Robert Spencer Carr and Hangar 18

Carr seems like a minister as he speaks slowly and deliberately in a deep, lilting voice. And, in a way, he is a minister. He preaches an attitude of peace, good will and cooperation with "our friends from space.”

- Jane Baumann in the Clearwater Sun, Oct. 27, 1974

Professor Robert Spencer Carr was the guest of a local radio show on Oct. 11, 1974 to promote the upcoming Flying Saucer Symposium by PSI Conferences in Tampa, Florida. During the interview, Carr made the shocking disclosure of the US government’s cover-up of the crash of a UFO in New Mexico. It created a media sensation that lasted for months in print and broadcast news. But who was Robert Spencer Carr?

Bob Carr was born March 26, 1909, and as brilliant youthful author published in prominent magazines, not only in pulps such as Weird Tales, but also mainstream slicks such as the Saturday Evening Post. His son, Timothy Spencer Carr, contributed a mini-bio to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database that fills in some of the blanks:

He was a child prodigy with published magazine articles at age 10, an international best-selling novel author at age 18 and a Hollywood screen writer at 20... he had 3 novels and at least a dozen short stories, mostly science fiction. Like many of his colleagues, he became a member of the USA Communist party during the 1930's. He actually lived in Russia from 1933 to 1938 (during the worst of Stalin's purges), where he became totally disenchanted with Communism. He returned to the US and renounced his party membership. He refused to testify against his former comrades during the HUAC witch-hunts of the 1950's.

Back in the US, Carr resumed his writing career, which included a substantial body of work during his four years as Director of Educational Research for Walt Disney Studios. He served in the Army during World War II, enlisting in 1944 and becoming a sergeant where he wrote lectures for officers to deliver to the troops. After that, he returned to the motion picture industry for several years, writing and producing educational films contracted by the State Department at the International Film Foundation. It was also during this period that Carr became interested in flying saucers.

Carr had a particular fondness for fantasy and science fiction, and his story about extraterrestrial visitors, “Morning Star,” was published in the December 6, 1947 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. In his author’s profile, Carr was described as “a devoted follower of the late Charles Fort, and a member of the Fortean Society,” and that he was a supporter in the possibility “that men from Mars—if not babes from Venus—already have visited the earth.” In Carr’s “Easter Eggs" (later retitled “The Invaders”) from the Sept. 24, 1949 edition of The Saturday Evening Post, two alien ovoid spaceships land, one actually on the White House lawn, the other in Moscow. It gives a hint of  Carr’s thoughts on the advanced mental and psychic powers of extraterrestrials - and our potential to match them. Bette Pringle, a White House secretary, establishes communication:

“I caught a glimpse of something alive inside, about the size of a man, sitting at controls. He tried to talk to me… He seemed to speak inside my mind, not with words but with ideas. With pictures too, pictures no artist could paint.”

Carr and Ufology

1952 marked the end of Carr’s film work and his literary career, his “The Coming of the Little People,” published The Blue Book, for their November issue. However, in July of that year he wrote something memorable for the President of the United States. Little evidence of Carr’s early UFO-related activity survives, but researcher Larry Bryant found documentation of it. Bryant examined letters to President Harry S. Truman from the public on the subject of flying saucers, writing, “The collected letters – or at least that portion that somehow escaped referral to the Department of Defense for reply – now reside at the Truman Library in Independence, Mo. … A White House staffer synopsized each letter in a cross-reference log.”

Carr’s letter to the President was forwarded, but the remarks by the staff note:

Robert Spencer Carr of Clearwater, Fla. (7/31/52)

“Writer encloses miscellaneous material relative to 'flying saucers’ – suggestions for contact. Respectfully referred to the Department of the Air Force for appropriate handling. Requests President’s comment re this. Threatens to publicize his letter if he does not receive an answer. Critical of the Pentagon. (consideration and appropriate handling.)”

During the 1950s, Carr otherwise was not active publicly in UFO activities, but he was a long-time member of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). The best period documentation of Carr’s NICAP role in a high-profile investigation into a 1965 UFO occupant encounter.

Carr, during the 1965 Brooksville investigation.

The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida, September 26, 1965

“A Public relations man from Pinellas County, Robert Carr, a member of NICAP,” told about the investigation of “the Brooksville incident in which a man testified that he spotted a landed unidentified craft with strange creatures walking around outside... Creatures three to four feet long have been reported... Carr also stressed that he does not believe any of the reports involving sightings of space creatures that he has investigated so far.” (Project Blue Book has a 109-page file on the Brooksville case, and on page 44, a clipping of the APRO Bulletin, which mentions Carr’s investigation.

