A Lost UFO Book Discovered

The Venusians, text and images © Harold J. Berney Estate, 1960 and 2023.

The first person convicted to prison for UFO-related crimes was the subject of an in-depth April 9, 2020, article at The Saucers That Time Forgot, “Harold J. Berney: The FBI's Flying Saucer Fugitive.” There’s been a new development, but first, for those who need it, a recap of the UFO-related part of his story. 

In the mid-1950s, Harold Jesse Berney approached a few individuals and confided that he was working on a top-secret project based on alien technology. Once a prototype was manufactured, the U.S. government contract would guarantee any early investors an enormous return. Hal was an interesting character, charismatic, an inventor, a talented artist, but all of that was overshadowed by his lifelong penchant for fraud. He’s remembered chiefly as a sign painter and swindler. The key thing that led to his downfall and conviction was a book he had written about flying saucers and aliens.

Berney’s story was the same thing he was telling investors, that he’d been hired by the U.S. government to study the technology of a captured flying saucer. Shortly after setting foot on the craft, he was contacted by an alien and accepted the invitation to go to Venus to learn about their technology. Upon his return, he worked with a major government contractor to build the powerful Magnetic Flux Modulator for the defense of the United States

In 1956, Berney worked with Pauline E. Goebel, a major investor, a legal secretary by profession. She typed up his story into a 118-page manuscript, Two Weeks on Venus, saved until the Modulator project was no longer secret. When she got word that Berney had died on another trip to Venus, Pauline tried to recoup the investment of her life savings by taking the manuscript to a publisher. After hearing her story, they suggested she call the police because she’d been swindled. From there, the FBI took over, and when they caught Berney, he claimed to be innocent of fraud, the book “just fiction.” To avoid the maximum penalty, on October 3, 1957, Berney agreed to a guilty plea for lesser crimes, two charges of fraud. He spent about three years in prison, and after his release he went back to work as a sign painter in Silver Spring MD, until his death in 1967. Hal’s name stayed out of the papers, and as far as the world knew, he had no other UFO-related activity.   

Other than a patent application, none of his drawings, paintings or writings are known to have survived. The sole manuscript for Berney’s Two Weeks on Venus was never published, taken by the FBI as evidence in Berney’s trial, afterwards filed with case records. UFO historians have never gotten to examine the text to see if it was merely derivative of early 1950 Contactee tales or was an original science fiction story. Depending on years of waiting for a FOIA response seemed the only hope of seeing it. It came as a delightful surprise to learn, "No, there is another." 

A Warehouse Find

In August of 2023, The Saucers That Time Forgot received an unexpected message in reply to our 2020 article on Berney. It stated, “I have a copy of the actual draft The Venusians by Hal J Berney… with hand painted art…” I texted the number provided, and the following conversation revealed that the book had been found in a Virginia warehouse (over 100 miles from Berney’s last home) and the owner knew nothing about it, or how it got there. Pictures were also sent, about a dozen photographs of a massive manuscript bound in a scrapbook. 

The scrapbook has a hand painted cover of the title, The Venusians, and the book itself is about 525 (single-sided) pages long, including hand-painted illustrations. The author is listed as Hal J. Bernéy, emphasizing that his last name was pronounced not like burn-ee, but like burr-nay.

Examining the photos of the text and illustrations, it indicates that this was Berney’s second attempt at a book. It was made after his conviction, and some of the paintings were made while he was incarcerated. One of the illustrations includes the year 1960 next to Berney’s signature.

An introductory page stated:

“The Venusians

A web of uncontrollable circumstances

This book is the culmination of the controversial manuscript… though at the time was called ‘Two Weeks on Venus’ was merely the outline basis for the now completed book named ‘The Venusians’.

A Fiction Novel by Hal J. Berney”

A following page emphasized the story as presented as a work of fiction:

“There are no true names of persons used in this book. Any similarity to names of persons living or dead is coincidental and not intended as such. The use of names of hotels, corporations, laboratories, Army and Navy personnel, Governments or courts are used fictionally, and do not imply their true connection in any actuality; while the laws in court procedures are correctly stated in a degree in their use, and then surrounded by fiction. The book is written in ambiguous obscureness, and is endowed with intricate, scientific facts. It is felt compulsory by the author to so state here, for his welfare, that the contents of this book are fiction.

Author: Hal J. Berney

Edited by:  Lorene D. Wells”

The Venusians was greatly expanded from the tale begun in Berney’s unpublished Two Weeks on Venus, and the second half of the book continued the story far beyond the events of including his trial for “Conspiring to Defraud through False Pretense.” Harold J.  Berney’s character is called “Albert J. Carlton,” and his company, “The Venusian Corporation of America.” 

