests included top experts in the field. I was about 16 when I first met Hugh and he became my hero. I so fondly remember him.

In this special STTF installment, we reprint the article on Hugh McPherson's UFO show by W. E. 'Ned' Chilton from the August 4, 1957 Sunday Magazine Section of the Charleston Gazette from Charleston, West Virginia. It featured one spectacular illustration, but we’ve included a few additional photos of the individuals it discussed.

Hugh McPherson: Spinning Platters and Flying Saucers 

by W. E. Chilton III 

of The Gazette Staff

Whether you believe or disbelieve, the reports of flying saucers, there is a growing legion of persons ready to testify they’re real. Although some are crackpots, some are experts who have nothing to gain by misleading the public, And a popular Charleston disc jockey is giving them air time.

Harry Belafonte (L) with Hugh McPherson

SEEN A FLYING saucer lately?
If you have, a disc jockey and his program technician would like to interview you on their regular Saturday night show which has been turned over to discussions about UFO's - the abbreviation for "unidentified flying objects."

Hugh McPherson, the personable and knowledgeable jazzophile, whose musical accomplishments include directing a semi-big-name band, having a popular song (“Rehearsin’ with McPherson”) named for him and recorded by the old Chick Webb orchestra with Ella Fitzgerald on vocal and being currently in point of service Charleston's most venerable platter spinner, is following a national trend with his once-a-week switch to weird tales of flying phenomena.

HUGH and his assistant, Johnny Barker, a fellow employee end TV engineer at WCHS, inaugurated their show on a regular basis June 8 this year, although six months earlier Hugh experimented with two lengthy conferences on similar material during his usual record program.

At that time Ivan Sanderson re-created for the airway audience the famous Braxton County Monster sighting which Sanderson- a scientist, author, zoologist and TV personality- has parlayed into a profitable venture with a published article for 'True" and a sequel far a newspaper syndicate. Response was terrific, causing the re-creation to be repeated about a month ago, and it was this response that helped convince Hugh and Johnny a growing nation-wide curiosity in such happenings might prove popular in West Virginia's Capital City.

The subject of UFO's is more than national in scope. It is -wide. England's premier too, the BBC in London with sonorous Big Ben time announcements, has presented a number of similar programs as have stations in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Sweden, Italy, the Belgium Congo- many of which Barker has monitored during idle hours. Even Russian stations are devoting time to speculative accounts of UFO viewings.

ACCORDING to Hugh a Los Angeles record entertainer back in 1950 or '51 was the first to realize possibilities in the "I've seen a flying saucer" type show. Several years later John Otto and the (celebrated singer - Johnny Desmond - began early identical nightly broadcasts in Chicago. Since then they've spread across the length and breadth of America, and now nearly every state has one or more radio personalities devoting time to UFO discourses.

Long John Nebel

A relative late-comer to the field is undoubtedly the best known UFO commentator "Long-John" Nebel of WOR in Newark, New Jersey. He commenced his nightly 1:00 to 5:00 a.m. interviews in 1956 and still is going strong. Entitled "Off-Beat Discussions”, Nebel goes far afield of UFO's. He has interviewed literally hundreds of scholars, scientists, crack-pots, fakirs, authors and publicity-seekers on as many assorted esoteric subjects as the average human mind can fathom.

HERE is a sampling: parapsychology. hypnotism, mediums, witch-craft, voodooism, teleportation (involving the transfer of the astral body from here to there - i.e. Dunbar to Morgantown - while the physical body remains here), telepathy, extra-sensory perception and telekinesis. The latter we finally placed in an unabridged dictionary means the "production of motion in objects by a spiritualistic medium without contact or other physical means” - whatever ever that signifies.

Nebel's wandering from the UFO fold came about naturally enough. Four hours a night - even to such highly notional and sensational matter as UFO's - is bound to become tiresome. Furthermore, many of the the subjects listed previously - teleportation to cite an example - often arise in talks with UFO addicts.

Dr. Adolph G. Dittmar

UNLIKE NEBEL who conducts his interviews person to person in the WOR studio, Charleston's only entrant to UFO as a rule specializes in taped telephone recordings. Hugh also receives some of his programs from Dr. A. G. Dittmar, a general coordinator of UFO information. This service is free, a labor of love, to quicken public knowledge and interest in the subject.

As would be expected a few of Hugh's interviews have been beyond fantasy, while others are well-documented, calmly presented and if not credible, ingeniously disturbing. Unfortunately, a marked characteristic of the saucer buff is the tendency to exaggerate on detailed personal exploits to the point of absurdity.