Operation Lure

1973 marked Carr’s next public UFO exposure, in a book by Major Donald E. Keyhoe. Carr was teaching classes in creative writing at the University of South Florida, but became more vocal about his position and beliefs about UFOs as he neared retirement. He’d written to President Truman in 1952 about contacting aliens, and twenty years on, Carr found someone interested in the idea. There was a plan, Operation Lure, which was the title of the ultimate chapter of Major Donald E. Keyhoe’s final book from 1973, Aliens from Space. According to Keyhoe, Operation Lure would be  “The first planned meeting of aliens and humans could be the start of mutual adjustments, leading to great advances for our world.” It was the UFO equivalent of a duck blind, complete with decoys, “an isolated base with unusual structures and novel displays, designed to attract the UFO aliens' attention... three or more dummy UFOs, disc types with domes, built of aluminum... the decoy UFOs and the education buildings flood-lighted from dusk to dawn. It may be several days before there is any reaction, but there are solid reasons to believe the Lure will work.”

The architect of Operation Lure?

The basic idea was first suggested by a NICAP Special Adviser, Robert Spencer Carr, former Director of Educational Research, Walt Disney Studios, a specialist in visual-aid education who has served with the Army Orientation Service and has produced educational films for the State Department. Since the original suggestion, I have privately expanded the plan with aid from Carr, linguists, psychologists and experts in other fields.

Carr placed special emphasis on the need for the lure to have projected movie images on an outdoor screen, noting that there had been many UFOs attracted to drive-in theatres. Once friendly contact was established, Carr believed the aliens could begin sharing “the benefits they might bring us.”

With his name and plan published in Keyhoe’s book, Carr began exploiting it, using it as evidence of his expertise in the UFO topic. In January 1974, at the University of South Florida, Carr engaged a USF Astronomy professor on stage in a debate, “UFO - Believe It or Not.” It was during this debate that Carr made his first public claim about captured flying saucers. The Tampa Tribune, Jan. 16, 1974 reported:

One of the best-kept secrets of the United States Government is that in Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, there are two flying saucers of unknown origin, a University of South Florida instructor said yesterday.

The Tampa Tribune, Jan. 16, 1974

This article on Carr’s debate seems to be the the first time Hangar 18 was named as the hiding place for UFO secrets, at least in print. If Carr wasn’t the first to name it, he certainly is responsible for making the name Hangar 18 famous. The story only was good only for some local news coverage at the time, but it exploded in the Fall with further disclosures. Hangar 18 was just the opening of Carr’s message, though. The crashed saucer story was a teaser to demonstrate what the UFO cover-up was depriving us of, to highlight how much more we could learn from the aliens by using Operation Lure to establish contact.

Dr. Carr’s Radio Disclosure

Robert Carr retired from the university in June 1974, and took up a new career as a UFO lecturer. PSI Conferences (PSI for Psychic, Spiritual and Intuition) hired him for the Tampa “Flying Saucer Conference,” and on Oct. 11, 1974, during a local radio show interview to promote it, Carr told his story of captured saucers again, but in far greater detail. This time, it made international news, and Carr was hounded by newspapers,  radio and television reporters for more information. Local radio started the buzz with the Carr interview, and the Zodiac News Service (ZNS, provider of bizarre and offbeat stories to progressive radio stations, college, community and underground newspapers) helped broadcast the sensational news nationally.

It's Out of This World...

(ZNS) Professor Robert Carr, a former instructor at the University of South Florida, announced last week that the United States government has secretly captured a complete U.F.O. with 12 dead beings aboard. Now. Professor Carr is predicting that by December 15th - in about eight weeks the U.S. government will launch a carefully-engineered effort to prepare American for an announcement of the existence of extraterrestrial life. the professor created a minor sensation last week after stating in a Florida press conference that the Pentagon has recovered a perfect "flying saucer" that allegedly had crash-landed in the desert near Aztec, New Mexico, in 1948. Professor Carr says that his sources for the incredible story are three men directly connected to covering up or protecting the project—a biologist who examined the bodies; a security guard who protected the ship in a hangar at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio; and a high ranking military officer who reportedly viewed the bodies of the 12 small beings while autopsies were conducted on them. The professor states that all his sources report that the 12 beings were apparently the victims of a decompression accident when the ship was punctured alter entering the Earth's atmosphere. All witnesses, he says, described the visitors as being exactly like small humans —three to four feet tall; white skinned; light haired; blue eyed; in perfect physical condition, but with highly-developed brains. The professor insists that the 12 bodies are still in "deep freeze" at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and that the ship is being concealed in a hangar at the air base. Wright-Patterson Air Force officials flatly and unequivocally deny the entire account.

