Space Brothers & Secret Agents

If there's one thing we can say for certain about the early Contactees, it's that their stories of alien interaction were profoundly weird and controversial. Some might even say wholly unbelievable.

But, might there have been an underlying reason for the stories being so controversial? Could that reason have been to try and make the UFO issue look ridiculous in the eyes of the public and the media?

In other words, could it be the case that some of the Contactees were actually secret tools of the Government, working to an agenda to deflect people away from certain aspects of the UFO problem and swamp the "good" material with a wealth of hard-to-believe tales of trips to the Moon and Venus?

As my latest post at Mysterious Universe notes, such a possibility should not be ruled out...

Allingham & Kraspedon: Back In Print

Good news for fans of Contactee cases both old and massively controversial! Tim Beckley's Global Communications company has just released a new book. Titled From the Golden Age of Flying Saucers, it contains reprints of two absolute classic Contactee titles: Flying Saucer From Mars by Cedric Allingham, and Dino Kraspedon's My Contact With Flying Saucers.

As devotees of all-things long-haired and Space-Brotherly will know, both Allingham and Kraspedon were highly intriguing characters - for very different reasons!

But, if you're not aware of the reasons behind those controversies, well, you're in for a big treat because the book contains new Introductions to each title, that provide some highly entertaining and juicy nuggets of data on the pair!

Here's the link to the book, which is now available on Amazon.

And, since it has been years since I read these definitively odd classics (which Tim Beckley generously mailed to me), I'm going to re-read the whole thing, and will be doing a big online review when I have done so.

A Q&A on the Space-Brothers

The latest edition of UFO Magazine (Vol. 24, No. 2) includes an extensive Q&A with me on the subject of my book, Contactees.

Space Brother Synchronicity

Do you ever get the feeling that reality isn't what you think it is? Of course you do! And so do I. And here's one example of why I know all is not as it seems, and it has a direct bearing upon the Contactee/Space-Brother controversy...

Dr. Esoterica and Contactees

The slightly mysterious "Dr. Esoterica" reviews my Contactees book and says:

"Nick Redfern’s Contactees: A History of Alien-Human Interaction is both profoundly enlightening and entertaining. It is also an indispensable historical study based on previously unavailable primary source documentation. The author is to be commended and we recommend the present title without reservation."

Here's the link to the Doc's full review...

Desmond Leslie: A New Book

For anyone interested in the Contactee movement in general, and the saga of George Adamski in particular, there's a new book that you'll definitely want to get hold of. The author is Robert O'Byrne, and its title is Desmond Leslie 1921 -2001: The Biography of an Irish Gentleman.

Leslie was, of course, the co-author with George Adamski on his famous (or perhaps infamous!) book, Flying Saucers Have Landed.

Here's the blurb for the book, which looks to be massively entertaining and informative:

"When a guidebook to Ireland described his family as being 'mildly eccentric', Desmond Leslie took offence and wrote to the publishers informing them that, on the contrary, the Leslies were very eccentric. Throughout his life, he maintained a reputation for unconventionality - hardly surprising when one of his godparents was a noted Satanist who kept a pet parrot in his trousers.

"Desmond Leslie more than matched this behaviour: one of the most popular items on YouTube is a BBC broadcast showing him punching the critic Bernard Levin on live television more than forty years ago. Thanks to his 1953 bestseller "The Flying Saucers Have Landed", co-written with George Adamski, Desmond Leslie remains a cult figure among UFOlogists.

"After serving as a Spitfire pilot during the Second World War, he settled in London and embarked on a career as a writer, producing a string of innovative and critically acclaimed novels, one of which anticipated George Orwell's 1984 by a year.

"At the same time, he worked as a film producer and screenwriter and composed music for film and television in the second half of the 1950s. In 1963 he returned to Ireland to live at Castle Leslie in County Monaghan, and for the rest of his life devoted himself to protecting the family estate, today one of Ireland's finest country-house hotels.

"Son of writer Sir Shane Leslie and brother of historian Anita Leslie, Desmond Leslie has never before been the subject of a biography, which includes personal recollections by family members and by the well-known writer Herbie Brennan. In portraying the Anglo-Irish during the second half of the twentieth century, as they struggled to find a new role in a rapidly changing world, Robert O'Byrne offers a wholly engaging case study of his propulsive and charismatic subject.

"Robert O'Byrne, journalist and art historian, is author of The Irish Georgian Society: A Celebration (2008), Dublin's Gaiety Theatre (2007), Mind Your Manners (2004), Living in Dublin (2003) and Hugh Lane 1875-1915 (2000)."

Angelucci & LSD

Over at his blog, Mark Pilkington - author of the book Mirage Men - discusses the strange case of friend to the Space-Brothers, Orfeo Angelucci (whose story is told in my Contactees book).

As Mark notes, Angelucci recorded in his 1959 book Son of the Sun a weird experience that occurred in 1954, when he may have been the unwitting player in some bizarre MKUltra-type experiment - one that had everything to do with clandestine psy-ops, concerns about Communism, and nothing to do with literal aliens.

As Mark says: "So how’s this for a temporary working hypothesis? Adamski and others were claiming alien contacts and espousing anti-American beliefs. Meanwhile Orfeo Angelucci and fellow contactee George Van Tassel, both employed at one of the US’s most advanced aircraft development plants, also claimed contacts with space beings. Angelucci, as it happens, had previously sparked a police hunt after launching balloons containing the aspergillus clavatus mould, a fact sure to have drawn the FBI’s attentions. Were Angelucci and Van Tassel given some kind of hallucinogen, deployed as a ‘truth drug’ to quiz them about possible Communist or Soviet sympathies and, perhaps to pump them full of extraterrestrial anti-Commie rhetoric for good measure?"

And here's Mark's full post, which I strongly urge you to read!