Several
weeks ago, I learned about a man, Blair MacKensie Blake, who had found an
original copy of the Varo Manufacturing reproduction of Morris K. Jessup’s The
Case for the UFO that had been filled with bizarre annotations. This book,
and several letters that were written about it, created a subset of UFO study
known as the Allende Letters. It suggested, in part, that the Navy had
successfully teleported a ship during World War II and that those who had
annotated Jessup’s book an a unique and insider knowledge of the UFO. You can
listen to that interview here:
https://www.spreaker.com/episode/50565617
And
for those of a more visual mindset, you can watch the interview here:
https://rumble.com/embed/v19kurz/?pub=yqkns
Now,
I suspect that those of you who are not fully cognizant with the tale of the
Allende Letters, might find some of this to be confusing. I have written about
the topic in the past. You can read those postings here:
https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/07/allende-letters.html
And
for those who enjoy chasing footnotes and are interested in another reason not
to believe the Allende Letters are anything other than a hoax, you can read
another theory here:
https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/08/chasing-sources-philadelphia-experiment.html
And
there is even more commentary that you can read here:
https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/06/ufos-never-ending-saga.html
With
all that background, it will be easier to understand the discussion about the
Allende Letters and how the Varo edition of the book came to be. Allende, who
was born Carl Allen, had bought a copy (and yes, I am assuming that he bought
the copy) of Jessup’s book and then filled it with annotations about his
beliefs and theories as they might have been postulated by three men rather
than one. Because of the nature of the book and because of those notations, and
because of the letters, all of which ended up in the hands of several Naval
officers, the nature and tone of the book changed. Blair suggested that this
made the book better because of the hint of authenticity buried in those
annotations. I found that to be an interesting remark.
Anyway,
we learn of Blair’s quest to find the rarest UFO book, which is an original copy
of the Varo edition. I, of course, have a xerox copy of the book and I know the
provenance of it. Sidney Sherby, who was one of the Naval officers responsible
for it, loaned me a copy of the Varo edition if I had a way to, well, copy it.
I did and I did. This is a mock up of one of the pages from the book so that
you can see what was done.
The annotations in the book were not as neatly done as this. |
https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2006/08/disappearing-aircraft-part-1-stardust.html
Anyway,
it turns out that Blair hadn’t conducted an in-depth investigation of the
Allende Letters case, but he was able to provide some interesting insights to
aspects of it. His real purpose was to find the book, which took about 35
years. He had found other copies, and I even had an edition that had been
produced by the French years ago, thought the notations were in blue rather
than the red of the Varo edition or the colored inks used by Allende. You can
see a sample of that here, courtesy of Blair:
A book annotated by Allende, but not the Jessup book. |
And
yes, I did write a magazine article about all this that Allende found and
annotated. A sample follows here:
For
those interested, I believe that provide an interesting perspective on this
narrow aspect of the UFO world.
4 comments:
Hi Kevin, I'm a huge fan of your work. I wanted to ask you a question, but I didn't see you're email listed. Thanks!
His articles in Darklore were always pretty good. If i recall he spent time out by Area 51 in the 90s. I think that story about the camo dudes with night vision goggles comes from his camping trip. Id have to go look at the article he wrote about all that in Darklore again tho. Wait, here is an excerpt from Darklore 7. https://www.dailygrail.com/2019/07/dirt-roads-to-dreamland-51-trips-to-area-51/
Hi Mr. Randle, I am a ufo books collector located in Italy and some 30 years ago I happened to find in US a copy of the Varo edition.
I thought it was one of Gray Barkers reproduction but recent comments on the topic made me wonder whether it is an original Varo one.
It is spiral bound, the spiral is plastic blue, thick, the covers are carton pale blue, no introduction by Gray Barker, text is black ink, underscores and annotations are a vivid red ink.
Letters are clear and not blurred.
Pages are thick paper, it does not seem the usual low quality typical of Saucerian publications.
I’d post photos if possible.
I’d appreciate if you could comment about the copy you saw when you met Mr. Sherby.
All the best from Italy!
Marco
Marco Mucci -
Given the description of the book you have, it seems that it is the real thing. The binding, known as a "Cerlox" was blue and the book covers were a pale blue. As you noted the text was black and the annotations and underlining was in red. Since it was decades ago that I handled the book, and I did return it to Sidney Sherby, I remember nothing about the quality of the paper. But, as I say, it seems you have the real thing.
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