Albany Student Press, Oct. 29, 1974

Carr’s mission was to launch Operation Lure, but all most people heard was, “Wright-Patterson Field has in its possession a spacecraft… blah, blah, blah.” Many people hearing the news break on radio took it to be an explosive new disclosure, mistakenly thinking Carr was describing a recent UFO capture, not a story from 1948. Reporters were just interested in the saucer and bodies in Hangar 18, so the plan for peaceful contact was seldom mentioned. The press coverage of the story was huge, carried in newspapers across the US and Canada by syndicated newswires such as the Associated Press and United Press International.

The Orlando Sentinel, Oct. 12, 1974

There was a great deal of excitement, and a fair amount of confusion. When newspapers reported the story the day after the interview, the story began to be challenged. Next:

Inside Hangar 18 with Dr. Robert Carr

UFO Promoter, Lawrence Brill: From Crime to Conferences

In our introduction, After the UFO Crash of 1969, we looked at how the closing of Project Blue Book seemed to cause a decrease in the public's interest in UFOs for several years, but in 1973 the topic made a big comeback and by the next year, UFOs were big business again.

In 1974, Lawrence Brill presented two UFO and paranormal conferences in Florida's Tampa Bay area featuring superstar guests; top talent, from experts and best-selling authors, to scientists and alien abductees. The events received major news coverage, but one lecturer made a stunning disclosure that overshadowed all the rest. A professor revealed that the USA’s Central Intelligence Agency directed the cover-up of UFOs, and that they possessed physical evidence of flying saucers and their occupants. It would change ufology forever. But, before we examine the story of conferences and the UFO evidence...

Who was Lawrence Brill, and how did he come to put on the show that made it all possible?

The Brill Family Business

The Morris J. Brill Agency ad from 1945.
Ready with financing help and sincere salesmen. 

1947 is known for the start of the flying saucer fever, but at that time, Lawrence Brill was a 23-year-old real estate salesman from Racine, Wisconsin. The Racine Journal Times from December 3, 1967, featured a retrospective that sets the stage:

20 Years Ago. December 3, 1947: A public hearing to determine whether Lawrence Brill should be granted a real estate brokers license was scheduled to be held in Racine by the Wisconsin Real Estate Brokers License Board. Brill formerly held a salesman‘s license and was employed by his father, Morris J. Brill. Licenses to the elder Brill and two of his salesman, George Brill and Herman Kaplan, were revoked Nov. 4 when the board found them guilty of “misrepresentation, untrustworthiness and improper dealing in real estate transactions.” The hearing was scheduled to determine Lawrence Brill’s trustworthiness to operate as a broker.

Brill's brokerage license was granted later that month, but with a stern warning:

“The board had a duty to treat Lawrence Brill as an individual and not penalize him for any misdeeds of his father, brother or brother-in-law. If the board was unable to connect Lawrence with any of the questionable cases investigated, then it had no alternative but to grant the license. But in granting the license the board warned that Lawrence must not be associated with any of the other three members of the former agency and any real estate transactions. This imposes a responsibility on Lawrence to make sure that he lives to up to the letter of the board regulations. The board and the people of Racine have a right to demand this, and doubtless will maintain a keen interest in seeing that it’s done.

- The Racine Journal Times, Dec. 22, 1947

Link to larger images of this and other Lawrence Brill articles.

In 1948, Lawrence took over the family business, renaming the real estate enterprise the “Lawrence Brill Agency.” What did not change was the family method of operation, and eventually the “misdeeds” came to a head. In 1954 Lawrence and his brother George Brill were among those arrested for a real estate scheme. The storm passed and they got back to business as usual, but it was a strong clue of what lay ahead. Lawrence managed to avoid getting his photo in the paper, and this picture of George is the closest we found to a picture of him anywhere.

Racine Sunday Bulletin, Oct. 24, 1954

The cards came tumbling down in 1967, with the legal proceedings following for several years. The two clippings that follow show how fraud and financial irregularities brought the Brill Agency down.