Thus, a reasonably mild recounting of sighting something unique in the heavens (“was big, round, oval-shaped, I guess you'd call it. It stayed stationary for maybe a couple of seconds, then just flew out of sight.”) becomes a tale celebre as the raconteur warms to His topic. What had been believable is destroyed by an overworked, too - free imagination - like the proud father recalling to his son the snows of yesteryear.

IT MUST BE recognized most people never have seen a flying saucer and flatly reject their existence. However, as we will point out later many reliable, responsible persons claim to have seen them, and an in justice to them accounts follow an unembellished pattern of simplicity and directness difficult to refute. Occasionally, these stories are heard on the airways, but more often than not it is the unbelievable that is aired.

Saucer fans - those listening and those contributing can be classified in these categories:

1. Psychic individuals who believe fervently in a "though disc." They are able to enter a trance-like state and in this state contact the living, unknown being from outer space. They visit the ship, talk to the leader and keep in constant touch.

2. The interested who discredit all psychic occurrences and who are anxious to learn the truth. There is a National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) dedicated to the search.

3. The skeptics who flatly disavow visits from the world beyond but who appreciate a rousing controversy.

4. A growing legion, such as a military man we, know who rejects the outer space theory but who credits our air force with development of a super space ship.

5. The naturally curious who have yet to be persuaded on their existence but who hold open minds.

HUGH, HIMSELF, falls into category five. "I don't say I believe or disbelieve." he states, "but I am interested."

Gray Barker

“Take Gray Barker; a Clarksburg author,” he says, wrote “They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers”. Scary stuff, and It's hard to read that book and listen to him on the subject without wondering.”

Barker, no relation to Hugh's assistant, has appeared twice on their program and is also editor of "Saucerian Bulletin" and "Saucerian Review” - two among many publications devoted to UFO information and enjoying a substantial readership. Hugh admits he has never seen a UFO, but a July 20 incident, reported the next day in this newspaper incidentally, has received attention on his program.

An Alderson funeral director along with an undisclosed number of witnesses reported spotting an object they described as a "comet with a tail." Five minutes later, George Mendenhall, a WCHS engineer at his transmitter location, saw what he believes to be the same object, and it has since been established the object was not a comet.

OF COURSE, one danger inherent to the claims of those sighting flying discs is the power of suggestion. Subsequent to Hugh's June 8 program he has had 12 phone calls from different personally attesting to have seen UFO’s.

The question immediately springing to mind is whether these sightings would have happened had there been no such program la this area. Hugh answers this objection by asking: “How many people go around peering up into the sky? It was only after the first sightings,” he adds, “newspaper articles, magazine stories that conscious such strange things do exist. Now, the curious and the interested actually are looking for them."

Right or wrong Hugh can point to countless sighting claims by witnesses who have nothing to gain from spreading irresponsible and distorted stories calculated to hoodwink the general public.

William P. Lear

WILLIAM LEAR, winner of the Collier Aviation Trophy and president of Lear, Inc., aircraft and electronics equipment testifies to having seen a UFO in bright daylight: "I believe,” he has said, “that the flying saucers come from outer space and are piloted by beings of superior intelligence."

A TWA pilot, doubtful about saucer reports, and seven passengers swear a glowing UFO paced their airliner near South Bend. Above Indianapolis American Airlines Captain Richard Case in his Convair noticed a large UFO speeding across the city, “It was a controlled craft of some going three times faster than we were.” Hundreds on the ground supported the captain's words.

THE LIST of those claiming to have seen the elusive saucers grows almost daily. Frank Edwards, noted AFL news analyst, Claire Boothe Luce, former American ambassadoress to Italy, Dr. Clyde W. Tombaugh, discoverer, of the planet Pluto and former chief of the Armed Forces search for unknown natural satellites, and Col. Frank Milani, Baltimore Civil Defense Director, all personally assert they have seen space ships or what they felt to be space ships in our heavens.

Johnny Barker, Hugh's friend and program counselor, is more positive about the existence of flying saucers than his boss, though like Hugh he never has seen one. Being an amateur astronomer," he says, "I believe many planets in our galaxy are inhabited. I see no reason why our planet among the billions of planets in all galaxies is unto itself in being populated by intelligent beings.”

Dr. Harlow Shapley and Dr. Harold C. Urey

HE SUPPORTS his thesis by referring to the fact that in our Milky Way alone there are between 500 billion suns or stars, and to each sun can be attributed a possible two or three planets. "There is much unknown about the unknown,” he says. “To date, we have been able to identify but nine planets including ours which belong to our sun."

