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Coming July 2014: Nick Redfern and Close Encounters of the Fatal Kind

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Gene Steinberg

Gene Steinberg

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He's back. On July 3, 2014, we'll be recording an episode featuring the ever-prolific Nick Redfern, who will be discussing his latest book, "Close Encounters of the Fatal Kind: Suspicious Deaths, Mysterious Murders, and Bizarre Disappearances in UFO History."

Is there a plot to cut short the lifespans of people heavily involved in UFO research?

Feel free to post your questions here.
 
Mr. Redfern,
Throughout your years of research into the UFO field have you ever felt in fear for your life or loved ones. Has anyone ever threatened or intimidated you to the point of possibly walking away from the field? If so, who?
 
Mr. Redfern - thank you for coming on the show once again, and for your work in the paranormal and UFO fields.

My question is this; do you think that the idea of UFO investigators being targeted by deadly external forces is legitimate or an artifact of heroism inspired by the Fox Moulder wannabes out there? After, the idea that you're life is in danger because of what you know is thrilling and exciting, but the lives of most individuals who take up the mantel of "UFOlogist" or "paranormal investigator" tend to be rather boring. I, myself, lead a rather mundane life in the field of computers, however I have investigated the paranormal (aka, ghost hunting) for over 7 years, now. I've never once felt my life was in danger, either by the phenomenon itself, or some officiating force that governs the phenomena.

However, I've talked to several fellow researchers, both from the haunting and UFO fields of investigation, who believe they're lives or sanity was at risk (John Zaffis, Stan Romanek, etc..). I've never seen any credible evidence of this and my honest belief is that people exaggerate or inflate any threats or "paranormal dangers" for the sake of making themselves out to be some sort of hero or champion for a cause, (which to me makes those individuals pretty pathetic). Do you believe this is the case or have you found genuine evidence of shorter life-spans within the population who call themselves "paranormal investigators?"

*Sheepishly* - Was Stanton Freidman's recent heart attack a result of microwave bombardment or psycho-reactive drugs.....or too many hot dogs and red meat?

If you and Nick Pope, (your closest dashing-Englishman-UFOresearcher competition,) were being chased by Men in Black, presumably to be eliminated via a staged suicide, would you trip Pope so he was caught first, or would you just try to outrun him? Pope seems pretty scrawny and I have odds that you could outdistance him in an out-right sprint. Do you think the MiB's would be content with the elimination of one UFO researcher with a compelling British accent or would you believe you were still in danger should Pope take a 10-story swan dive?
 
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Your opinion on the Zigmund Adamski case ?

It would seem "they" got the wrong Adamski.
 
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Just bought an e-version of the book and will cram to read it by the 3rd. :). I have a few more non-specific questions (meta data), but wanted to see if the book covered them, first.
 
1. Harold Dahl: did the craft kill his dog?
2. Fred Crisman: is there any proof besides what Kenn Thomas says Crisman was on the scene of the Kennedy assassination?
3. Jim Keith: did he know too much about giant red bigfeet and the germ-warfare aspect of cattle mutilations?
4. Grace Moore and the crowned prince of Norway: assassinated in 1947 by ET?
5. D B Cooper: sucked aboard a UFO in mid-air?
6. Lieutenant Frank M. Brown and captain William Davidson of Maury infamy: too dumb to jump out of a burning plane with at least 10 minutes before airworthiness was compromised?
7. Marconi deaths morphing into biochemists' deaths: ET nano-sludge from South Sandwich Islands responsible? Was Thatcher really ready to nuke Argentina over a few hundred sheep?
8. Thule AB "broken arrows": was someone getting too close to that secret ET icecave in east, west or north Greenland?
9. Are or were Strieber, Moseley, Shaver, Geller protected by ET and thus fated to die of old age?
10. etc.
 
D.B. Cooper being sucked in by a u.f.o. ? I didn't even know that was a thing. Was there something you came across that promoted this idea?
 
What's your opinion of the Colares, Brazil UFO flap of 1977? This was a case that Jaques Vallee covered extensively and involved UFOs firing on people with a kind of laser-weapon. At least one death occurred.
 
Hi Nick :) How the F do you churn out book after book, all of which are fun, great to read , and have boatloads of info in them..I mean, how do you do it..coffeine, nicotine, beer ? Keep on doing it.
 
What about the Gorman "dogfight" with the mini UFO with multiple witnesses? Did the UFO let him win, or at least walk away with his life?
 
Mr. Redfern we're gonna have a close encounter of the cancelation kind if we don't take this break.

Okay, serious now. :-)


Mr. Redfern- what was the explanation given for the 2 women and young boy who got radiation sickness after seeing a ufo?
 
Let's consider people who indisputably HAVE been killed by huge conspiracies for revealing secrets. For example, informers murdered by the Italian and Sicilian Mafia for are typically found with very characteristic mutilations, such as their throat cut and their tongue poking out of the wound - the so-called "necktie" - or their genitals cut off and stuffed in their mouth. This sends a very clear message. On the other hand, if a huge organization such as a repressive government is trying to prevent information from getting out, rather than punishing somebody who has already talked, the usual method is to kill the person as quickly and efficiently as possible, ideally causing them to simply vanish. If this isn't possible, the victim is often killed in such a way as to suggest natural causes or suicide, hopefully preventing anyone from looking into it too deeply.

In other words, if you know too much, you'll die before you can talk, and nobody will know you've been murdered. Even if your death is suspicious, it won't draw attention to whatever it was that you were about to reveal - that's the whole point. But if you're killed as a punishment for having already talked, your death serves no purpose unless other people know beyond any shadow of a doubt why you were killed, and are therefore deterred from doing the same thing.

