UFO Expert and Lecturer, Norman S. Bean

 

Norman S. Bean was a first-generation ufologist. He was born in 1906, so he was a full-grown man when the 1947 news of flying saucers captured his life-long interest. Electronics engineer by trade, his 1967 profile in the Palm Beach Press described him as a graduate of Tufts College, Mass., who had “designed electrical equipment for Pan-American Airways, Philco Corp. and RCA. In 1943 he designed a television camera for guided missile projects: after the war he is credited with designing the first RCA commercial TV camera for both sports and studio use.”

Broadcast News, Oct. 1946

Around 1950, Bean became the electronics and TV engineer for station WTJV in Miami, Florida. In his spare time, Bean kept up with UFO literature and gathered enough knowledge that in 1952, he began lecturing locally on the topic, sometimes as often as three times a week, His position was that flying saucers were real, and he believed them to be spaceships from another planet. 

He didn’t speak much about it publicly, but Bean and his wife Louise had a strong interest in psychic phenomena. “I read a book about Edgar Cayce's life in 1952. It opened my eyes and changed my way of thinking.” His passion was flying saucers, and he connected with others who shared his interest, including the saucer clubs that started forming. He also became friends with a notable UFO witness from Miami, Pan American World Airways pilot Bill Nash, of the July 14, 1952, Nash-Fortenberry UFO sighting.

 

Bill Nash

Bean’s First Saucer Sightings

They say, “seeing is believing,” but up until late 1953, Bean had been believing without seeing. From Bean’s letter to The Little Listening Post newsletter:

"There have just been two saucer sightings over Miami. March 18 [1954] I had my first daylight sighting. Saucer was following a B-36. Several witnesses, (one my technical assistant, Carl McClure, is an ex-navy spotter.) It was his first sighting. I had a night sighting ln Sept. [1953], through my telescope. On that occasion I watched the object hover for four minutes. It was glowing red."

As we shall see, Bean was just getting started.

 

Norman Bean on left. From PIC magazine, June 1954

At the beginning his ufology career, James Moseley went to Miami in Feb. 1954 to meet William Nash and “contacted a number of interesting people... Norman Bean, a pseudo-engineer and saucerer who'd invented a psychic machine that he claimed healed people at a distance; and marine PFC Ralph Mayher, whom Nash had put me onto. In late July 1952 Mayher had shot some movie film of a saucer. His superiors took the film to a local television station to have it developed, where it was processed by none other than Norman Bean.” (Shockingly Close to the Truth, 2002). Bean only played a minor supporting role in  this UFO case, but the full story can be found at NICAP’s page on the Mayher film. 

Besides his frequent lectures, Bean also frequently appeared on local radio stations to talk about flying saucers and their origins. At these appearances, members of the audience would sometimes tell him stories they heard about captured flying saucers, and even alien bodies. When in March 1954 Bean was unable to speak as planned, he asked his friend Bill Nash to fill in.

The Saucerian, Jan. 1955

Based on some of those second-hand tales, Nash said in his lecture on saucer, he said he was convinced, "the Air Force has collected hardware from outer space." That caused quite a stir and launched even more rumors and speculation. (For more on that story, see Captured UFOs and Building Hangar 18: A Chronology.”

Agent of N.I.C.A.P. 

NICAP (the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) described both Bean and Nash as “member-investigators” and also on their “Panel of Special Advisors.” They’d later refine that a bit, listing Bean among their “Scientific and Technical” panel.  

Bean in 1959

With Sputnik and the UFO flap of 1957, his lectures had titles such as, “Satellites and Saucers, and "Mystery from Outer Space." Things slowed down but never stopped. The 1966 saucer flap put UFO speakers back in big demand, and it kept Bean in front of eager audiences.

Here is What Bean Believes about UFOs

Now for our feature presentation, an excellent profile on Norman S. Bean’s first two decades as a ufologist, from the Tampa Bay Times, July 22, 1973, written by Gene Rider.

Illustration by Rick McCormick.

13 UFOs over Miami

The press continued to be interested in Bean’s views on UFOs. The Bulletin (Bend, Oregon), Jan. 9, 1974, reported that Bean believed saucers were extraterrestrial ships that are magnetically controlled, powered by atomic reactors for anti-gravity flight, and that when an earthly nation discovers the secret, “it will rule the skies.” The Miami News, Nov. 6, 1975, reported, “Bean, who says he has seen 13 UFOs over Miami in the last decade or so, said it is not unusual for the objects to sit suspended over airports.” Bean said, "This happens at airports all over the world. It's as if they are curious about our methods of flight."

The Bermuda Triangle… and Roswell?

Charles Berlitz's 1974 book, The Bermuda Triangle included some UFO cases, and two of them were provided by Norman S. Bean. 

In the 1979 documentary based on the book, the credits listed a few ufologists among the technical advisors including William L. Moore, Don Berliner and Bean.

Bean was also mentioned in 1980 book by Berlitz and Bill Moore, The Roswell Incident. It was in a section titled, “Holes in the Cover-up,” a passage about a rumor that had been repeated about an of alien autopsy…

Norman Bean, Miami, Florida, electronics engineer, inventor, and lecturer on UFOs, remembers an incident that took place in the mid-fifties. After a lecture he had just given he had a conversation with a retired air force officer, a Colonel Lake, who informed him that a close friend had talked to a doctor in Dayton, Ohio, at some length about the autopsies of the "saucer" crew in which he had participated. According to Colonel Lake, the internal organs were similar to those of human beings, with basic organs "just like chickens and people." Colonel Lake, naturally aware of security regulations, said he could talk about this now in a general way because "all this is going to be a matter of public information in a few months." 

By the time of the Roswell book, Bean was in his mid-70s, and retired, but not from ufology. The Feb. 1981 MUFON Journal announced him as their new State Director for Florida. 

“It is an extreme pleasure to announce that one of the pioneers in UFOlogy in the U.S.A. has accepted the position of State Director for Florida. Norman S. Bean, a retired RCA engineer… Norman has interviewed several thousand UFO sighting witnesses during the 30 years he has been lecturing on UFOs. Many of our new MUFON members in Florida have joined as a result of the radio talk programs that Mr. Bean has participated in around south Florida.” 

After serving almost four years, Bean retired from the role in late 1984 due to “his inability to travel and advancing age.” A few years later, the MUFON Journal, April 1987 carried some sad news. 

Bob Pratt learned from Mrs. Louise Bean that her husband Norman Bean, former State Director for Florida, died on December 8, 1986 at the age of 80. Mr. Bean, a retired RCA engineer with many television related patents and truly a UFO pioneer, was recognized by Larry King on his CNN radio show, featuring the Japan Air Lines flight 1628 UFO sighting report. Norman had appeared on many of Larry King's radio programs when they both lived in Miami, Florida. 

Norman Stuart Bean 1906-1986

Gone, but we remember...

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For more news clippings on Norman Bean’s UFO cases and lectures, see the PDF clipping collection at NICAP.

The Blue Ribbon UFO Panel of the National Enquirer

Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle, Dr. Frank Salisbury, Dr. James Harder, Dr. Robert Creegan,
Dr. J. Allen Hynek and Mr. Jim Lorenzen. From 1975.

In the early 1970s, an elite panel of researchers from the leading UFO organizations was formed to evaluate the strongest cases of the year, and they had a specific goal: "find positive proof that UFOs come from outer space." They were called the Blue Ribbon Panel, and were assembled and financed by The National Enquirer, the tabloid magazine owned by Generoso Paul "Gene" Pope, Jr.

From 1967

It wasn't merely about the pursuit of science; the Enquirer was after selling papers, and they were putting up big money to pursue the cases and evidence. 

National Enquirer clipping from 1978

The panel was comprised of top men. Top men.

The National Enquirer's Blue Ribbon Panel members of 1974. From left to right: Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Dr. Robert F. Creegan, Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle, Dr. James A. Harder, and Dr. Frank B. Salisbury (Betz Mystery Sphere in foreground). APRO (Photo from The Encyclopedia of UFOs by Ronald Story.)


In the 1997 book, At the Threshold: UFOs, Science and the New Age, Charles F. Emmons, Ph.D. discussed the magazine's Blue Ribbon Panel:

Surprisingly the National Enquirer, when its format emphasized the paranormal rather than celebrities, was one of the more "scholarly" of the tabloids, at least in regard to UFOs. James A. Harder, a pioneering ufologist with a Ph.D. in fluid mechanics from the University of California, and a retired engineering professor from UC Berkeley, reports that he, Leo Sprinkle, Frank B. Salisbury and Robert Creegan, all from APRO (Aerial Phenomena Research Organization), and J. Allen Hynek himself formed the UFO consulting board for the National Enquirer in 1972. The publication established a reward of $50,000 for "the first person who can prove that a UFO came from outer space and is not a natural phenomenon." Not only did this statement contain the assumption that UFOs must be extraterrestrial and nonnatural, but it seemed so difficult to prove that another award of $5,000 was added for best evidence each year.

In 1975, the editors of the National Enquirer were uncertain enough about the validity of the Travis Walton case (in which Walton was knocked down by a beam from a UFO in an Arizona forest and disappeared for five days) that they decided not to publish it, although later the consulting board decided to award Walton and five other witnesses in the case the $5,000 for 1975. Three MUFON consultants were added to the board in 1978, but it was eliminated in 1979. Certainly this is an atypical chapter in the tabloid UFO story, but it also shows that mass media are not as uniform as one might think in spite of certain general patterns.

Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle, Jim Lorenzen, Dr. James Harder, Dr. Robert Creegan, Dr. Frank Salisbury, and
Dr. J. Allen Hynek 

While the panel was active, it awarded $5,000 to $10,000 for the flowing UFO cases, including some now classics, but there were some that didn't make the cut.

The Panel and the Betz Sphere

In 1974, one of the cases the Enquirer panel investigated was that of a metal sphere found by Terry Matthews, an object he thought came from outer space.

The Associated Press coverage played up the hope that the submitted object might be extraterrestrial, which was the only thing the Enquirer's panel seemed to care about.

Sarasota Herald Tribune, April 17, 1974

The United Press coverage from the following week was a bit more cautious in is reporting. 

Santa Ana Register, April 21, 1974

The Betz sphere was not much of a contender for the Enquirer's prize, and the panelists concluded that though they couldn't identify the object,  it was clearly manmade, therefore not extraterrestrial.

The UFO Prize Winners

While the UFO panel was active, the magazine rewarded the following cases:

1973: Delphos Ring

1974: Coyne Incident

1975: Four witnesses in the San Antonio International Airport sighting

1976: Travis Walton and the Lumberjacks

1977: Tehran UFO "dogfight" incident

1978: Memphis Triangle

1979: Shared among several cases

1980: Val Johnson

The National Enquirer's most famous award winner: a team of lumberjacks for their 1974 UFO story.

All good Things Come to an End

The National Enquirer changed their focus a bit in 1979, when the black and white tabloid switched to color, courting a more mainstream supermarket audience with stories about celebrities. It's old press was taken over by the sister publication the Weekly World News, which also inherited most of the UFO material. The money that the National Enquirer had put towards UFO research dried up, and along with it, the Blue Ribbon Panel.


For more historical information on The National Enquirer's Blue Ribbon Panel for UFO Investigations, see this article by Isaac Koi: Consensus lists: National Enquirer Panel

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