Johnny’s argument is validated by Dr. Shapley, former director of the Harvard Observatory: “We must now accept it as inevitable that there are other worlds with some kind of thinking beings.”

A member of the International Mars Committee, former commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission and head of Institute for Nuclear Studies, Harold C. Urey, is not so emphatic: "It is exceedingly probable that there is other life in the universe more intelligent than ours,”is his statement.

Regardless of who is right, who is wrong, Hugh intends to continue his program.

"It's proving popular" he says, "and as long as we can keep our audience interested and entertained we'll stick to it.”

. . .

Hugh McPherson's show continued to discuss UFOs into the early 1960s. The site My West Virginia Home In Photos has a collection of articles on Hugh's career, with a few mentions of his flying saucer shows. McPherson was friends with fellow West Virginian, Gray Barker and both were interested in the Flatwoods Monster. Due to that interest, one of the few recordings of Hugh survives, hosted at the My West Virginia Home site, on the page The Braxton County Monster & Hugh McPherson.

The UFO Anniversary and the Giant New York Convention of 1967

John Keel, Gray Barker and Jim Moseley

On the 20th anniversary of the historic Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting of June 22, 1947, there was an epic event to mark the occasion, the 1967 New York UFO Convention presented by Saucer News,
James W. Moseley and the Congress of Scientific Ufologists.

Some changes to the final programming were made by the time of the event. Kenneth Arnold himself decided not to attend, as did Ray Palmer. Other guests were added to the roster, most notably actor Roy Thinnes, star of the hit ABC television series, The Invaders, a show about a crusading flying saucer witness.

Donald Keyhoe and his National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon, disapproved of the convention including Contactees, and NICAP published an article in their journal, The UFO Investigator, before the event, condemning it.

The UFO Investigator, May-June 1967 (PDF)

Despite the condemnation from NICAP, the convention went on to be a hit, reportedly the largest indoor UFO convention at the time.

John Keel, lecturing to a packed house.

NICAP did get in a word after the show, though in the forma of a newspaper article by the director of their Connecticut faction.

George W. Earley (circa 2007)

George W. Earley at the time was president of NICAP-CONN, the Connecticut Affiliate of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon, and employed as Aerospace Administrative Engineer at United Aircraft. He wrote an unfavorable review of the NYC saucer convention for the Hartford Courant, July 9, 1967:

"Hippies, Old Ladies, Over 30 Types Orbit in Flying Saucer Circles."

Hartford Courant, July 9, 1967

When James Moseley, congress chairman and publisher of "Saucer News," opened the Saturday session, a surprise guest was discovered in the audience Dr. Edward U. Condon.

A hard-nosed approach to saucer spotting was taken by James Randi, a radio - television personality who has been a UFO buff for many years. The amateur astronomer snapped: "I'm getting damned tired of sitting on a cold car bumper at 4 a.m. waiting for Venus to rise so some fool can tell me it is a flying saucer."

"You people," he said "have got to stop believing everything you are told. There are liars and frauds among us right now, but in among all the trash and nonsense perpetrated in the name of ufology, I think there is a small grain of truth."

The Fall 1967 issue of Moseley's Saucer News carried photographs from the convention, may of them contributed by George W. Earley himself.

For more on the historic 1967 convention, see the article by Rick Hilberg,
"Jim Moseley's Giant UFO Show" at
https://www.jimmoseley.com/jims-greatest-hits/

and

Saucer News NYC Convention Memories a photo essay by Karl Machtanz

Roswell Reborn: The Hangar 18 Legacy

Continued from The Day After Saucergate

Robert Spencer Carr

In 1974, Robert Spencer Carr had put a crashed flying saucer on newspaper front pages, and the sensation caused by somehow persuaded a veteran researcher Leonard Stringfield to begin reexamining UFO crash stories. At the time were still considered crackpot and tabloid material, having been tainted by the stink of the Silas Newton Aztec hoax popularized in Frank Scully’s Behind the Flying Saucers.

The first major mainstream ufologist to declare crash/retrieval reports a matter of legitimate concern, even vital interest, was Leonard Stringfield, a widely respected figure whose history in the UFO field went back to the early 1950s. His advocacy of crash/retrievals would have enormous impact on ufology's subsequent direction… Stringfield first declared himself in a 1977 book, Situation Red, the UFO Siege!, which sought to revive both the extraterrestrial hypothesis of UFO origin (a notion that had largely fallen out of favor among many ufologists) and the idea of an official cover-up (also judged passe). In doing so, he marshaled the usual evidence familiar to readers of 1950s UFO books, such as those by Donald E. Keyhoe. Less predictably, he dedicated 10 pages to crashed-disc stories.

