A UFO (Book) Report

Flying Saucers Over America by Gordon Arnold, (2022)

McFarland, $29.95 softcover, $17.99 ebook. 

227 pages and 17 photos, including chapter notes, a bibliography, and index. 

 

When a scholar or journalist takes a serious look at UFO history, it’s always interesting to see how they approach the topic and present their views and conclusions. Before discussing this book, it’s important to know something about the author, his background, and perhaps his purpose for writing it. From the Montserrat College of Art site, “Gordon Arnold is Professor of liberal arts… He teaches courses in film history, animation history, and the social sciences. Arnold’s research has resulted in a series of books that explore the history and social contexts of U.S. film and culture.”

Professor Gordon Arnold

Subtitled, The UFO Craze of 1947, Flying Saucers Over America, contains a preface where Arnold tells the reader that the book takes no position or promotes any particular UFO belief or agenda. Instead, he states, “…something unusual happened in the [1947] skies… but the jury is still out on what it was. …perhaps it is time to revisit what we do and do not know about these initial events and rethink whatever conclusions we may have drawn.” The author respectfully sets out to do just that, focusing on the foundational events of 1947 and the subsequent UFO investigations and events of the early 1950s, and the evolution of beliefs that sprung up about them. 

 

Chapter one opens with a quote from Carl Jung’s 1958 book, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. My hunch is that Arnold’s book began as a college course and that Jung’s book was required reading for it. Luckily, for those who haven’t read it, Jung’s classic is freely available at the Internet Archive. Arnold follows Jung’s lead that while UFO sightings are not purely psychological, our attempts to understand them often are. “In very short order, then, the public interpreted UFO sightings in light of what people already knew, or thought they knew, based on previous reports.”

 

The strength of Flying Saucers Over America is that it provides excellent historical perspective on the early flying saucer events and documents how the media and public reacted as these series of events unfolded. Typically, UFO books neglect to present anything but the sensational highlights like Kenneth Arnold’s historic sighting and the Roswell incident. Arnold covers those but examines the events in between, the reaction of the public and press, as well as the incidents that followed. He also touches on an important issue that’s often overlooked, how UFO activity and public interest seems to come and go, pointing out that after a few weeks in the headlines, flying saucers faded “into the background for a time” but would be rekindled by further events or newspaper stories.

 

Most of the book’s chapters focus on a single case or topic, so it reads like a collection of short essays or classroom lectures that, while thematically connected, can stand alone. The essays are not always presented in chronological sequence; Chapter 20, “Life on Mars” seems far out of place, as it describes 19th century beliefs that paved the way for notions of little men in flying saucers. Arnold returns to the role of imagination in the UFO topic in the chapter “Going Hollywood,”  discussing how motion pictures featured tales of alien invaders in spaceships before 1947, but by 1950 Hollywood science fiction was rebranded as flying saucer thrillers. He says, “As time passed, it would sometimes be difficult to sort out which ideas about unidentified aerial phenomena referred to actual events versus those originating in fiction.”

 

In chapter 28, “The UFO Myth” Arnold discusses how decades after 1947, the narrative of the Roswell incident came to encapsulate flying saucer beliefs into a single package. Arnold again seems to turn to Jung for perspective, saying, “In their compelling stories, myths reveal much about the society in which they thrive. Thinking of things as right or wrong in absolute terms may be a mistake.” 

 

Several chapters focus on the US government’s attempts to wrestle with the UFO problem and examines several aspects of the approach such as in “National Security and the Culture of Secrecy,” “Unknown Knowns,” and “The Bureaucratic ­Merry-Go-Round.” In “Visitors from Mars,” Arnold reminds us that the Cold War with the Soviets had the US in a state of agitation and paranoia, fearful of aerial invasions and of security leaks about their own military aviation weapon developments. This real policy of secrecy fueled the belief in a government UFO cover-up.

 

The focus of chapter 14, “A Laughing Matter,” is on the toll of ridicule and “jeer pressure” from the press and public towards witnesses. Arnold states, “It surely seems likely that some unknown number of sightings was never reported officially to anyone. Whether any of those would significantly alter our understanding of the phenomenon remains unknown.” 