Deaths in the UFO and paranormal community do not seem to conform to this pattern. People who have been loudly saying all they know for years, sometimes decades, without really adding anything new die in natural or unfortunate ways which only suggest that a vast conspiracy was responsible if you're already paranoid. They haven't been prevented from revealing anything, and their deaths don't send a clear message. So what's the point?

Also, as Polterwurst has already pretty much asked, if the gold standard of truth in UFO literature is that the author was allegedly murdered by the US government and/or space aliens for knowing too much, then presumably the more books an author in this field manages to publish without being killed, the more worthless they are. Nick Redfern has published a staggering number of books. So does this mean we should automatically assume they must be pure fantasy?
 
I was threatened once for revealing an ex-Nazi in political office, in a very strange way. Anyway...

I noticed Nick was practicing on Brand X paranormal radio with Snoory's cohort George Take a Nap in preparation for his REAL interview on the Paracast. Sounded like the Brasil stuff will be on the menu, and it brought some small joy to my wretched heart that he said "Maury" more than once. No, not Maury Povich, you lunkheads! And the JFK-UFO stuff, in a very superificial way, was addressed. Maybe Gene and Chris can get deeper into that with him, might be interesting.
 
I relistened to Nick on a recording of Brand X paranormal radio and wasn't quite so happy the second time around.

He got nearly everything he said about Maury Island wrong.

Nick:
1. Maury is not in Tacoma, it's just off Vashon Island, or was, now it's part of Vashon;
2. The two Military Intelligence fellows never went to the island, at least not in the summer of 47;
3. I think the two MI officers claimed to be from Hamilton in CA, not Wright Field, although Arnold later found out they were lying and were from a base in the east. Arnold wrote that Dave Johnson of the Idaho Statesman had been requested to make a full written report of his experience to the CO at Wright, so that might be the source of that confusion.
4. a whole bunch of other incorrect stuff I forgot right now :)

On the plus side, Nick could make the case Maury is even spookier than hitherto believed, because Ken Arnold was searching for that lost Marines transport plane on the Tacoma Glacier on Mt. Rainier when he saw his discs the first time, and it later turned out, when the plane was found, that there were no bodies, no blood or bones on board, and all the parachutes had been left behind. It seems logical to me to merge Ken's sightings and Maury because of spatial and temporal proximity into a single series of events.

Did anyone ever successfully link Oswald and Crisman? I didn't think Kenn Thomas even did that. Nick said they were "associated" or something, leading to the impression they knew each other personally. The connection has always been more nebulous I thought, that Crisman might have shot from the Grassy Knoll, but then that Oswald wasn't one of the shooters, although they both knew Bannister. Incidentally, Nick might be interested to know Bannister also knew that prosecutor from New Orleans whose surname starts with G I think but whose name is escaping me just now, back from his FBI days in the Northwest. G. was in Tacoma office or something, while Bannister was in Idaho or Montana or somewhere, but roving all over.

I didn't think it was especially spooky the Tacoma reporters Morrello (United Press) and Paul Lantz (not Paul Lance as Ken Arnold wrote, Tacoma Times I think) died, but it was spooky what happened to Dahl's son, who was more or less abducted by fairies or ETs and woke up from a trance to find himself washing dishes in Wyoming or something.

Anyway, yes, I would like to hear more about Maury when Nick comes on, even if the hardest writing man in Paranormality gets a few of his facts turned around the wrong way sometimes.
 
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Question: Anticipating Nick will talk about the plague outbreaks around Roswell and Sandia Labs, is Nick aware of other outbreaks of plague in the general area, such as the LA plague epidemic of the 1920s?
 
1) What really happened to the original crew complement that went missing over Mount Rainier? Arnold said initial reports identified that no bodies, bones or blood were found at the scene and that the air force said originally mountain lions took them away. The final report identifies that the majority of the bodies were found tangled in the wreckage or encased in ice. What's the real deal?

2) While researching this book how often did you run into the tension of respecting the families whose loved ones died of natural causes vs. insinuations from the UFO community that something malicious and suspicious took place and what did you do about that conflict?

3) After completing your research what did you find more evidence of: encounters with UFO's directly causing human deaths or the killing of witnesses of UFO events to maintain secrecy? Is either more frequent, or plausible than the other?
 
Burnt State said:
2) While researching this book how often did you run into the tension of respecting the families whose loved ones died of natural causes vs. insinuations from the UFO community that something malicious and suspicious took place and what did you do about that conflict?
Click to expand...

Which brings up a very interesting question

Nick, I have seen almost no claims that Mac Tonnies was murdered because he got "too close." Yet he was a young man who died of a very unusual condition, right as he was finishing a book offering a new and highly anticipated take on the UFO question and the origins of being associated with it. I understand that many, including you, were good friends of Mac's. I do not suggest this was actually the case, and do not mean to diminish or demean his life or his death. But if he wasn't a good friend, surely the nature of his work at the end of his life, and the nature of his death, would make him near perfect for the sorts of speculations discussed above. I'm sure James Forrestal, the Maury Island officers, and others all had friends and loved ones who, as Burnt State intimates, probably aren't happy with UFO authors making them infamous for their supposed deaths as part of a conspiracy. What makes them different from Tonnies and his imminent book on the big secret behind the cryptoterrestrials? Perhaps an even better analog would be Danny Casolaro, who gets a chapter in your book.
 
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