Isaac Koi - New Uploads

The section of the online archive containing UFO articles from mainstream American magazines has grown again today, thanks mainly to scanning by veteran American ufologist Barry Greenwood. 

The additions include several articles from "Science & Mechanics" (including material on alleged UFO sightings by astronauts), plus material from "Movieland", "Minutes" (including views expressed by J Allen Hynek), "Valor" and "Voice of Faith".

The "Minutes" article containing views by J Allen Hynek includes the following:

"Unfortunately, much of what is printed [about UFOs] contains more fiction than science.  The most deplorable aspect of this sensationalism is that it creates misconceptions about a serious problem. The public is concerned and wants to know what it can believe. Too often it is led astray by garbled or false stories in the news media".

Larraine Cilia is the president of the "UFO and Paranormal Research Society Australia" ["UFO-PRSA"]. Larraine has kindly given me permission today to upload searchable copies of that Society's publication, "The Phenomenon Times". 

I've obtained copies of 19 issues from an archive of that Society's website and Neville Smith has very promptly provided copies of a further 7 issues to me.

I think that this may be a complete set (but will, of course, be happy to add any further issues that emerge).

I've added this newsletter to the relatively large section of the online archive relating to Australian UFO newsletters/magazines (much of which arose from a previous successful collaborative effort between Keith Basterfield and others in Australia, me, and the AFU in Sweden).  I'm attempting to obtain permissions for uploading some further Australian material at the moment, particularly from Robert Frola.

I've created a new section for UFO articles from UK mainstream magazines in my online archive and uploaded (thanks to Fran Ridge of the NICAP.org website) a scan of a "RAF Flying Review" article about UFOs from 1957.

If anyone in the UK has already scanned any significant articles on UFOs from UK mainstream magazines (particularly any significant ones from, say, the 1940s-1960s) then please let me know so that I don't waste time reinventing the wheel.  

The USA section relating to mainstream magazine articles also continues to grow, with the addition of about 25 articles from "Time" scanned by the AFU in Sweden and also an early article on foo fighters (the "American Legion" article by Jo Chamberlin).

(Again, these new sections for material from mainstream magazines are separate from the existing large sections in the online archive of UFO newsletters from the USA and UFO newsletters from the UK).

Another batch of 1950s UFO articles from various mainstream French magazines is now online. I've been able to upload these today due to further work by French researcher Patrice Seray.  

(Patrice Seray and Pierre Lagrange have been having a friendly competition this week to see which of them can add the most to this part of the online archive...).

This further batch includes material from "Le Pelerin" (from about 7 different issues), "Aviation", "Noir et Blanc", "Semaine du Monde", "Spoutnik".

(Again, this new section for articles from mainstream French magazines is separate from the previous - and currently much larger - section for French UFO newsletters).

The new folder for articles from mainstream French magazines is growing rapidly, with further material from various researchers (particularly French researchers Patrice Seray and Pierre Lagrange). The "Paris Match" folder has grown substantially in the last few hours and I have uploaded new folders for UFO articles from "Voila", "Point de Vue", "Radio Cinema", "Meccano", "Sciences et Mecaniques". 

Thanks to Patrice Seray and others in France, UFO articles from various mainstream French magazines are now being added to a new section of my online archive.  (A large collection of French UFO magazines and newsletters is already included in a separate section of the online archive. Most of the main French UFO magazines and newsletters are in that section, thanks to the efforts of the AFU, Gilles Durand of SCEAU, Patrice Seray, Pierre Lagrange, Peter El Baze and others in my informal network of UFO groups and researchers scanning and helping to get relevant permissions).

I have now uploaded several articles from "Science et Vie", "Paris Match" and "Le Scooter".

I note in passing that an article in "Paris Match" in 1953 stated "for Americans, flying saucers have become an obsession"...

Thanks to scanning efforts by various researchers around the globe, the online archive continues to grow rapidly.  The latest uploads of 1950s articles about UFOs from mainstream magazine include articles from "The New Yorker", "Pic" and "Coronet" (thanks to various UFO researchers and groups, particularly Pierre Lagrange in France and Mikhail Gershtein in Russia).  

I'll probably extend this little project beyond the USA today by adding folders for articles from mainstream magazines in other countries, probably starting with the United Kingdom, Canada and France.  (Of course, the online archive that I've been developing already includes large folders of UFO magazines/newsletters from those countries already - but I want to keep individual articles from mainstream publications from each country separate from the collections of UFO/Fortean newsletters).

I don't usually post when a gap or two gets filled in a previously announced incomplete upload, or if a better copy of an issue/article is uploaded. 

However, this gradual filling of gaps is a significant part of the international collaborative work done by an informal global network of over 100 UFO groups/researchers in relation to the scanning project so I occasionally post examples of such work. 

I thought I'd just post today a few examples of gaps filled in the last 72 hours to thank those involved and to highlight the global nature of the scanning project.  

(1) American archivist Rod Dyke has supplied 2 of the missing 100 or so issues of the Italian UFO periodical "UFO Express" - issues 099 and 127. (The previously uploaded issues were all from the AFU in Sweden).

(2) Another American, Barry Greenwood, has supplied complete copies of the 2 articles from "True" that I had previously highlighted as being incomplete.

(3) Russian researcher Mikhail Gershtein has provided a better copy of the May 1952 "Popular Science" article.  I also located another 9 or so articles from "Male" (mainly by John Keel) that had been supplied by Mikhail Gershtein in Russia - they are also now online.

(4) French researcher Pierre Lagrange has provided more issues of, and some better copies of, articles from various mainstream American magazines - including "Life" and the "Saturday Evening Post". 

(I've also received material today from various other countries and will be uploading it this weekend).

Yesterday, Tony Eccles (a British UFO researcher) kindly donated copies of "The Researcher" publication (of which he was the primary editor) to the AFU. Today, searchable copies of "The Researcher" are freely available online - with his permission.

Tony edited most issues of "The Researcher", with the final few issues being edited by the late Mark Rosney.  

"The Researcher" was associated with "MARA", which was the "Merseyside Anomalies Research Association".  It focused mainly on UFOs, with articles featuring various UFO incidents (especially from the United Kingdom, including Rendlesham and the "Knutsford Flying Triangle") plus some articles on various other "anomalies", including Alien Big Cats, Remote Viewing and parapsychology.  It also included some articles on mind control and Jack the Ripper.

Tony has commented that "The Researcher" was "supposed to be a research mag but it became a mix of scepticism and belief. MARA started off as NARO members but who had a Liverpool base in common". He recalled that "One of the issues is concerned with Chinese lanterns which had only just became popular, so we had been puzzled by these lights for some time".

"Popular Science" magazine has published a number of UFO articles from the 1950s onwards.  

These have included material on Area 51, SETI and the Rendlesham Forest incident, plus material on skeptical theories regarding UFOs (including by Donald Menzel regarding mirages).

Thanks to the AFU in Sweden and Mikhail Gershtein in Russia, scans of these articles are now available.

I'm not sure whether to include the most recent material (although it seems common to see copies of news articles posted on UFO websites, Facebook etc so perhaps I'm worrying over nothing...).

Click on the image below for a link to the relevant folder I've created on the AFU's website.

"True" magazine published some of the most influential articles about UFOs during the 1950s and 1960s, including articles by Donald Keyhoe and Edward Ruppelt (particularly in the January 1950 and May 1954 issues respectively).  

The same magazine also published a significant skeptical article: J P Cahn's article "Flying Saucer Swindles" in the August 1956 issue which focused on the Silas Newton hoax.

This magazine was another of the magazines featuring UFOs in that period that was explicitly aimed at men. The title of the magazine was "TRUE : The Man's Magazine".  I'll refrain from posting here some examples of the sexist cartoons in that publication, including one of a father telling a boy "You must remember your mother is a wonderful woman - for a woman" (in the January 1950 issue that featured Keyhoe's influential UFO article). Not exactly politically correct, nor hilarious.

Thanks to Russian researcher Mikhail Gershtein and French researcher Pierre Lagrange for most of the scans of this American publication. 

I've also included some material from Jan Aldrich's "Project 1947" website in relation to two articles (marked INCOMPLETE) pending full scans being obtained.  (Jan has kindly given me permission to include some relevant material from his website in the archive, but I need to speak with Jan about the extent of that permission since I have a few ideas...).

(The publishers of True also published several issues of a publication devoted solely to UFOs, the True Report on Flying Saucers.  I'll deal with them separately).