Readers may be disappointed in the lack of examination of the flying saucer photographs of 1947. The 17 photos and illustrations in the book provide a bit of historical flavor, but they are more decorative than evidentiary, mostly stock photos of locations, aircraft, sample documents, etc. In that sense, it was a poor choice for the publisher to use a UFO photo for the book’s cover rather than a more atmospheric illustration of the author’s exploration of the cultural aspect of the UFO enigma.

 

Is Flying Saucers Over America a good book? Yes, but not a perfect one. It would be a good choice to read and then share with friends and family who are unfamiliar but curious about the UFO topic and its history. You might bookmark it for them and suggest your own chapter order for optimal enjoyment. For example, if you know they’d be more interested in the US government’s involvement, have them read the chapters on Project Sign, Grudge, Blue Book before some of the other "lectures."

 

Even a UFO scholar is likely to benefit from Arnold’s perspective as he presents a mosaic of the flying saucer age, the big picture of how UFOs affected our culture, prompted governments to react, and stirred belief in many people.

Ufology: Information Dispersal - Documents and Photos

Louis Taylor recently left a series of interesting comments on The Saucers That Time Forgot, and it prompted us to check his Blogger profile which links to his Pinterest page. It’s called "Information Dispersal," where Luis hosts an interesting collection of various UFO correspondence, documents, and photos, mostly from the 1960s. The correspondence covers letters between ufologists such as Steve McNallen, Tom Adams, Anthony Kimery, Ed Biebel, John Keel, Bill Moore and others.

When we contacted him, Louis told us a little about his UFO projects:

"I've been working on a couple of books and doing research into all manner of details concerning the phenomenon including those you've covered on your blog. Been looking into the concurrent evolution of the anti-communist right and UFOlogy in the 20th century as well as the GOC (Ground Observer Corps) and other things like accumulating sighting catalogs of UFOs around transmitters as well as ringing hull cases."

Louis has been building an archive of vintage material from various sources, including items offered for sale on eBay. Unfortunately, many of these come without any data about their date or origin. 

At his page, Louis has a collection of photos labelled, “Orphaned UFO Images,” and asks: “Have you seen me? I was created many years ago but I don't know by whom. Any information as to the true source of the following images would be greatly appreciated.”

I asked him if we could share some of his UFO pictures at STTF.

“That would certainly be fine by me.  The whole point of posting them is to try and get any information that might be available that might further identify them.”

Louis also shared a collection of images, some of which will be used in later articles. There’s some press material from the 1967 direct to television movie, Mars Need Women. 

We found info on this movie still from "Flying Saucer," it’s from an English dubbed version of the Italian film, "Il Disco Volante."

The last photo is the most mysterious, a 1947 photo shot from a plane with what looks like a snowy mounting in the background, and above it a flying spherical object.

The photo is a print used for an unknown newspaper’s story, and on the back is a pasted a clipping of the published caption:

An object flying over Mount McKinley in Alaska which three Fairbanks girls believed to be a “flying disk” was recorded on film by the trio during a Fourth of July vacation flight near the mountain. The girls, Margaret Hawk, Mary Lou Hawkes, and Julie Harris, say they had focused their camera on the peak when a “bright red mass” went flying through space leaving a gaseous trail. What they saw is shown in this picture to the right of the peak's crest. The “disk” was visible only a second, they said, and then disappeared into the mist.

 [stamped] JUL 15, 1947

Louis Taylor notes the print had been retouched, a common practice to sharpen details for newsprint publication.  He said: 

“From the look of it it actually looks like a frame from a home movie or something.  It's obviously been retouched but what is it, a Perseid meteor or something else?”

So far, we have been unable to find the published version. This is an outstanding find, and would be in the running with the Frank Ryman picture for the first UFO photo of the flying saucer era.

 STTF readers are urged to check out Louis Taylor’s gallery of documents at Information Dispersal. If you have any information on any of the photos, please post in the comments below or send Louis an email.

UFO Culture Examined: They Are Already Here by Sarah Scoles

They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers by Sarah Scoles

Reviewed by Curt Collins

Full disclosure: Sarah Scoles interviewed a number of ufologists in researching this book, including me, and I am mentioned in chapter 8. I’ll mostly recuse myself from reviewing that chapter, but the rest is fair game.