One of the biggest upheavals on Racine's commercial scene in many a year came with the collapse of the Lawrence Brill Agency's rental housing empire. Once the largest manager of rental housing in the city, controlling as many as 2,000 units, the Brill Agency folded in 1967 and went into bankruptcy, listed about $1 million in unsecured debts, $9 million in contingent debts and assets of $344,000. The bankruptcy proceedings are still in progress. In a related action, the state this year brought a variety of charges against brothers George and Lawrence Brill, who operated the agency as a partnership. The charges allege violations of Wisconsin securities law, theft and theft by fraud.

- The Racine Journal-Times, January 11, 1970:

"'60s Racine's Eating, Buying Habits"

Betty Flannery, former bookkeeper for the Lawrence Brill Real Estate agency testified in 1969 that, “by and far most of the properties lost money” in the year leading up to the bankruptcy, with losses running about $30,000 to $40,000 per month. “I told him five or six times that he was losing money but it was difficult for him to believe it because he planned things so carefully."

- The Racine Journal-Times, Feb. 17, 1969

Jumping ahead in the story, ultimately the Brill brothers were found guilty, but served no time or paid no penalty, only given five years probation. In 1974, they were ordered to repay 11 cents on the dollar for their bankruptcy debts.

Flight to Florida

In 1967, while the legal proceedings were just beginning, George and Lawrence Brill left Rancine and moved to Florida for a fresh start in Tampa. There, Lawrence Brill became a member in local social clubs and civic organizations, and his wife Nora (nicknamed Noni), took an active role in the Tampa arts community. The connections they made in these social circles would prove to be important later, when they were introduced to psychics.

Lawrence Brill reinvented himself as the president of Pandora Enterprises Inc., a company based in Tampa, both retailing and wholesaling hair pieces, wigs and fashion accessories. The company also operated under the names, Hair Goods, Inc., Wig Factory Inc. and reportedly, Palucha Enterprises. In a 1970 interview with The Tampa Tribune, Brill was asked about the rising popularity of synthetic wigs. Fake hair had caused his sales of human hair wigs to drop by 90 percent. Brill was no seer, but, “He predicts that within a year the demand for human hair will return if New York designers create styles that demand genuine hair for their execution.”

By 1974, Brill’s company had three retail stores under the name of Wig Wardrobe. In the registration, Brill’s wife Nora was named as vice president, and Cynthia B. Stanley was listed as the director. It was through friend and business partner, Cynthia Stanley, that the initial connection was made that would lead to the UFO and paranormal conferences. The story “Saucer Symposium Held” in Willoughby, Ohio’s The News-Herald, Nov 3 1974 by Joel Greenberg told how it all began:

The seed for this unlikely gathering was planted nine months ago in the mind of Cynthia Stanley, who works for Palucha’s three Wig Wardrobe Stores in Tampa. While driving around town last February, Ms. Stanley suddenly decided to stop at Halarion House a now-defunct spiritual church. There, psychics Ernest and Bernadine Villanueva “read my aura,” the electrical field that surrounds the head, she recalls. Ms. Stanley says she has now become an adequate “table-tapper” — she can induce spirits of dead persons to tap answers on a table (one tap for yes, two for no). At Palucha director Lawrence Brill’s home, where the Villanuevas psychically swung a 150-pound chandelier, got PSI (Psychic, Spiritual, Intuition) Conferences off the ground.

High Society

Lawrence Brill took on the role as director of PSI Conferences, and with the help of rising psychic star, Bernadene Villanueva, they were able to gather an impressive roster of celebrities for their first conference, PSI ’74. The Tampa Tribune, Aug 1, 1974, describes a social event held in honor of two of the starring psychics.

Tampa Tribune, Aug 1, 1974

The article also names one of Brill’s other PSI directors, Dr. Edwin L. Stover, the chairman of

the Humanities Department, St. Petersburg Junior College (who also played with the Florida Gulf Coast Symphony). A later article lists Bob Mims, as a PSI Conferences director, another contact that Brill seems to have made through the high society clubs he and his wife belonged to. Lawrence Brill was the voice of the organization, however, and it was run through the company he owned.

With the support of advertising and media coverage, Brill's PSI ’74 was ready to launch. It was held on Aug. 2, 3 and 4, 1974 in St. Petersburg, Florida, with events at the Hilton Inn and the Bayfront Center arena. Lawrence Brill's story continues in our coverage of PSI '74 and the epic UFO conference that followed it.

In our next chapter: The first PSI conference, and the unpredicted response to the UFO witness.

PSI ‘74: Psychics and the UFO Witness from Pascagoula

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.