Here are a few pages and illustrations from the manuscript that were sent as examples:

Double-page fold out: “Milky Way and our Galaxy Map.”

Figures approaching to examine a landed flying saucer.

“The ship had a flat concaved circular orbit-like band around the center of its ball shape.”

A scene discussing the scientists who would manufacture the Venusian technology on earth.

In Berney’s fictionalized trial, The Grand Jury charged Al Carlton of perpetrating:

“a scheme that disrupted and stagnated the Corporation and its investors and the deliveries of the necessary ships to the United States Government, thus not only depriving the Government, but his investors, and leaving the entire Nation unprotected by the lack of the Venusian ships, and at the mercy of other foreign powers who might obtain the invention from the Defendant.”

The “North American Nebula”

There wasn’t enough shown to reveal the entire story, but it seems the existence of the Venusians visitors were revealed in some kind of public disclosure. There was a scene of a crowd of people gathered under a phenomenal night sky.

“As they sat huddled together, the air seemed filled with soft strange music, as if some great choir of thousands of people were singing heavenly praises."

I AM

Part of the story involved an ill-fated interplanetary romance. Al Carlton had fallen in love with a Venusian princess, but they were separated by her untimely death. Somehow, after his trial, Berney’s character traveled back to Venus. At the end, Al died in an accident and was buried beside the princess. The closing page describes their bittersweet reunion with a religious acknowledgment of “the great ‘I AM’.”

There’s been no documentation found, but there seems to be some overlap between Berney and the spiritual Contactees and the I AM followers, even if they were only among his prey in his investment schemes.

Lost and Found

Prior to this discovery, no one had a clue that the book existed. So far, no further information has been found about it, or Lorene D. Wells, the woman who helped Berney produce it. What will happen to The Venusians? The people who found the manuscript contacted me to get information on the author for the purpose of selling it. I gave them the background on Berney and put them in touch with his surviving relatives. Ideally, the manuscript will find a home with Berney’s family, and that scans of the document are made and made available to researchers. As of this writing, the final fate of the book has yet to be determined. 

. . .

Connections? Two Flying Saucer Corporations

I've been unable to connect Hal Berney to any saucer club, but there was a lot of UFO-related activity nearby. Berney lived in Washington, D.C., but conducted business in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Flying saucer inventor Otis T. Carr's home and office was in Baltimore, Maryland, and there’s some interesting similarities between the two. They both had studied art, but neither of them had a formal education beyond the eighth grade. In the early 1950s, both started developing flying saucer technology, were granted patents for inventions, and incorporated businesses.

Harold J. Berney’s Telewand Corp. sought investors for his “Magnetic Flux Modulator.”
Otis T. Carr’s OTC Enterprises Inc. sought investors for his “Utron Electric Accumulator.”

Berney’s Modulator was a box unit that produced "its own power by drawing energy from the atmosphere.” Carr’s Utron produced “free energy” to power “a fourth dimensional space vehicle... the OTC-X1 circular-foil spacecraft.”

Carr holding Utron Electric Accumulator, 1957.

Both attracted believers in Contactee lore, but Carr was far more public in recruiting investors. Carr employed a publicist, Margaret Storm (author of Return of the Dove - a Theosophical biography of Nikola Tesla as a Venusian). Alice Beulah Schutz as a stenographer, and as A.D.K. Luk, she wrote Law of Life, a book for the “I AM” saucer-related religious cult. Whether through her or another source, Berney was aware of the religion and prominently featured a mention of “I AM” in the closing line of his book.

A Distinctive Saucer Design

The typical UFO of the day was pictured like a saucer or an automobile hubcap. Another distinctive saucer design debuted around 1957, a windowless elliptical fuselage ringed by an orbit-like band around its center. In Carr’s colorful spiral-bound pamphlet, published in October 1957, “OTC Enterprises, Inc, Brings You Atoms For Peace,” there was a spectacular illustration of his concept for a “Fourth Dimensional Space Vehicle.” The original art hung in his office and replicas and 17 x22 inch lithographs of the picture were offered to the public.

1957 Carr publicity photo.

The photo of Carr in front of the picture seems to show the artist’s signature in the bottom right corner, but it was cropped out of the published versions. While the identity of the artist is unknown, his space scene and the distinctive flying saucer design look very much like the work of Hal Berney, and an identical design appears on the cover of The Venusians. Berney and Carr’s flying saucers looked like they all came from the same factory on Venus.