Jerome Clark, UFO Encyclopedia Vol. 3: High Strangeness: UFOs 1960-1979 (1996)

Stringfield became interested in the crashed saucer stories mainly because they could prove that UFOs were not some hallucination or psychic projection, but physical proof of the extraterrestrial. In Situation Red, The UFO Siege!, Stringfield said:

“The little men at least provide provocative evidence—and perhaps specimens— to show that they are part of a nut-and-bolt universe. If we are to believe… reported cases of crashed UFOs and dead occupants… Some of these stories are now legend. One persists: Following the crash of a “spacecraft” thirty-one feet in diameter near Aztec, New Mexico, in 1948, twelve human-like bodies, three to four feet in height, were found inside. They were moved surreptitiously to Wright-Patterson Field, where they had been stored in refrigeration in a secret building.

Frank Scully, in his book Behind the Flying Saucers (1950), revealed the intrigues of another crashed-UFO and little-men incident, but Scully’s story was to be exposed as a fraud. However, some researchers have never given up and believe that Scully was the victim of official counteraction and that his smeared book was actually true.”

The figures Stringfield cited, the 31-foot diameter saucer with 12 bodies, were not Frank Scully’s, but Robert S. Carr’s.

From EC Comics' fictional version of the fictional Aztec crash.

Retrievals of the Third Kind

At the 1978 MUFON Symposium in Dayton, Ohio, Stringfield gave a lecture, “Retrievals of the Third Kind: A Case Study of Alleged UFOs and Occupants in Military Custody,” which he later published as UFO Crash Retrievals - Status Report I: Retrievals of the Third Kind.

He discussed how the subject of crashed saucers had been unfairly tarnished by the discredited Frank Scully story, and presented several cases from anonymous sources that he felt showed evidence of were legitimate.

Stringfield also told how in late March of 1978, he renewed his acquaintance with Bob Carr:

“I had not corresponded with Professor Carr since the 1950's when I published the CRIFO ORBIT. Checking my old files, I reviewed his letters sent to me. Certainly all were well-written, factual and conservative.” He telephoned Carr and liked what he heard, but didn’t check too closely into the academic non-qualifications of his source, or his source’s alleged informants.

“While Scully used shady characters to support his case, new data, supported by people with solid credentials, have surfaced through the efforts of Professor Robert Spenser Carr, a long-time researcher with his own proper credentials.”

Carr’s sources weren’t just shady, they were shadows, and they’d multiplied. Originally, Carr had three, an Air Force officer, a security guard and a biologist, then picked up an autopsy nurse, but when he described the witnesses to Stringfield, the Air Force officer now had a degree in anthropology, the biologist went AWOL, but Carr had two aeronautical engineers to take his place, were the source of the technical details of the recovered saucer.

Carr's informants? A military officer, a nurse, and a biologist.

In his original disclosure, Carr has emphasized that the aliens were human beings, small in stature, but otherwise identical to us except for their longevity and brainpower. In the version he told Stringfield, they picked up far more alien characteristics, with Carr’s witnesses supposedly having “all agreed that the bodies were from three to four feet tall, with elongated heads, oversized compared to their bodies; and, with eyes slanted, looking oriental.”

Stringfield was sold on Carr and his story. “I feel that the Aztec affair can now be viewed with new confidence and free of the Scully stigma.”

The Scully stigma was supplanted by the Carr creativity, and UFO crashes were born again, all the sins washed away. Maybe Carr was John the Baptist in this story and there are a lot of Jesuses, starting with Len Stringfield who preached the word of the UFO crash/retrieval, or the Church of the  C/R.

A Lecturer Hears His Calling

Stanton T. Friedman and Don Berliner dramatically described how Stringfield’s 1978 sermon changed ufology in their 1992 book, Crash at Corona:

Then Leonard Stringfield came winging out of Cincinnati to drop his bomb at the July 1978 annual convention of the Mutual UFO Network... held in Dayton, Ohio, not far from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the home of the old Project Blue Book and the scene of so many rumors of alien bodies held in cold storage in the probably mythical Hangar 18...

