Find of the Day: Contactee Book

My find for the day: My Contact with Flying Saucers, by Dino Kraspedon, hard cover, for under $2.00 at the St. Vincent de Paul's.

Written in the 1950s, it's about Kraspedon's (a pseudonym) meetings with an alien from -- not Venus, which seems to be the usual, but Jupiter.

From Blue Alien: CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs

The Blue Alien the hive blog has a piece by Gerald K. Haines: CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90: A Die-Hard Issue.

UFO Era (new site)

Inside UFOlogy,a piece on a new site (for me) that posts articles, etc. on UFOs from years ago. The description reads:
UFO Era: Classic ufo files from the electronic boards of last millennium

Little guests in the Moon Palace, early 1970s


I found this on Gatochy's blog/Flicker album. Gatochy has a few blogs, devoted in some way to vintage images; some of her blogs are in Portuguese. This was a great find. I was actually looking for something else -- vintage propaganda, for my new blog (yes, I know, you don't need to say anything!) Pulp Jello. I love the art work in this.

We Have Contact!

A new website on Contactees. I like it! It's called We Have Contact! Thanks to dr. wu on the Department 47 forum for the link alert.

MIB History in America

Researcher Art Champoux has a good piece on UFO Digest on the history of MIBS in this country:Extraterrestrials in America's History.

For more interesting background on the MIBs, read William Bramley's The Gods of Eden.

Also, for a more academic look, see The "Men in Black" Experience and Tradition: Analogues with the Traditional Devil Hypothesis
by folklorist Peter M. Rojcewicz for The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 100, No. 396 (Apr. - Jun., 1987), pp. 148-160 (article consists of 13 pages) You have to be an academic or pay to get this on-line, fortunately I still have this from my college days.

Just for fun, this image of James Cagney from the classic Public Enemy, while having nothing to do with MIBs, just gives the MIBS creeps!

UFO Mystic: The Close Encounter Classification System

Greg Bishop at UFO Mystic has a good piece on Dr. Allen Hynek and the "Close Encounter Classification System."

A bit of background from Bishop's piece:

His 1972 book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry contained his proposal for a system of classifying UFO sightings. The system was envisioned as a first step in legitimizing UFO research as a valid scientific pursuit. When a witness is less than 500 feet from the observed phenomena, this was labeled a Close Encounter. The distance from the observer was important because, depending on the apparent size of the observed anomaly, details may be less obvious and mistaken for something truly unknown.

You can read the entire article here.