Berney was arrested in March 1957 and was sentenced to prison in Oct. (about the time Carr printed the brochure). The book and art apparently began during or after his prison sentence, one picture is dated 1960. Without documentation, all we can say is that it’s possible Berney saw Carr’s saucer and copied it for his book cover. They are too similar in style and design to ascribe to coincidence.

Similar Fates

Both Berney and Carr were charged with crimes related to their flying saucer investment schemes.

Berney and Carr share the rare distinction of being among the few Saucer Swindlers to ever serve time behind bars in punishment for their crimes.

Alien Attack Unites Humanity

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

That adage dates to the 4th century or before, and it applied to more than individuals. Feuding villages sometimes set aside their differences, uniting when faced by a mutual threat. The Saucers That Time Forgot specializes in examining how UFO-related concepts were born and spread. The timeline below chronicles the development of the idea of an alien threat uniting humanity, with over 30 examples from public figures like science fiction authors, playwrights, sociologists, philosophers, economists, international statesmen, generals, CIA operatives, and U.S. presidents. 

Timeline: Alien Attack Unites Humanity 

Crashed Flying Saucers and the Hydra Club

Caption: Fletcher Pratt and the Roswell UFO crash via The X-files

In January 1950, newspapers reported the autopsy of small extraterrestrial bodies from a flying saucer captured by the U.S. government, information from insiders, “confidential sources” disclosed via a reputable journalist and military expert. Ufologists later cited the report as credible supporting evidence of Roswell and other crash-retrieval cases. Who leaked the story, and how?

Fletcher Pratt Wonder Stories Quarterly, Winter 1932

Murray Fletcher Pratt (1897-1956) was a prolific author, primarily of naval and military history. He was also famous for his science fiction and fantasy, frequently written in collaboration with L. Sprague de Camp.

Fletcher Pratt bio from Modern Science Fiction 1953

A UFO crash opened one of Pratt’s early science fiction stories, an alien encounter story written fifteen years before the flying saucers of 1947.

Amazing Stories Quarterly, Winter 1932

“A Voice Across the Years” was a novella published in Amazing Stories Quarterly, Winter 1932, by Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher Pratt, illustrated by Hans Wessolowski. Two men see a “meteor” crash into a lake and go to investigate. There, they eventually meet and befriend an extraterrestrial shaken from the crash of his “cometary car.” The spaceship is irretrievable, so they assist the alien in construction of a new one. Just as it’s finished, the police come to capture him. In an unintentional abduction, one man is trapped inside the ship as the alien takes off for another world.

Thirty years later, the story was edited and expanded by Pratt’s widow, Inga, and published as the 1962 book, Alien Planet. Cover artist Ed Emshwiller depicted the alien’s circular spaceship with a flattened appearance, making it look very much like a flying saucer.

Astounding Oct. 1954 - SF Book Club ad

In the early 1950s Fletcher Pratt was among the top science fiction authors, and  a member of an elite network of professionals sharing common interests.

The Hydra Club

In October of 1947, a group of professional science fiction writers and editors founded a group in New York, calling themselves the Hydra Club. The founding members included: Lester del Rey, David A. Kyle, Judith Merril, and Frederik Pohl. Lester del Rey described the early days at his The Way the Future Was blog:

“There were nine of us. The mythological Hydra was said to have nine heads. That was good enough, so we called it The Hydra Club and began beating the brush for members. In the process of inviting all the area’s sf writers and editors whose addresses we could locate, Fletcher Pratt was one of the first we reeled in. He was a key recruit. We original nine of course knew all the book and magazine editors, and most of the writers, in the area. Fletcher knew everybody else…”

Besides Fletcher Pratt, they were later joined by more than forty others, including: L. Jerome Stanton, Hans Stefan Santesson, Willy Ley, Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, and L. Sprague de Camp. The group’s early history was chronicled in Marvel Science Fiction Nov. 1951, by Judith Merril, with art by Harry Harrison:

Founding member David A. Kyle wrote "The Legendary Hydra Club" for Mimosa 25, April 2000. The group held monthly meetings at the homes of members or in a rented hall, and once hosted a convention, “the famous New York Science Fiction Conference of July 1-3, 1950, sometimes known as the 'Hydracon'. …Over 300 authors, publishers, scientists, and interested spectators attended. … Life magazine covered the event and [published a] panoramic picture of the assembled diners at the banquet.”

Life magazine May 21, 1951

The photo was included in “Through the Interstellar Looking Glass” by Winthrop Sargeant was a look inside the world of science fiction fandom. It also discussed the “rumpus that rocked the world of science fiction—the Shaver hoax… The deros were responsible for... catastrophes, from shipwrecks to sprained ankles... for the reports of flying saucers." 