It's not very often a new book comes along with saucers in the title, so although our focus here is on weird UFO history, I felt obligated to check it out and review it at STTF. They Are Already Here is pitched as: “An anthropological look at the UFO community, told through first-person experiences with researchers in their element as they pursue what they see as a solvable mystery—both terrestrial and cosmic.”

I first became aware of Sarah Scoles’ work from her Feb. 2017, article in Wired magazine, “What Is Up With Those Pentagon UFO Videos?” one of the few pieces of investigative journalism examining the AATIP story. She approaches the UFO topic from a journalistic background - her usual beat is covering science, and her previous book was about legitimate scientific matters, a biography, Making Contact. Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The AATIP story drew her in, and from there, this book.

The very first UFO book, Keyhoe’s The Flying Saucers are Real, set the model for most that have followed: The author receives an assignment or goes on an investigation (aka quest) which allows otherwise dull information to be packaged in dramatic scenes as the narrator overcomes obstacles and digs ever closer to the truth. The trope is tired, since it’s also an overused device to cope with the fact that there’s not going to be a satisfying ending. Since there's not much solid information, and even less in the way of clear answers, the UFO author usually has to drum up some drama by talking about the many locked doors they find, but insisting, have my faith my brothers and sisters, we’re almost to the truth

Chapter one begins with... you guessed it. But the author’s quest bit works very well here. Unlike in the hackneyed formula, Sarah actually does go on a journey - several of them, in a real-life journalistic quest to get under the skin of UFO mavens. By that I mean to understand them, but yes, she has gotten under their skin in both the positive and negative connotations!

Instead of a rabbit hole, she calls it a wormhole, but falls into a wonderland just the same. Part of how she was drawn in was driven by what she found to be curious lapses of details in the reporting of the AATIP story, and its uncritical acceptance by many, and the fact it was being merchandised.

Chapter two takes a weird turn, because it looks like the author began her investigation by going to a UFO convention. C’mon, man! That’s like trying to learn about zoology by going to the circus. Probably worse. But I get it, that’s where the UFO people are, from authors to devotees. A newcomer would expect a ufology conference to be a bit like a scientific conference where the latest scientific papers were presented and so on. Well, not so much here. There are some serious presenters and new data, but most of it is lectures from regulars on the UFO circuit, some of which are more performers than researchers. Often, it's no more than a UFO Comic-Con, a place to hang out with people with similar interests, with the option for cosplay and one-nighters.

Luckily, at the 2018 International UFO Congress, she ran into a few rational folks there, including Robbie Graham, who gave the lecture, “Searching for Truth in All the Wrong Places,” which caught her interest since he seemed to have a grounded approach and healthy perspective on a far-out and fringy topic. It was the book Graham edited, UFOs: Reframing the Debate, that led her to Canadian ufologist Chris Rutkowski, author of the chapter, "Our Alien, Who art in Heaven." Chris is a great guy with wealth of knowledge, but most people ignore him because he just makes too much sense.

Yow! Curt Collins is quoted in the chapter 8, which gives this book the distinction of being the possibly the first ever to mention the Roswell Slides, Gray Barker, and AATIP in the same chapter. And speaking of Gray... the playful wit of his good friend Jim Moseley (of Saucer News/Smear) seems to be alive and well in some of Sarah’s quips and chapter titles:

In chapter 4, Scoles begins her discussion of UFO history with the Kenneth Arnold sighting, which is good, because many numbskulls think it all started with a Roswell crash. She talks about how after Arnold’s story went big, the US was swept with saucer fever, and all of a sudden everyone was seeing saucers. There’s a brief mention of “perceptual contagion,”and that’s spot on. In 1947, there may indeed have been a saucer invasion, but people were reporting discs by the hundreds. In all the excitement, a lot of innocent birds, planes and balloons had their citizenship challenged; Martians everywhere. But that’s the point, she’s looking at the cultural impact of UFOs, which is why she fast-forwards to the Robertson Panel, the CIA panel that has been blamed for causing UFOs to be debunked and ridiculed. Those guys weren’t around back during the heyday of sea serpents, but sailors still got ribbed for being drunk on the job.

