MAURY ISLAND, 1947
Fig. 1: Artist's conception, from Crisman/Dahl's description, of the supposed June 21, 1947 Maury Island saucers.
Fig. 2: Back cover of Amazing Stories, August 1946, almost a year before the flying saucer craze & the Maury Island hoax.
Fred Crisman had been sending "true" stories to Amazing Stories editor Ray Palmer, beginning in 1945, in an attempt to cash in on the success of the Shaver Mystery, claiming to have lost a friend while battling Shaver's "deros" in a mountain cave somewhere in Alaska, among other heroic exploits. The Maury Island hoax was Crisman's attempt to cash in on the flying disc craze. Palmer paid Kenneth Arnold $200 to investigate. Years later, Arnold & Palmer would write The Coming of the Saucers, in which we are introduced to shady guys in suits with grim warnings to the Maury Island investigators.
Another author, Gray Barker, dubbed these sharp-dressed phantoms the "Men in Black" in his 1956 book, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. Gray Barker was a prolific hoaxer himself, forging the "Straith letter" to George Adamski in 1957 & faking a saucer film in 1965.
Where did Gray get his start as a UFO journalist? Ray Palmer paid him to investigate the Flatwoods monster in West Virginia for Fate magazine in 1952. So one may judge the credibility of the Flatwoods monster and the Men in Black by considering the source.
Incidently, the Men in Black first appear before the flying disc craze in the form of mysterious phone calls to Palmer's office, warning them to back off the Shaver stories as they're getting too close to the truth. In 1947, Palmer called Crisman about his Maury Island story. He immediately recognized the voice on the other end. It was the same voice behind those phony phone calls: the Man in Black was Fred Crisman.
CONTACTEES, 1950s
Don Moore, Detroit Free Press, Nov 12, 1957:
The first famous claim of physical contact with current spacemen was Frank Scully's kidding Variety columns in 1949 and his deadpan best-seller [Behind the Flying Saucers] In 1950.
His authority was a "leading oil geophysicist" [Silas Newton] who said one of his employees, a "magnetic engineer," [Leo Gebauer] had seen crashed saucers studied by the Air Force. One saucer contained 18 little men burned black. The oil man lectured on saucers before a Denver University class. Two years later he was wanted by the Denver district attorney in an alleged $50,000 oil swindle.
As proof that the moon had breathable atmosphere, Scully quoted a 1949 telepathic travel book, 'Pioneers in Space,' by 'Prof. George Adamski of Polomar.' Adamski was not connected with Palomar Observatory: he lived down the mountain at Palomar Gardens, practicing amateur astronomy, observing and lecturing on saucers.
Adamski, whose authorized biography claims little formal education, had published a 1936 book, "Wisdom of the Masters of the Far East, Published by the Royal Order of Tibet, Compiled by Professor G. Adamski." It gave answers to religious questions, laws of cosmic brotherhood, visions, space and levitation.
In 1952 Adamski took six witnesses on a desert picnic near the Arizona border to look for saucers. His subsequent best-seller told how he approached and photographed a landed scout ship, its slight, long-haired Martian pilot in ski suit and flexible shoes warned him and the world, largely in gestures, against atom-bombing. The Martian left behind a footprint in the desert sand. Witness George Williamson poured handy plaster of Paris in the small footprint, preserving for publication a surprisingly detailed design of swastikas, dots representing planets and moons, and intricate lines and hieroglyphics. By the time Adamski published his next book, sightseers from Venus, Mars, and Saturn were reported walking city streets, conversing in fluent English, and taking him aloft in their ships for philosophical lectures reminiscent of his earlier beliefs.
Other books about personal contact with space men quickly followed, such us English thriller writer Cedric Allingham's account of a Lossiemouth, Scotland, landing. An Arizona mechanic wrote and lectured about riding with a beautiful Venusian lady captain in her "scow," a California plastic worker reported rides and telepathic talks, an auto mechanic and prospector wrote of his "Round Trip to Hell in a Flying Saucer."
An unskeptical Missourian sold souvenir tufts of hair from his Venusian dog. New Jersey sign painter Howard Menger described TV-like screenings of Venus by courtesy of a 500-year-old beauty; one interplanetary visitor stayed for ham and eggs. Another saucer-seer shied away from a landed space ship when the pilot warned: "Don't touch that, pal, it's hot".
George Van Tassel, who recalls being lifted into a hovering saucer by a gravity nullifying beam, conducts the annual Inter planetary Spacecraft Convention at his California desert airport (1,500 attended last May). He announced he was running for President in 1960 at the request of the saucer people (from other planets).
Many who write and lecture about their contacts seem sincerely self-convinced as they relay cosmic advice from the "guardians" and "celestials" to the troubled atomic earth. Double Talk Scientific information vouchsafed for by the superhuman space travelers, however, is strangely full of elementary errors like self-luminous planets, lunar air, magnetic and gravitational "lines" of force. Similar science fiction double talk marks the method of communication - telepathy, "radi-esthesia," "conoscope," crystal balls, "telonic" telescope, electronic devices and strange magnetic machines.
Messages were supposedly recorded on a sealed magnetic tape by one Mon-Ka, head of Mars, giving the space confederation's advice to Earth and promising a broadcast from his ship over Los Angeles Nov. 7, 1956. Radio stations and skywatchers stood by on that date, but Mon-Ka didn't show.
Two boatloads of Chicago saucer fans cruised Lake Michigan last April, flashing light beam messages to the night sky and lighting flares. An ordinary shooting star was observed.
...Some saucer believers say there is a sinister conspiracy of "silencers" hiding an interplanetary secret and muzzling persons who learn the truth. Many believe military security is concealing new secret devices or startling developments in magnetism, gravitation, and space travel. Others think civilian research can help solve admittedly puzzling sky phenomena.
SOCORRO, 1964
"[Philip] Klass found numerous inconsistencies in [Lonnie Zamora's] story. Despite the loud noise and brilliant flame which Zamora said drew his attention, a couple living a few hundred yards from the site had noticed nothing unusual. Photographs show that despite the reported ‘intense flame’ under the craft, there was no more singeing of a bush and a clump of grass than could have been produced with a cigarette lighter. The reputed pad prints were spaced irregularly; one looked as though it had been formed by moving a rock, while another appeared to have been dug by a small shovel. No one other than Zamora noticed the noisy, flaming craft depart over US Highway 60, although a gas station attendant reported that a customer told him he had seen a police car going out after a flying craft that was coming in to land. But Zamora said he did not see the craft until it was already on the ground.
"Such blatant inconsistencies point not merely to a misconception, but to a hoax. Klass noted that, by curious coincidence, the local mayor, who is also the town banker, happened to own the site on which the alleged UFO landed. Socorro gained considerable publicity from the case, with an inevitable improvement in the tourist trade." - Ian Ridpath, Messages From The Stars, 1978
CASH-LANDRUM, 1980
This alleged encounter seems to be influenced by Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), which was re-released (the "Special Edition") in December of 1980. The incident was reported to have occurred on December 29th of that year.
Note: the following quotes are paraphrases culled from multiple Betty Cash & Vicki Landrum interviews.
1. "There was a light above our car."
2. "It caused radiation burns."
3. "I said to Colby, don't be afraid. If someone comes out of the light, it'll be Jesus."
4. "The craft was shaped like an upright diamond with the sharp edges cut off."
5. "The military arrived."
6. "We counted 28 helicopters."
7. "The government is covering it up."
Another likely influence: a 1977 In Search of... episode featuring recent (1975) UFOs:
1. Big Chimney WV (diamond-shaped)
2. Mellon WI (blocking a country road)
3. Medford MI (with flames shooting out)
The episode includes discussion of radiation & burns left by saucers.
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