Hydra Club members were serious about their science fiction but skeptical about things in popular culture they considered unscientific: Dianetics, Velikovsky, Atlantis, reincarnation and so on. They’d groaned at Ray Palmer presenting the Shaver Mystery tales as true in Amazing Stories, and to them, flying saucer mania was cut from the same cloth. At club gatherings, these pseudo-scientific topics could be the target of criticism, jokes, or satire. 

Photo from “Review: The Compleat Enchanter” by Phil Sawyer

Kyle wrote, “A Hydra Club meeting was always a party… The biggest and best” was held in 1949 on New Year's Eve. Several reporters were present, and their stories on it appeared in the press, including The New York Times. One reporter present was from the French international news agency, Agence France-Presse (AFP). His story focused solely on a talk given by Fletcher Pratt, and it appeared in French in Var-Matin République, Jan. 1-2, 1950, and in the English language daily newspaper in Rangoon, Burma, The Nation, Jan. 2, 1950. 

“Flying Disc” Visitors From Strange Planet

Bodies of 3-Foot High “Strange Creatures” in American Hands

New York, December 31. -- The American newspaper man, Fletcher Pratt, a former U.S. war correspondent, today claimed that contrary to recent official announcement, flying saucers were not a product of the imagination but visitors from another planet.

Speaking at a meeting sponsored by science magazine, Fletcher Pratt said that according to “confidential sources”’ one of such flying discs together with its occupants -- all of them dead --had fallen into the hands of American authorities. These visitors from another world were killed, Pratt said when their flying disc entered the atmosphere of the earth. Atmospheric pressure proved fatal to them and their bodies were now being dissected and studied, he claimed. Quoting the same source, Pratt said the interplanetary travelers were “strange creatures”. -- AFP.

Var-Matin République, Jan. 1-2, 1950 (transcribed by Patrice Seray)

The Nation, Jan. 2, 1950 

Amazing if true. Let’s see what other reporters made of the speech. 

Weird, Astounding

At the end of 1949, spaceships and aliens were headline news due to the release of True magazine’s article by Donald E. Keyhoe, “The Flying Saucers are Real.” Also, Hollywood gossip columnist Frank Scully had published two Variety articles late in the year (based on the claims of Silas Newton) about the U.S. military’s capture of flying saucers and the bodies of the little aliens inside. At the Hydra Club’s holiday party for 1949, Pratt spoke on the topic of saucers. Here’s an account, co-written by one of the club members, “Weird, Astounding” in The New Yorker, January 21, 1950, page 19, by Jerome Stanton and John McCarten: 

“We were invited down to Werdermann's Hall, on lower Third Avenue, the other evening to attend the annual party of the Hydra Club, an outfit composed of writers of science fiction... Fletcher Pratt appeared on the platform and made a speech about flying saucers, which he branded a big fake. He was followed by Mr. [Willy] Ley, who told a story about the footprints of an aardvark being mistaken for those of a dinosaur and expressed agreement with Mr. Pratt's conclusion as to flying saucers. A man about five feet tall interrupted the proceedings at this point, screaming ‘Leave the saucers as a matter of faith!’ "That's Lester del Rey," a gentleman next to us said. "One of the best in the field."

The New York Times Jan. 2, 1950, discussed the party, but only in business terms, “Science fiction has made incredible progress in the past two decades, graduating from the pulp magazine era to its modern respectability of hard-cover books…” There was no mention of saucers.

The Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University houses the Fletcher Pratt Papers; his correspondence, manuscripts, scrapbooks, and memorabilia. Hoping to locate the text of Pratt’s 1949 flying saucer speech, I contacted the SCRC librarian. Nothing was found about crashed flying saucers or the talk: “No speeches of any kind, unfortunately, and definitely not one from the Hydra Club party.” It may have been that Pratt’s saucer talk that night were no more than impromptu remarks. 

This AFP’s sensational saucer story was given a one sentence summary in the 1980 book by Charles Berlitz and William Moore, The Roswell Incident, along with these comments:

“This further reference to a Roswell-type incident was, of course, denied in official circles with the customary vehemence. However, it must not be forgotten that Fletcher Pratt was a reputable military historian with a historian's regard for the highest possible accuracy of information and therefore would have been reticent to accept a report dealing with startling information from an unreliable source.” 

With the conflicting news accounts and the interpretation by Roswell crash authors, one might wonder where Fletcher Pratt really stood on the phenomenal topic. 

