The Paracast Newsletter
July 28, 2024
www.theparacast.com
Discover the Fascinating World of UFO Culture with Historian Greg Eghigian on The Paracast!
The Paracast is released every Sunday and available from our site, https://www.theparacast.com, your favorite podcast app, and the IRN Internet Radio Network. All episodes from 2022, 2023 and 2024 now feature better audio and fewer ads.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP FOR THE PARACAST+ YET? PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARACAST+ SO YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE ULTIMATE PARACAST EXPERIENCE AT A SPECIAL LOW PRICE! We have another radio show and we’d love for you listen to it. So for a low subscription fee, you will receive access to an exclusive bonus podcast, After The Paracast, plus a special version of The Paracast with all the ads removed, when you join The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes on your device, and those episodes are now released 12-24 hours earlier. Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! For the easiest signup ever, please visit: https://www.theparacast.plus
This Week's Episode: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz explore the fascinating world of UFO culture with historian Greg Eghigian, author of “After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon.” The book is the result of researching the history of the global fascination with unidentified flying objects and aliens (a fascination for him since childhood). In this discussion, the Hollywood connection to the UFO mystery is explored. And, by the way, Gene is mentioned as one of the book’s sources. Eghigian’s next book project will examine the controversy surrounding the alien abduction phenomenon. In his “civilian life,” he is a Professor of History and Bioethics at Penn State University (USA). He is a historian of science and medicine, specializing in studying the ways in which society thinks about and treats people, ideas, and behaviors it considers to be odd or dangerous. He has written books and articles about the history of disability, the history of madness, and the history of criminality, among other things.
After The Paracast — Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers by July 28: Historian Greg Eghigian returns to continue to explore the topics he wrote about in his book, “After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon.” In the course of the discussion with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz, he attempts to identify the least trustworthy contactee in the UFO field — and he is not someone super famous. The possible causes behind contact claims is also explored, along with the spread of UFO culture around the world. And what about paranormal experiences across the ages? In his “civilian life,” Eghigian is a Professor of History and Bioethics at Penn State University (USA). He is a historian of science and medicine, specializing in studying the ways in which society thinks about and treats people, ideas, and behaviors it considers to be odd or dangerous. He has written books and articles about the history of disability, the history of madness, and the history of criminality, among other things.
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums.
A Very Early Paranormal Social Network
By Gene Steinberg
These days if you seek a fellow traveler, someone interested in the same topics that have dominated your attention, you have a choice of millions — maybe billions — of people. It’s all courtesy of your social network(s) of choice. So, if you want to form a little club to reflect your favorite hobby, you have a chance to populating it with loads of members on the same network.
Maybe.
I mean, there are so many existing groups on the various social networks, it may be hard to stand out among the crowd. Indeed, sometimes it may seem more fitting to go back and do it the way it used to be done.
To be sure, online friendships are often fleeting. They are apt to be anonymous, meaning the people who participate in these groups may not even use their real names. They may not even disclose where they live, not even the country of residence.
Yes, all so impersonal.
Now it’s perfectly true that you may just find people in your own neighborhood who share your interests, making it easy to have personal get-togethers.
When I first got interested in chasing the flying saucers, I found two people who lived nearby who shared that interest more or less. One lived down the street in Brooklyn, NY, Ken Alpert. He was also a sci-fi fan. Even though our paths have diverged in terms of where we live, we have remained in touch, more or less, most of our lives.
My other UFO acquaintance was a neighbor whom I discovered after my family moved to another apartment in a different neighborhood. Marty Salkind was also an inveterate reader of saucer lore.
I recall the occasion where Marty and I traveled to Washington, DC in the 1960s to meet up with two other friends in the field, Allen Greenfield, who lived in Atlanta, and Rick Hilberg, who lived in Cleveland. We assembled to visit with legendary author and researcher Donald E. Keyhoe near his Luray, Virginia home, and the headquarters of the organization he ran, NICAP, at its modest office suite in Washington, DC.
Therein lies a tale that I’ve talked about many times. But not this time, since this is about the early social network that brought such lifelong friends.
The responsible party for that social network was one Ray Palmer, famous (or notorious) in sci-fi fandom for promoting the Shaver Mystery, about alleged inhabitants who hung out in caves beneath the Earth, but also a legend in the UFO field.
Palmer was co-founder of FATE magazine, a publication that still exists online and in a print version. He also launched an early UFO magazine, Flying Saucers, which I subscribed to as soon as I discovered it at a local newsstand.
The magazine’s format mirrored the sci-fi pulps, as did FATE, but the contents were presented as factual.
Palmer was very open in Flying Saucers about author rights. It had no copyright, meaning anyone could reproduce its contents, although RAP hoped you’d give him credit. Sad to say, he didn’t pay for those articles either, but I still had one or two published there in the early days.
To me and many other readers, the most interesting feature was Saucer Club News. As the title indicated, it presented announcements about the activities of such groups, usually small, and quite often run by teenagers. There was space for a mailing address and, on a rare occasion, a phone number.
So I started my own group, with help from Ken and Marty at different times, and, in turn, received letters from people around the U.S., and sometimes from other parts of the world.
That’s how I met Allen and Rick, David Halperin (then from Levittown, Pennsylvania), and a number of other people. In other words, pen pals.
Don’t forget that it would take days for letters to reach their destinations, and they sometimes ran several pages or more. In turn, one’s response might also be lengthy. That’s quite unlike today’s digital communications that are, at most, a few hundred characters in length. It was a far more personal level of communication, one that occupied hours or days of one’s time.
To me, it was usually a matter of a few hours since I had a little help. My mom bought me an electric typewriter and taught me touch-typing in my preteen years. It was one of the best and most profitable skills she taught me.
With a pen pal, you rarely talked to anyone, unless they were local, or you were willing to spend up to several dollars per minute for a long distance phone conversation. Or far more for a personal visit. I recall my father complaining to me from time to time when I ran up phone bills that sometimes cost over $100.
Despite the rarity of actual conversations, on the phone or in person, I often felt close to these people. Indeed, when I had the privilege of meeting them, it was as if we were lifelong friends.
And I met my first wife, Geneva, courtesy of a letter published in a comic book.
I can’t forget my annual encounters with Allen Greenfield. His parents would take him to a luxury hotel near Times Square in New York City, a subway trip away. But rather than celebrate the arrival of the New Year and its pomp and circumstance, we would hang out in Allen’s room talking about the saucers.
Sure, the room’s TV was on in the background, but that didn’t keep us from talking about saucer gossip and, sometimes, speculate on their origin and purpose.
One year, Allen had a tattered copy of a fantasy novel on a table, “The Incomplete Enchanter,” from L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt. The book was devoted to the exploits of one Harold Shea, involving a parallel reality that co-existed with ours where magic replaced the laws of physics.
Ah an epiphany!
What if the reason the saucers sometimes blinked in and out of view was the result of crossing a dimensional portal that separated our reality from others.
Thus came the alternate reality theory of UFOs, something Allen wrote about in detail for a number of years. As you know, the concept of other realities — the multiverse — has become a common trope in the worlds of sci-fi and even comic books.
So both DC and Marvel have presented different versions of the same character from different universes. I remember several versions of Superman, a few variations of the Flash, and even three depictions of Spider-Man.
For me, most of my lifelong friendships began with that free social network feature in a flying saucer magazine.
I often think that today’s social network interactions, as frequent as they might be, are usually far more impersonal, far less satisfying. And that’s not my desire to return to the old days. It just happens to be a sad fact of life.
Copyright 1999-2024 The Paracast Company. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
July 28, 2024
www.theparacast.com
Discover the Fascinating World of UFO Culture with Historian Greg Eghigian on The Paracast!
The Paracast is released every Sunday and available from our site, https://www.theparacast.com, your favorite podcast app, and the IRN Internet Radio Network. All episodes from 2022, 2023 and 2024 now feature better audio and fewer ads.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP FOR THE PARACAST+ YET? PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARACAST+ SO YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE ULTIMATE PARACAST EXPERIENCE AT A SPECIAL LOW PRICE! We have another radio show and we’d love for you listen to it. So for a low subscription fee, you will receive access to an exclusive bonus podcast, After The Paracast, plus a special version of The Paracast with all the ads removed, when you join The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes on your device, and those episodes are now released 12-24 hours earlier. Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! For the easiest signup ever, please visit: https://www.theparacast.plus
This Week's Episode: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz explore the fascinating world of UFO culture with historian Greg Eghigian, author of “After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon.” The book is the result of researching the history of the global fascination with unidentified flying objects and aliens (a fascination for him since childhood). In this discussion, the Hollywood connection to the UFO mystery is explored. And, by the way, Gene is mentioned as one of the book’s sources. Eghigian’s next book project will examine the controversy surrounding the alien abduction phenomenon. In his “civilian life,” he is a Professor of History and Bioethics at Penn State University (USA). He is a historian of science and medicine, specializing in studying the ways in which society thinks about and treats people, ideas, and behaviors it considers to be odd or dangerous. He has written books and articles about the history of disability, the history of madness, and the history of criminality, among other things.
After The Paracast — Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers by July 28: Historian Greg Eghigian returns to continue to explore the topics he wrote about in his book, “After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon.” In the course of the discussion with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz, he attempts to identify the least trustworthy contactee in the UFO field — and he is not someone super famous. The possible causes behind contact claims is also explored, along with the spread of UFO culture around the world. And what about paranormal experiences across the ages? In his “civilian life,” Eghigian is a Professor of History and Bioethics at Penn State University (USA). He is a historian of science and medicine, specializing in studying the ways in which society thinks about and treats people, ideas, and behaviors it considers to be odd or dangerous. He has written books and articles about the history of disability, the history of madness, and the history of criminality, among other things.
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums.
A Very Early Paranormal Social Network
By Gene Steinberg
These days if you seek a fellow traveler, someone interested in the same topics that have dominated your attention, you have a choice of millions — maybe billions — of people. It’s all courtesy of your social network(s) of choice. So, if you want to form a little club to reflect your favorite hobby, you have a chance to populating it with loads of members on the same network.
Maybe.
I mean, there are so many existing groups on the various social networks, it may be hard to stand out among the crowd. Indeed, sometimes it may seem more fitting to go back and do it the way it used to be done.
To be sure, online friendships are often fleeting. They are apt to be anonymous, meaning the people who participate in these groups may not even use their real names. They may not even disclose where they live, not even the country of residence.
Yes, all so impersonal.
Now it’s perfectly true that you may just find people in your own neighborhood who share your interests, making it easy to have personal get-togethers.
When I first got interested in chasing the flying saucers, I found two people who lived nearby who shared that interest more or less. One lived down the street in Brooklyn, NY, Ken Alpert. He was also a sci-fi fan. Even though our paths have diverged in terms of where we live, we have remained in touch, more or less, most of our lives.
My other UFO acquaintance was a neighbor whom I discovered after my family moved to another apartment in a different neighborhood. Marty Salkind was also an inveterate reader of saucer lore.
I recall the occasion where Marty and I traveled to Washington, DC in the 1960s to meet up with two other friends in the field, Allen Greenfield, who lived in Atlanta, and Rick Hilberg, who lived in Cleveland. We assembled to visit with legendary author and researcher Donald E. Keyhoe near his Luray, Virginia home, and the headquarters of the organization he ran, NICAP, at its modest office suite in Washington, DC.
Therein lies a tale that I’ve talked about many times. But not this time, since this is about the early social network that brought such lifelong friends.
The responsible party for that social network was one Ray Palmer, famous (or notorious) in sci-fi fandom for promoting the Shaver Mystery, about alleged inhabitants who hung out in caves beneath the Earth, but also a legend in the UFO field.
Palmer was co-founder of FATE magazine, a publication that still exists online and in a print version. He also launched an early UFO magazine, Flying Saucers, which I subscribed to as soon as I discovered it at a local newsstand.
The magazine’s format mirrored the sci-fi pulps, as did FATE, but the contents were presented as factual.
Palmer was very open in Flying Saucers about author rights. It had no copyright, meaning anyone could reproduce its contents, although RAP hoped you’d give him credit. Sad to say, he didn’t pay for those articles either, but I still had one or two published there in the early days.
To me and many other readers, the most interesting feature was Saucer Club News. As the title indicated, it presented announcements about the activities of such groups, usually small, and quite often run by teenagers. There was space for a mailing address and, on a rare occasion, a phone number.
So I started my own group, with help from Ken and Marty at different times, and, in turn, received letters from people around the U.S., and sometimes from other parts of the world.
That’s how I met Allen and Rick, David Halperin (then from Levittown, Pennsylvania), and a number of other people. In other words, pen pals.
Don’t forget that it would take days for letters to reach their destinations, and they sometimes ran several pages or more. In turn, one’s response might also be lengthy. That’s quite unlike today’s digital communications that are, at most, a few hundred characters in length. It was a far more personal level of communication, one that occupied hours or days of one’s time.
To me, it was usually a matter of a few hours since I had a little help. My mom bought me an electric typewriter and taught me touch-typing in my preteen years. It was one of the best and most profitable skills she taught me.
With a pen pal, you rarely talked to anyone, unless they were local, or you were willing to spend up to several dollars per minute for a long distance phone conversation. Or far more for a personal visit. I recall my father complaining to me from time to time when I ran up phone bills that sometimes cost over $100.
Despite the rarity of actual conversations, on the phone or in person, I often felt close to these people. Indeed, when I had the privilege of meeting them, it was as if we were lifelong friends.
And I met my first wife, Geneva, courtesy of a letter published in a comic book.
I can’t forget my annual encounters with Allen Greenfield. His parents would take him to a luxury hotel near Times Square in New York City, a subway trip away. But rather than celebrate the arrival of the New Year and its pomp and circumstance, we would hang out in Allen’s room talking about the saucers.
Sure, the room’s TV was on in the background, but that didn’t keep us from talking about saucer gossip and, sometimes, speculate on their origin and purpose.
One year, Allen had a tattered copy of a fantasy novel on a table, “The Incomplete Enchanter,” from L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt. The book was devoted to the exploits of one Harold Shea, involving a parallel reality that co-existed with ours where magic replaced the laws of physics.
Ah an epiphany!
What if the reason the saucers sometimes blinked in and out of view was the result of crossing a dimensional portal that separated our reality from others.
Thus came the alternate reality theory of UFOs, something Allen wrote about in detail for a number of years. As you know, the concept of other realities — the multiverse — has become a common trope in the worlds of sci-fi and even comic books.
So both DC and Marvel have presented different versions of the same character from different universes. I remember several versions of Superman, a few variations of the Flash, and even three depictions of Spider-Man.
For me, most of my lifelong friendships began with that free social network feature in a flying saucer magazine.
I often think that today’s social network interactions, as frequent as they might be, are usually far more impersonal, far less satisfying. And that’s not my desire to return to the old days. It just happens to be a sad fact of life.
Copyright 1999-2024 The Paracast Company. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!