THE NEVER-ENDING STORY

Lochlainn Seabrook, Mysterious Invaders: Twelve Famous 20th-Century Scientists Confront the UFO Phenomenon, Sea Raven Press, 2024.

On 29 July 1968, the US House of Representatives Committee on Science and Astronautics, held a symposium on UFOs. It was instigated by Congressman and NICAP member J. Edward Roush, and he introduced the session by saying this was to be an assessment of the UFO problem by six experts, to enable better judgements about future avenues of research.

The chairman of the committee, George P. Miller was quick to point out that they were not here to criticise the Air Force’s UFO investigations, instead they were here to look at the matter from different perspectives and viewpoints.

The six experts were Dr J. Allen Hynek, Dr James E. McDonald, Carl Sagan, Robert L. Hall, Dr James A. Harder and Robert M. L. Baker Jr. All of them were generally in favour of conducting further UFO research. And note, there is not a sceptic in the house. Out of them McDonald gave the longest and most impressive case for future research.

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PASSING ON

Judith Flanders, Rites of Passage: Death and Mourning in Victorian Britain, Picador, 2024.

‘Don’t be so morbid!’ is usually the reaction to any spontaneous discussion of death and dying in the 21st century. For example, bringing up the subject of funerals arrangements while in good health is thought of as the province of those guilt-inducing TV advertisements for funeral plans, themselves usually shown on channels dedicated to old stuff for wrinklies. 

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THE KEY TO KEYHOE

Linda Powell.  Against the Odds. Major Donald E. Keyhoe and his Battle to End UFO Secrecy, Anomalist Books, 2023.

To those of us who just think of Donald Keyhoe as the author of some of the earliest and most important UFO books, and as a director of NICAP, this biography gives us an excellent insight into his early career and how he came to be involved with this subject.

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DOUBTFUL ORIGINS

Simon Webb. The Origins of Wizards, Witches and Fairies. Pen and Sword Books, 2023

This book contains a mass of information and conjecture; all of it diverting, some of it convincing, much of it discredited. The author takes time (55 pages to be precise) to set the context, and to introduce his wide-ranging selection of traditions, concepts and images common across Northern Europe. 

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SEX, SATANISM AND EATING ONIONS

Perttu Häkkinen and Vesa Iitti. Lightbringers of the North: Secrets of the Occult Tradition of Finland. Inner Traditions, 2022.

This enjoyable read has in my view been given the wrong title. I would suggest 'Riotous Assembly' for what follows is just that: a smorgasbord of short biographies mostly from the twentieth century of some of Finland's most notorious characters involved in one form or another in the occult. 

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ALICE IN UFOLAND

D.W. Pasulka, Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences, St Martin’s Essentials, 2023.

Pasulka, who is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, regards the belief in UFOs as a ‘nascent religiosity’ and that the perception of the subject is mediated and manipulated by the media and unnamed agents of disinformation.

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TESTING THE LIMITS

Joanne Morreale. The Outer Limits. Wayne State University Press, 2022.

 

“There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity....

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SHADOWS OF THE FUTURE?

Sam Knight. The Premonitions Bureau, Faber and Faber Ltd, 2022.

This is that rarest of literary animals – a book about what might loosely be called the paranormal that not only made it into the mainstream, but received excellent reviews from those who would normally be complete cynics unwilling to soil their eyes on any such work. Sam Knight, however, has cracked it.

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TO WIDDICOMBE AND BEYOND

Mark Norman. The Folklore of Devon. Exeter University Press, 2023.

There is a certain journalist/commentator who delights in informing us every April 23rd that St George, the Patron Saint of England, "is ackcherly Turkish". I wonder what he would make of the possibility that the old Devonian folk song character Uncle Tom Cobley is ackcherly German?

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STONE LUKEWARM

Katy Soar [Editor] Circles of Stone: Weird Tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites. British Library 2023.

Katy Soar’s persuasive introduction to Circle of Stones made me pick up a collection of stories exploring the native (wraith-like) stones that cover the British Isles. They are rich objects for human sacrifice, devil worship, pantheistic cults and magic. Stones are ambiguous and mysterious. 

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