Category: The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers

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1999: The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers

By John A. Keel  In 1947, the editor of Amazing Stories watched in astonishment as the things he had been fabricating for years in his magazine suddenly came true! North America’s “Bigfoot” was nothing more than an Indian legend until a zoologist named Ivan T. Sanderson began collecting contemporary sightings of the creature in the early 1950s, publishing the reports in a series of popular magazine articles. He turned the tall, hairy biped into a household word, just as British author Rupert T. Gould rediscovered sea serpents in the 1930s and, through his radio broadcasts, articles, and books brought Loch Ness to the attention of the world. Another writer named Vincent Gaddis originated the Bermuda Triangle in his 1965 book, Invisible Horizons: Strange Mysteries […] Read More

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The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers 2

Actually, Palmer had accidentally tapped a huge, previously unrecognized audience. Nearly every community has at least one person who complains constantly to the local police that someone – usually a neighbor – is aiming a terrible ray gun at their house or apartment. This ray, they claim, is ruining their health, causing their plants to die, turning their bread moldy, making their hair and teeth fall out, and broadcasting voices into their heads. Psychiatrists are very familiar with these “ray” victims and relate the problem with paranoid-schizophrenia. For the most part, these paranoiacs are harmless and usually elderly. Occasionally, however, the voices they hear urge them to perform destructive acts, particularly arson. They are a distrustful lot, loners by nature, and very suspicious of […] Read More

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The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers 3

Palmer assigned artists to make sketches of objects described by readers and disc-shaped flying machines appeared on the covers of his magazine long before June 1947. So we can note that a considerable number of people – millions – were exposed to the flying saucer concept before the national news media was even aware of it. Anyone who glanced at the magazines on a newsstand and caught a glimpse of the saucers-adorned Amazing Stories cover had the image implanted in his subconscious. In the course of the two years between March 1945 and June 1947, millions of Americans had seen at least one issue of Amazing Stories and were aware of the Shaver Mystery with all of its bewildering implications. Many of these people […] Read More

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The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers 4

In June 1956, a major four-day symposium on UFOs was held in Washington, D.C. It was unquestionably the most important UFO affair of the 1950s and was attended by leading military men, government officials, and industrialists. Men like William Lear, inventor of the Lear Jet, and assorted generals, admirals, and former CIA heads freely discussed the UFO “problem” with the press. Notably absent were Ray Palmer and Donald Keyhoe. One of the results of the meetings was the founding of the National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) by a physicist named Townsend Brown. Although the symposium received extensive press coverage at the time, it was subsequently censored out of UFO history by the UFO cultists themselves – primarily because they had not participated […] Read More