Click on the image below for a link to the folder containing relevant articles.

In 2018, I requested permission from Walter Kelch to upload his "Magazin fur Grenzwissenschaften" [Magazine for Frontier Sciences].  He published that magazine in Germany in the 1990s.

In one interview Kelch stated that this magazine "dealt with the fringes of science".

A few days ago, Hans-Werner Peiniger let me know that he now had permission from Walter Kelch for me to upload scans of this magazine.

So, thanks again to scanning by the AFU in Sweden, most issues of "Magazin fur Grenzwissenschaften" have now been scanned. I have added these scans to the folder for German magazines that I previously created on the AFU website (with considerable help from various researchers in Germany, particularly Danny Ammon).

I hope that some German colleagues can help fill in the few gaps. Hans-Werner Peiniger has already offered to scan copies and make them available to me, so I'm confident the gaps will be filled soon.

"Life" magazine published several articles about UFOs that gained considerable attention. The cover of the issue dated 7 April 1952 featured Marilyn Monroe on the cover and also a statement that "There is a case for Interplanetary Saucers". That article contained an article by H B Darrach and Robert Ginna entitled "Have We Visitors From Space?" which highlighted the fact that "The Air Force is now ready to concede that many saucer and fireball sightings still defy explanation".

A subsequent issues (dated 9 June 1952) contained a follow-up article by Robert Ginna which reported that the original article "provoked a tremendous barrage of letters".  That article commented that many readers "expect a landing momentarily". It noted that some still argued that the saucers were "super-secret US weapons" but that the original article had "dismissed this argument on the ground that the government would hardly allow one branch of the service to spend vast sums of money on a saucer investigation which would have the primary effect of fooling another government branch even more completely than the enemy". 

I have created a folder for UFO articles from Life magazine.

Click on the image below for a link to that folder. 

Hopefully sexism has reduced in publications relating to UFOs since the 1950-1960s.  Back then, it was fairly common for UFO articles to be published in magazines such as "Sir!", which had the tagline "A Magazine For Males".  

I've been surprised how many of the UFO articles I've seen from magazines in the 1950s-1960s time period were aimed explicitly at men and had titles such as "Male", "Man to Man" and "For Men Only". A considerable number also appeared in magazines such as Playboy.  

I'm not sure what this says (if anything) about the sociology/demographics of the UFO readership at that time - or today.

Personally, I find some of the sociological issues relating to UFOs, and ufologists, to be pretty interesting and would like to see more material by academics looking into these issues .  I wrote an item back in 2014 on the PhD dissertations I'd found relating to ufology [see "Dr Who?? : UFO PhD dissertations - free online"- most of which had a sociological or psychological focus.  I may revisit that project now that I have more material and connections. 

Some of the pre-1964 material is, I think, now in the public domain under relevant copyright rules in the USA, but I'm slightly hesitant to post that material due to the nature of the covers of the relevant magazines.  (As some of you may have noticed, I tend to use covers of the publications when sharing material, to indicate at a glance the content of my post to those scrolling down a page).

For now, I've just uploaded a sample from a single publication - "Sir!" - with thanks to Mikhail Gershtein for these scans.

Chile section : "NOUFA" added

Raúl Núñez Gálvez has kindly me permission to upload copies of his "NOUFA" newsletter [the "Noticiero Ufologico Autonomo"], with thanks to Pablo Petrowitsch and Diego Zuniga for their help and advice in relation to material from Chile.

The Dogma Cero blog has commented that this Chilean UFO newsletter has been produced with "dedication and diligence" by Raul. 

I have added the first issues 75 of NOUFA so far.

(I think there may be a few more recent ones. I have found references on Raul's blog to issues up to 83, so will try to get issues 76 onwards very soon and add them).

Italy section : "UFO Express" added

Daniela Giorfano has kindly me to upload searchable scans of her "UFO Express" newsletter.]

Daniela (a former Miss Italy) published this newsletter in the 1980s-1990s. It largely comprised newspaper cuttings about UFOs from Italian newspapers and also American newspaper cuttings with Italian translations.

Daniela has also written a book which has been published in English, "The Dream Visitor" - available on Amazon. The book was also published last year in Italian with the title "Tre Vite in Una". A summary on Amazon includes the following: "I have seen children move things with their minds. I have seen the unexplained flying in the night sky. And most importantly, I have been visited by someone-something-I cannot ignore and given by him/it a message I must convey".

Unfortunately, the obvious candidates in my informal network (including the AFU in Sweden, Barry Greenwood in the USA, and Edoardo Russo in Italy) only had a handful of issues of this publication. So, at present I have only been able to upload about 7 issues out of the first 125 issues (with thanks to the AFU for 6 scans and Barry Greenwood for 1 scan).  

I'm fairly optimistic that starting the uploading of this publication (with Daniela's kind permission) is likely to prompt others in Italy to come forward with some further scans, which I will of course upload to the folder containing the existing scans.

A special issue of "Look" magazine entitled "Flying Saucers" was published in 1967.  

That special issue included one of the few instances of material relating to Roswell published between 1947 and the late 1970s, in addition to material about Kenneth Arnold, the Mantell incident and Dr Hynek. It included numerous photographs including "rare color photographs" of various "UFOs".

About 5 years ago, I had some contact with a Reddit user ("OK200") who had helpfully scanned that special issue. 

At that time, I was reluctant to post a searchable PDF version for copyright reasons. However, looking into this more recently, I think that the publishers surrendered their copyright in at least the images in this magazine (and possibly the text) to the US Government and a lot of the photos/material from Look is now on Government websites. Also, OK200's scans of this publication have been online for the last 5 years without any apparent problem. So, I have now uploaded a PDF version of this publication. 

I have also uploaded scans of several UFO articles from other issues of Look magazine, from between 1952 and 1968. Some of those are incomplete.

Click on the image below for a link to the relevant folder.

Barry Greenwood, the veteran American UFO researcher, has kindly helped fill in the gaps in several rare UFO newsletters from the UK and the USA.

USA section - "Searchlight" (Tim Beckley, 1960s)

Barry has provided: 

Volume 1 Number 1, 

Volume 3 Number 9, 

Volume 3 Number 12.

(31 other issues were previously uploaded, with permission from its editor - Tim Beckley).

USA section - "Interplanetary News Service" (Tim Beckley, 1960s)

Barry has provided Interplanetary News Service Supplement No 1.

(11 other issues were previously uploaded, with permission from its editor - Tim Beckley).

UK section - WYUFORG News  (West Yorkshire, UK, 1980s)

Barry has provided issues 1, 2 and 3 of this publication.

(Issues 4, 5 and 6 were previously uploaded - with permission from its publishers, Paul Bennett and Martin Dagless).

Fran Ridge (of the excellent Nicap.org website) has kindly given me permission to upload scans of his "UFO Intelligence" newsletter. Fran published this newsletters in the USA in the 1990s.

This newsletters included material on Fran's "MADAR" UFO detection system. He described his "Multiple Anomaly Detection And Recording" system as a "magnet variometer detection unit with a light beam scanning method" built in 1970 and "equipped with a mechanical chart recorder and an alarm system, as well as a stop-clock". He stated that the "main purpose was to provide 'early warning' of a UFO presence within the system's umbrella" which was approximately a 5-mile radius.

The AFU in Sweden has scanned 12 issues.  Barry Greenwood in the USA has a few additional issues, so I'll ask him if he can scan those.

This is the latest addition to the USA folder I've created on the AFU's website.

With thanks again particularly to Ukrainian researcher Igor Kalytyuk, 5 more sets of Russian UFO magazines are now online. The relevant collections of magazines are:

(1) "Ekspres UFO" [Express UFO]

(2) "Kontakter" [Contactee 47]

(3) "Mir Nepoznannogo" [World of the Unknown, AIAUFO]

(4) "Neyadomoye" [Unknown]

(5) "Pyatoye Izmereniye" [The Fifth Dimension, Ufologists Club Penza]

Igor Kalytyuk kindly provided the scans of these publications and has been working to liaise with others in Eastern Europe to obtain relevant permissions/material. Igor Kalytyuk has let me know that it is okay for me to upload these scans.

(A growing number of others in Russia and Eastern Europe have been joining my informal network and providing UFO material, more of which will hopefully be online soon).

The rapidly growing folder that I created on the AFU's website for Russian UFO magazines is at the link below. I may add a separate folder soon for Russian UFO documents, but for various reasons such documents are not always easy to deal with.