I had no idea who "The Patron Saint, or Something of Saucers" was going to be about, and seeing it in the index, thought that would have been Kenneth Arnold. Instead, it's an entire chapter on aerospace billionaire Robert Bigelow, sometimes called the Howard Hughes of ufology. His deep involvement of the AATIP story is just beginning to be understood.

Much of the rest of the book is Sarah's travels to meet people involved in the UFO scene, and she puts in a lot of time on the road and in the air to get to them. The writing is excellent, and the conversational tone of the book is works well, and it almost feels like the author is taking you by the hand touring into a UFO museum - or maybe a haunted house. The biggest gripe I have about the book is that an experienced UFOer will read the book, and say, "Why’d you go there, and why did you talk to that clown?” It’s like that old fairy tale, and anyone new to ufology is going to have to kiss a lot of frogs at the start.

There’s a line in chapter six that reflects her both her scientific background and the insight she gained by studying ufology:"

"Scientific methods are civilization’s so-far best attempt at removing biases, but nothing that involves a person (and probably nothing that involves a robot) is ever truly objective.”

In “It was Always You,” there’s an unexpected twist that closes not only the chapter, but the entire book. Scoles turns her examination 180 degrees and briefly examines her own beliefs, in what must have been a painful section to write so honestly about. It’s only a page and a half long, but one of the most powerful parts in the book. Though little is said there of UFOs, much is said about faith, belief, and feelings.

For UFO nerds like myself, who are often more concerned with data than literary merit, this book has a good index that’ll allow you to target any passage about any of the heroes villains or bit players discussed within.

There’s a passage from chapter one that can save you a lot of time, since if it doesn't grab you, They Are Already Here is not for you:

“I undertook this project because I wanted to understand why these people spent so much time on a phenomenon that they weren’t even sure was a phenomenon—at least not one beyond the human brain. What I found, when I got to know them, was that we were actually a lot alike in a lot of ways. They sought out mystery in the known world—and then scratched at its surface till it eroded into understanding. They believed people flying high in the government wanted to keep secrets. They craved evidence. They wanted better data. They wanted the truth. They wouldn’t—couldn’t—stop until they figured it out. That’s a lot like the journalistic process.”

I thought the book was great, and it would be perfect for any UFO buff to share with friends or family who don’t quite get the “UFO thing.”

In the AATIP-Bigelow-Skinwalker Ranch story, there's been a small tempest over a BAASS scientist saying they were using “the novel approach of utilizing the human body as a readout system for dissecting interactions with the UFO phenomenon.” Sarah Scoles volunteered, but it's sort of the same thing. Via this book, her brain can now be examined as a readout system for dissecting a scientific civilian’s exposure to ufology. She survived it, but can ufology survive its examination by her? I think so, and it’ll benefit from hearing her conclusions.

They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers by Sarah Scoles

If you don’t think you’ll like it, buy a copy anyway just to burn. It pairs well with UFOs: Reframing the Debate.

P.S.

By chance, I happened to sit in an interview of Sarah Scoles on the Paracast radio show. During some of it, I’m sure Sarah must have felt like it was more like a cross-examination or inquisition. She handled herself well, and I thought she did a good job of representing the book.

We also talked about how the prejudice of some of the UFO crowd on Twitter who have rejected the book without bothering to read it. Ufology has dreamed of getting science and journalists to take an interest. Sarah’s done that, and taken two years to give ufology a chance. We should listen carefully to what she made of it.

The Paracast: March 22, 2020 — Sarah Scoles with Curt Collins

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

Forgotten UFO Literature: The Poems of 1947

In the first weeks of the flying saucer hysteria of 1947, many opinions were offered about the mystery. Some people expressed their outlook in the form of poetry, and here's a small collection of some early notable examples.

The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, from July 4, 1947:

Two saucer poems from The Boston Globe, July 7, 1947:

A (premature) lament about the end of the saucers. From the Pennsylvania Altoona Tribune,  July 22, 1947:

And finally, not exactly poetry, but a piece on what William Shakespeare might have said about UFOs. From Ohio's Dayton Daily News, July 8, 1947: