Jerome Clark - UFO Encyclopedia

ABOUT THE COVER: This unique photograph details one of the unidentified flying objects that flew over Curitiba, Brazil on December 14, 1954. Photographer Maxim Cicaida of Foto Heisler photographed the objects and frightened witnesses to the phenomenon. His photographs were published by the newspaper O Estado do Paran on December 16, 1954. Cicaidas negatives were sent to the Naval School in Rio de Janeiro for analysis, but details of their findings were never released and the negatives never returned. Copies of the photographs were obtained by the newspaper, but the copies also disappeared from the archives some time later.

The UFO Encyclopedia

3rd Edition

The Phenomenon from
the Beginning

The UFO Encyclopedia

3rd Edition

The Phenomenon from
the Beginning

By Jerome Clark

615 Griswold, Ste. 901, MI 48226
Phone: 800-234-1340
www.omnigraphics.com

OMNIGRAPHICS

Angela L. Williams, Managing Editor

***

Copyright 2018 Omnigraphics

ISBN 978-0-7808-1659-6

E-ISBN 978-0-7808-1660-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Clark, Jerome, author.

Title: The UFO encyclopedia: the phenomenon from the beginning / by Jerome Clark.

Description: 3rd edition. | Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018030324 (print) | LCCN 2018035734 (ebook) | ISBN 9780780816602 (ebook) | ISBN 9780780816596 (hard cover: alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Unidentified flying objects--Encyclopedias.

Classification: LCC TL789 (ebook) | LCC TL789.C555 2018 (print) | DDC 001.94203--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018030324

Electronic or mechanical reproduction, including photography, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system for the purpose of resale is strictly prohibited without permission in writing from the publisher.

The information in this publication was compiled from the sources cited and from other sources considered reliable. While every possible effort has been made to ensure reliability, the publisher will not assume liability for damages caused by inaccuracies in the data, and makes no warranty, express or implied, on the accuracy of the information contained herein.

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the ANSI Z39.48 Standard. The infinity symbol that appears above indicates that the paper in this book meets that standard.

Printed in the United States

To my children, Alex, Evan, and Molly, who have enriched my life immeasurably, and to my beloved grandchildren, Esme and Julian, whom I hope will know more than we do

Contents

The UFO Encyclopedia

Introduction

The UFO Encyclopedia is a revised, updated omnibus third edition of a work originally published in three volumes between 1990 and 1996: UFOs in the 1980s (1990), The Emergence of a Phenomenon: UFOs from the Beginning through 1959 (1992), and High Strangeness: UFOs from 1960 through 1979 (1996); and as two volumes in 1998 as The Phenomenon From the Beginning . The 2018 edition includes almost sixty new entries, updated existing entries, and offers context for the reams of declassified UFO-related documents that have been released in the United States, Brazil, and other countries; explores secret government programs that were revealed in recent years and before; and compiles and explains the UFO phenomenon in all its aspectsthe sightings, close encounters, investigations, debates, symposia, personalities, hoaxes, debunking campaigns, and conspiracy theoriesincluding expert analysis of the UFO era (which began in the summer of 1947); new works that burst on the scene following release of Steven Spielbergs film Close Encounters of the Third Kind ; and historical context for sightings in the century and a half before the UFO era (when such sightings occurred even in the absence of a name for what was being seen)

Cross-referencing

As in previous editions, entries are extensively cross-referenced. Cross-references are indicated by boldfaced type.

Documentation

At the end of most entries is a list of source material that includes both the publications cited in the entry and related material for further reading. Biographical entries list all of the major UFO-related matter authored by the individual.

Bibliography

A bibliography listing every source used in The UFO Encyclopedia appears after the text of the volume. Books, articles, letters, government documents, and other sources of documentation are given in standard bibliographic form.

Index

An index covers persons, organizations, publications, and subjects that are discussed in The UFO Encyclopedia .

The UFO Phenomenon: A Historical Overview

The UFO phenomenon burst onto the world scene in the wake of a sighting made over the Cascade Mountains on June 24, 1947, when private pilot Kenneth Arnold spotted nine shiny discs moving in formation at something over 1,200 mph. The sighting and those that immediately followed it, in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere, inspired an anonymous headline writer to coin the phrase flying saucers. The soberer Air Force-concocted unidentified flying objects did not come into popular usage until the mid-1950s.

Phenomena that would have been called flying saucers or UFOs had they been reported much later began to show up in contemporary documents in (and on rare occasion before) the early years of the nineteenth century. The first great UFO wave occurred in the United States between late 1896 and the spring of 1897. The objects, dubbed airships, were generally thought to be somebodys secret aviation breakthrough. Some speculation, not to mention several spectacular hoaxes, linked the manifestations to extraterrestrial visitors. Sightings of such things continued all over the world, but except for those who had directly experienced them, memories faded quickly, and typically each sighting was treated as a discrete event unrelated to any larger phenomenon.

The first writer to collect reports from a wide range of sources and locations, and to see them in broad context, was the American Charles Fort (18741932), author of what is arguably the first UFO book, The Book of the Damned (1919). Two other Fort books, New Lands (1923) and Lol (1931), chronicled early UFO reports. During World War II UFOs were called foo fighters. The Allies suspected that they were devices built by the Axis powers, and the Axis powers held the opposite view. Secret Soviet missile firings were blamed, falsely as it turned out, for the ghost rockets that plagued northern Europe in 1946 and early 1947.

After the initiation of the modern UFO controversy in the summer of 1947 official investigations commenced, and the first books with flying saucers in their titles saw print in 1950. Speculation about UFOs became a national craze, with popular opinion divided between those who dismissed the phenomenon entirely (as the product of hysteria, hoaxes, and misperceptions) and those who saw it as of enormous potential significance. Some individuals became consumed with UFOs, and by the early 1950s the first UFO organizations were formed. Most were little more than saucer fan clubs, but several were disciplined, intellectually serious, and capable of sophisticated investigation and analysis. These ufologists, as they called themselves, looked askance at an emerging occult-religious movement led by contactees, who were claiming direct communication with benevolent Space Brothers and whose eccentric beliefs and antics only compounded the ridicule already surrounding the UFO question.