Mechanix Illustrated June, 1951 

Scientists had announced that life was probable throughout our galaxy, and in “How Scientists Visualize the REAL Flying Saucer Men,” Mechanix Illustrated checked with a couple of science fiction authors. John W. Campbell said, “There is every reason to suppose that life on Venus, or on any other planet, if it has developed to a high level, has taken human form. But this form would have to conform to the specific conditions of the planet.” Fletcher Pratt played along but reasoned that if it were possible, “any life form there must be completely different from ours.”

In Saturday Review, March 14, 1953, Pratt gave a favorable review of Flying Saucers by Donald H. Menzel.

“Among the many answers are mirage, auroral phenomena, formations of ice crystals in the upper air, sun dogs, moon dogs. reflections of earthly objects or the moon on layers of mist... In other words, almost anything but little green men from Venus or educated bees from Mars. It is rather a pity that a good scientist had to take time from his work to clear up this clotted nonsense, but now that he has done it we can all be glad he did. And it certainly makes good reading.”

The Hydra Club on UFOs, and Little Green Men from Afar

Fletcher Pratt was a key member of the Hydra Club. He died of cancer in 1956 and his obituary was published in The New York Times, June 11, 1956

(Full text) http://www.northofseveycorners.com/write/pratt.htm

According to Dave Kyle, the Hydra Club faded away sometime in the 1960s. Both before and after the club’s demise, several members had some things to say on the topic of UFOs.

Lester del Rey was a frequent Panelist on Long John Nebel’s Party Line radio show, and wrote “The Saucer Myth” in Fantastic Universe Aug. 1957.

Frederik Pohl informally investigated the 1964 Lonnie Zamora case in Socorro, NM, and wrote a skeptical UFO editorial about it, “Air and Space” in Worlds of IF Sept. 1965.

L. Jerome Stanton wrote a skeptical UFO book, Flying Saucers: Hoax or Reality?, 1966.

Hans Stefan Santesson edited Fantastic Universe magazine where he frequently featured non-fiction articles by ufologists.

Willy Ley frequently discussed UFOs skeptically and took the negative side of the debate against Ray Palmer in 1950. He also slammed saucers on the CBS talk show, Longines Chronoscope, Aug. 4, 1952.

Isaac Asimov wrote a favorable review of Flying Saucers by Donald H. Menzel in Galaxy Science Fiction July 1953, and closed by saying, “My own personal use for it will involve braining with its edge the next innocent who says: ‘But don’t all science-fiction writers believe in flying saucers?’”

L. Sprague de Camp also gave a positive review of Menzel’s book, for Science Fiction Quarterly, November 1953, saying, “As an old debunker, I can tell you that one of our species’ odder characteristics is that they will pay much more to be bunked than to be debunked.” Two decades later, L. Sprague de Camp wrote “Little Green Men from Afar'' as a lecture for the conference where the notorious Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, CSI was founded, "The New Irrationalisms: Antiscience and Pseudoscience," April 30-May 1, 1976, at the State University of New York at Buffalo. His lecture started by discussing the same topic as Fletcher Pratt’s 1949 speech Silas Newton’s flying saucer hoax. Then he turned to the broader issue: 

“The story of pseudoscientific cultism, of which the enlighteners in UFOs form but one small part, is depressing to believers in human rationality. Some cultist ideas… are so absurd that they beguile few followers and soon fade away. Others attract huge followings and persist for generations.” 

Theodore Sturgeon reviewed two UFO books in Galaxy science fiction magazine, Nov. 1974, saying:

“My personal opinion on the whole subject… is that yes, there are UFOs, and no, I have no opinions as to what they are, where they come from, or why, being perfectly content to wait for further evidence — ‘hardware or bodies,’ as the late Fletcher Pratt used to say.”

Fletcher Pratt became a footnote in UFO history for making fun of flying saucers at a Hydra Club party. All because someone didn’t get the joke. 

. . .

 

For Further Reading 

Fletcher Pratt, Military & Naval Historian by Henry Wessells )

L. Sprague de Camp’s “Little Green Men from Afar” was published as an essay in The Humanist, July/Aug. 1976. In recognition of his lifetime achievement, de Camp was awarded the Grand Master Nebula of 1978 by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Editor Frederik Pohl chose de Camp’s essay to represent his work in the 1980 book, Nebula Winners Fourteen, and it also was presented in two other collections:

The Fringe of the Unknown, by L. Sprague de Camp, 1983

The SFWA Grand Masters, Volume 1, edited by Frederik Pohl, 1999