Stringfield spoke at the Dayton MUFON meeting for two hours, detailing one C/R after another, to the amazement of the hundreds of veteran UFO investigators... Among those galvanized into action by the shocking revelations at Dayton was Stanton Friedman. It had been but a few months since his revealing talk with Jesse Marcel, who described recovering strange debris from a sheep ranch. A few months after the Dayton meeting, Friedman talked with Vern Maltais and got the story of Barney Barnett at the Plains of San Augustin. Soon... Friedman and Bill Moore zeroed in on the Corona, New Mexico, crash, for it was then thought the downed craft seen by Barnett must have been the one that left some of its pieces on the Foster ranch before crashing 150 miles to the west.

From those pieces, The Roswell Incident was made. In the book, Charles Berlitz and William Moore acknowledge Robert Spencer Carr, but only in the bibliography. They posit that Frank Scully’s Behind the Flying Saucers book was true, just flawed and poorly researched and that the time and place of the crash was not 1948 and Aztec, but 1947 and Roswell, New Mexico. Berlitz and Moore recycled just about every recovered saucer rumor in a patchwork to support their Roswell story, and mention a few hangars and UFO storage buildings along the way:

There are even persistent rumors that, sometime in the mid-1950s, presumably after an alleged viewing by President Eisenhower of the material and bodies at Edwards, they were reunited under one roof inside a structure referred to only as "Building 18-A, Area B" at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Rebranded as Roswell

Hangar 18 was becoming a mainstream term, a household word even before the Berlitz-Moore book, but their mention of it in The Roswell Incident helped. But things changed. Hangar 18 was no longer associated with Aztec, it’d been replaced by Roswell. From a TV listing for Oct. 4, 1980:

Channel 41: In Search of ... UFO Cover-Ups. Is the Air Force hiding alien corpses in Ohio? Host Leonard Nimoy visits the "infamous" Hangar 18.

Having the crashed saucer rumor recast as Roswell stirred things up again, and once more Wright-Patterson faced a barrage of inquiries about Building or Hangar 18.

Like the plot of the movie it apparently inspired, the rumor of Wright-Patterson's aliens on ice is farfetched enough to make it almost believable. And, based on the number of letters that keep flowing in here every month demanding that the Air Force come clean about its extraterrestrial cover-up, more than a few people believe every word of it. The rumor is that in 1947 a saucer-shaped spaceship, manned by aliens, crashed in an isolated area of New Mexico...

The Cincinnati Enquirer, April 23, 1981

Crashed and Retrieved

The Aztec story was too strong to die, but it never really caught on until the little men became more alien and it was grafted onto Jesse Marcel’s testimony about taking crashed foil and sticks to the base at Roswell, NM. The Roswell Incident became THE saucer crash story.

Robert Carr continued to be a trusted source for Leonard Stringfield for several years, and as late as 1982 was supplying him with new details about his Aztec witnesses for UFO Crash / Retrievals: Amassing the Evidence, Status Report III. It’s interesting to note that even after the debut of the recrafted Roswell story, Carr was still devoted to his Aztec story and the goals of Operation Lure.

New and Improved!

With the public’s discovery of Area 51 in the 80s and 90s, it became the new “Hangar 18,” the mysterious hiding place for the government’s UFO secrets, and it and Roswell received most of the UFO love. Don’t mourn for Aztec, though. Seeing the Roswell story’s success and acceptance, like hungry raccoons, ufologists pulled the Aztec story back out of the trash can. In 1987, William Steinman and Wendelle Stevens gave us UFO Crash at Aztec, then in 2011, Scott and Suzanne Ramsey dug it out again for The Aztec UFO Incident, complete with a blessing and introduction from Stanton T. Friedman, the flying saucer physicist.

Roswell became the biggest UFO franchise of all time, with a spin-off hoax industry that owes a few debts to Professor Carr’s tales from the alien crypt. We all owe a big thanks to Robert Spencer Carr for giving us not only Hangar 18, but for being the grandfather of the Roswell crash, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Alien Autopsy and Area 51.

And also a big thanks to Lawrence Brill, who gave Professor Carr a voice by putting on a show. 

. . .

Epilogue: A Final Word of Thanks

In the article above, we quote Jerome Clark saying that Leonard Stringfield was "The first major mainstream ufologist to declare crash/retrieval reports a matter of legitimate concern." But he was not the first. Some less "reputable" ufologists were already promoting saucer wreckage, chiefly Otto Binder, but also the legendary Gray Barker.

In "America's Captured Saucers: Cover-Up of the Century," UFO Report, May 1977, Barker discussed crashed saucer tales including Robert Spencer Carr’s. It's possible that this publicity helped encourage Leonard Stringfield to dig deeper in the subject. Barker's magazine article was later used as a source for Berlitz and Moore’s 1980 book, The Roswell Incident.

