X-Zone Broadcast Network - Jerry Clark

This week I discussed the UFO Encyclopedia, 3^rd Edition, with the author, Jerome (Jerry) Clark. Before we began our discussion, I mentioned that it was the 50^th anniversary of my destroying a UH-1H helicopter by triggering a land mine in South Vietnam. Knowing full well that there are many people who claim Vietnam service who were never there, and knowing some might be not believe the story, you can read it in the unit history of the 187^th Assault Helicopter Company here:

http://www.187thahc.net/Incidents/incident_69.htm

Just scroll down to May 16, and you’ll find it… and yes, this has nothing to do with UFOs and I mentioned it only because it was fifty years ago today that it happened.

But on to the UFO stuff and Jerry Clark.

Naturally, given the timing of the show, we had to mention the passing of Stan Friedman a few days earlier. I thought it important to acknowledge his passing and

Jerry Clark

we devoted the first segment of the show to that.

We did get around to talking about his UFO Encyclopedia, which is a massive resource, that is a must for anyone who is serious about UFO research. To me, one of the most important aspects of the Encyclopedia, is the list of sources at the end of each of the articles. That allows the reader to find additional information, some of it providing an opposing view or giving an alternative solution. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17940170

Although I wanted to cover the questions that readers had sent, we did run out of time. I tried to ask at least one question from each of those who supplied them. One of them concerned the airship wave of 1897. I had thought that Jerry believed there was a core of good reports that began in late 1896, but that many of the sightings in 1897 were, shall we say, imaginative. Jerry quickly corrected me.

I did go back and look at the entry from the 2^nd Edition of his Encyclopedia so that I could compare it with the latest version. The entry had evolved, and covered sightings that began in other parts of the world some fifty years earlier. It seems that the sightings involve some sort real experiences but when we reach April, 1897, it is clear that the majority of those reports are faked. I asked specifically about the Aurora, Texas, crash, which, given what we know today, is laughable, when you read the original report. I am astonished that there are those who still believe this was a real event. You can find more information about it, and the Alexander Hamilton calf-napping here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/04/aurora-texas-again.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/09/ufo-crashes-fifty-years-before-roswell.html

Jerry tells me, "The point I was trying to make about airship reports was that they were real experiences, not "real events" as you have it.  I try to make clear that radars/visuals and CE2s exemplify event anomaliess, i.e., strange things that occur within the boundaries of consensus reality, and high-strange phenomena exemplify experience anomalies, which take place in liminal space between the real and the imagined, with characteristics of each mixed together."

We also talked, briefly about contactees and abductions. Time prevented us from going into depth about these topics. I think you get a feel for where Jerry is on the topics and I do mention that George Adamski’s tales of Venus failed to account for the surface temperature that is hot enough to melt lead… not the tropic environment that so many envisioned in the 1950s.

Next up is Dr. Dan Farcas and his theory about Hyper-civilization. It is an interesting take on a number of questions about UFOs and other topics. For those who have questions, as always, append them here in the comments section and I’ll try to get them asked.

MUFON's Top 100 UFO Books

MUFON, or some members of MUFON, have come up with a list of what they think of as the one hundred top books about UFOs published over the last seventy years or so. There are some things wrong with that list that I thought I would mention, which is, of course, my opinion of what is wrong. You can see their list here:

http://micropublishingmedia.info/mufonbooks/list-mufon-top-100-books-of-all-time-2/

The first three books on this list were written by George Adamski (one with Desmond Leslie) and that makes me wonder about this. Adamski was the contactee who claimed communication with people of Venus. Tall, good looking people who apparently were worried about Earth and our warlike ways. In the 1950s and 1960s when the contactees were in their heyday, Venus was seen as a world somewhat similar to Earth except the surface was hidden in a perpetual cloud bank that suggested a steamy, jungle-like, swampy planet. Today we know the surface is hot enough to melt lead and doesn’t seem to be the likely home of any living creatures, let alone an advanced race capable of interplanetary flight. This would mean that Adamski wasn’t honest in his descriptions of Venus or in his communication with the inhabitants… his book might have been influential but it was complete fiction. Should it actually be on a serious list?

Adamski is not the only contactee represented here. Dan Fry, or should I say Doctor Dan Fry and his The White Sands Incident is on the list. Frank Stranges, or should I say Dr. Frank Stranges, is there with his Stranger at the Pentagon. I’m not sure why there are so many books by contactees who claim to have interacted with alien creatures, usually from other planets in the Solar System. I have to wonder why George van Tassel was overlooked.

Another entry that I think is questionable is The Philadelphia Experience. This is that tale we discussed a while back that is based on the hoax perpetrated by Carlos Allende or Carl Allen, depending on his mood. There has been quite a bit written about this, and it was the subject of several books, but the whole thing started when Allende (or Allen) created the letters about teleportation and Navy experiments. He even admitted the hoax and his parents and other family members confirmed the hoax. It seems that this is the fifth or sixth book of fiction to appear on the list.

This would be the same complaint about Behind the Flying Saucers. Though there has been some resurgence in the Aztec UFO crash, I believe the case has been discredited. Two of the primary sources had backgrounds that were less than sterling (though I know Frank Warren disagrees with me on that or at the very least doesn’t believe it disqualifies their testimony).

I also wonder why UFOs: God’s Chariots made the list when Erick von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods did not. I mean that if we’re going to credit someone with creating the whole ancient astronaut theory, it was von Daniken who popularized this idea though others had reported on this many years before von Daniken hit the bestseller list.

Don Keyhoe

Oh, there are some very good books on the list. David Jacob’s UFO Controversy in America seems to belong. So do the two books by J. Allen Hynek, The Hynek UFO Report and The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. And let’s not forget Allan Hendry’s The UFO Handbook. Some of Vallee’s books are there, but I wonder if they might not be overly represented. I think the same thing about Keyhoe’s books because I worry that some of the information is more speculative than factual, but then, those books were certainly influential. The same can be said for the Lorenzen’s though they sometimes let their enthusiasm for the extraterrestrial cloud their vision.

I was surprised to see Carl Sagan on the list. His book with Thornton Page, UFOs: A Scientific Debate is properly there as well. Strangely, Steven Spielberg made the list with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which is obviously a movie created for entertainment. The book based on it doesn’t add to our knowledge.

Actually, this looks more like a list someone prepared of his or her own library of UFO books. It is an eclectic mix of books that run from those that are clearly fiction (Adamski and Fry) to those that actually add something to our knowledge. I don’t know the criterion used to select the books, but it seems that it wasn’t very strict and probably had more to do with MUFON entering the book publishing business than anything else.