A big thanks is due also to Gray Barker, for his hand in bringing the UFO crash story to Roswell.

. . .

For more on the impact of the Hangar 18 story...

UFO and Alien Movies: It Came from Hangar 18

Flying Saucer Ambush: Brush Creek, CA, 1953

Gail Sprague, illustration for The Saucerian #2, 1953

This case cannot truly be considered forgotten because Gray Barker devoted an entire chapter to it in his classic 1956 book,  They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.

John Black and John Van Allen told authorities they had been mining "fissionable material" in the Marble Creek area near Brush Creek, California. On at least two occasions, they witnessed a flying saucer land and a small man get out, fill a pail with water, then fly away. There seemed to be a pattern to the visits, so the miners intended to be ready to shoot at the saucer when it returned. They consulted the local law enforcement asking for permission to fire at it. The Brush Creek incident raised some ethical and legal challenges. Can aliens be shot for trespassing? Captain Fred Preston of the County Sheriff's Department, said no.

Idaho State Journal June 25, 1953

Long Beach Independent, June 25, 1953

Gray Barker, author of They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. 

Gray Barker reported on the case in the first issue of The Saucerian, and followed up in the second issue, "Report on the Brush Creek Saucer," which was the basis for his coverage in They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.

To me the story somehow smacked of truth, and I felt I should try to get to the bottom of it. Paul Spade, an amateur astronomer of California, who had volunteered his services to saucer investigation in his area, also volunteered to go to Brush Creek and look into the matter.

Spade provided the most detailed description of the saucer argument: 

The little man wore green trousers, a jacket and a tie. His shoes were particularly strange in that they seem to be so remarkably flexible. Although they were distinctly recognizable issues, they seemed almost to be a part of the man's feet. The outfit was topped off with a green cab over black hair. He seem like a normal person and except for his small stature and somewhat odd dress.

They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers

300 people were ready for the saucer's return, but apparently a much smaller number was ready at the alleged landing site.

Long Beach Independent, July 20, 1953

The Chico Enterprise-Record, July 21, 1953

The saucer did not return. Among the puzzles in this case is why the miners would have wanted to shoot their visitor. In the trespasses on their camp, the little man only took a bucket of water on each visit. That's hardly a crime worth punishing if it risks starting an interplanetary war.

We were unable to find much on John Q. Black, but the obituary for John J. Van Allen indicates that he was a veteran of World War I, and died on June 3, 1957, at the age of 64.

This Brush Creek incident is not forgotten, and is cited in many UFO databases and prominent books like Passport to Magonia by Jacques Vallée. However, considering the absence of tangible evidence, it would seem to be fit only for a discussion of folklore.  For further reading, see the entry by Patrick Gross at UFOs at Close Sight:

MAY 20, JUNE 20, 1953, BRUSH CREEK, CALIFORNIA, USA, JOHN B. BLACK AND JOHN J. VAN ALLEN

Project Blue Book Case does have a 12-page file: 20 May 1953, Brush Creek, California. The Air Force closed the case on the Brush Creek incident, and it was classified a hoax.

. . .

A special thanks to Louis Taylor of Information Dispersal for the original UP photo of Black and Van Allen.

Flora Rogers' Flying Turtle over Texas, Aug.12, 1952

 Everybody knows turtles don't fly--so what was that thing Mrs. Flora Rogers saw paddling through through the air over her West Texas ranch?

Newspaper clipping from Project Blue Book.

Stanton, Texas, about 100 miles south of Lubbock

The Abilene Reporter-News August 13, 1952

As with so many of the most interesting UFO cases featured here at The Saucers That Time Forgot, Project Blue Book has no file on this incident... but they do have a bad, faded copy of a news article with a drawing of the UFO. https://www.fold3.com/image/6996929

Gray Barker

It was left to ufologist Gray Barker in his historic 1956 book, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, to chronicle this event. He managed to stretch the newspaper story into three pages of his book, concluding his coverage thusly:

When pressed for an opinion as to what she thought the object represented, Mrs. Rogers hazarded a guess, but insisted it was only an idea she evolved while watching it."It must have been some sort of radar machine taking pictures of the ground beneath."

And so ended another flying saucer story few people would believe, except those who heard her tell it first hand, a story that would be discounted by the Air Force and forgotten by all but a few who had the temerity to collect and file away data on such unusual and unlikely events.