FIRST READ - DEEP WATERS

Tim Dinsdale. Loch Ness Monster. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961.

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Maurice Burton. The Elusive Monster: An Analysis of the Evidence From Loch Ness. Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961.

Nessie would have been 80 this year if she had still be around as a living legend, but of all the old standard Fortean phenomena she is the one that has been most comprehensively debunked, mainly by the combined efforts of Ronald Binns, Steuart Campbell, Adrian Shine and Christopher Spurling. #

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FIRST READ - MIRACLE VISITORS

A book can have an impact even though you first read it many years after publication. Ian Watson's Miracle Visitors was published nearly 40 years ago, and it had a major affect on some British ufologists at the time. Jenny Randles wrote about it in her book Mind Monsters, and noted a number of coincidences between the fiction events in Miracle Visitors and the UFO abduction that she was investigating at the time of its publication.
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FIRST READ: THE START OF THE SLIPPERY SLOPE

A. V. Sellwood and Peter Haining. Devil Worship in Britain.  Corgi, 1964.

When I was a teenager we didn’t have video nasties and computerised war games to allow you to venture into the dark realm, you read books like the Pan Book of Horror Stories , the Pan Book of Ghost Stories, or things like this. Long term Magonia readers will recall our various articles on the great Satanism and Satanic abuse panics of the 1980s and early 1990s.
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FIRST READ: 'ALLO, 'ALLO, 'ALLO!

John Harney recalls first reading a book by “Britain’s leading UFO detective” and muses on what it tells us about the current state of UFO research in Britain. The UFO scene in Britain in the 1990s was quite lively, as there were a number of UFO groups which had memberships consisting of both believers and sceptics. One controversial character who obviously much preferred the believers was Tony Dodd.

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FIRST READ: FROM MENZEL TO THE MILITARY

Donald H Menzel and Lyle G Boyd. The World of Flying Saucers: a Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age. Doubleday and Co, 1963.

Lt Col. Lawrence J Tacker, USAF. Flying Saucers and the US Air Force: the Official Air Force Story. Van Nostrand, 1960.

Let me be honest, I think I got these two books from Wilshaw’s book shop with my Christmas money in 1964 because they were the only two books on the subject (at least the only two non-contactee books). They were my first sceptical books, and I cannot quite now remember how I viewed them.

FIRST READ: THE CASE OF MORRIS JESSUP

M. K. Jessup. The Case for the UFO: Unidentified Flying Objects. Arco, 1955.

M. K. Jessup. The Expanding Case for the UFO. Arco, 1957.

Morris Ketchum Jessup was perhaps the first person to use the term ‘UFO’ in a commercial publication, which is something of an irony as very little of these books was devoted to stories of unidentified flying objects, rather they were devoted to a great variety of Fortean topics, such as Fortean falls, unusual archaeological ruins, mystery meteors, disappearing ships and crews and the like.

FIRST READ: THE COMING OF THE SAUCERS

Gerald Heard. The Riddle of the Flying Saucers: Is Another World Watching? Carroll and Nicholson, 1950.

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Desmond Leslie and George Adamski. Flying Saucers Have Landed. Werner Laurie, 1953.

At the start of my third year at Urmston Grammar School for Boys, I met my first actual ufologist, the parent of one of my fellow pupils. He came to give a lecture on flying saucers, which mainly consisted of slides of George Adamski’s faked flying saucer photographs, and if I remember rightly, a fragment of the Madeleine Rodeffer film. There were also pictures of 'Cedric Allingham’s' flying saucers.

FIRST READ: THE WARMINSTER MYSTERY

Arthur Shuttlewood. The Warminster Mystery: Astounding UFO Sightings. Neville Spearman, 1967. Recalled by John Rimmer

A while ago I revisited Warminster and took my copy of Arthur Shuttlewood's first book The Warminster Mystery along with me to read on Cradle Hill, perhaps seeking some sort of mystical communion with the original Warminster era. 
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FIRST READ - MEETING MR FORT

The books of Charles Fort had been taunting me for a while, as they sat on the shelves of Wilshaw’s in John Dalton Street, Manchester, then the town’s leading bookshop. I wanted them but their cost was enormous. £3.00 or 60 shillings. That was a time when my weekly pocket money was five shillings (25p). 

FIRST READ: ENTER THE SCEPTICS

Eric J. Dingwall and Trevor H. Hall. Four Modern Ghosts. Duckworth, 1958.
Donald J. West. Psychical Research Today. Penguin, 1962. Duckworth 1954.

Dingwall and Hall's small sceptical book probably disappointed me at the time, though it probably helped to detoxify ghost stories for me. It deals with four ghost stories; the first was an alleged appearance of an apparition in the library of the Yorkshire Museum at York in 1953. This ghost had the habit of taking off the shelves a volume on church antiquities published on 1896/7 - not exactly an ancient tome - this being witnessed by a number of dignitaries.

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FIRST READ: THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES

Following the invitation for Magonia readers to contribute to our 'First Read' feature and tell us about the books which particularly influenced their views on UFOs, the paranormal and other topics covered in Magonia, we received this contribution from author and editor William J. Grabowski. 

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FIRST READ: AIME MICHEL AND THE STRAIGHT LINE MYSTERY

Aime Michel. Flying Saucers and the Straight Line Mystery. Criterion Books, 1958. [S. G. Phillips, 1958]

I bought this book from Wilshaw’s book shop in John Dalton Street Manchester in the first week of January of 1964, with most of my Christmas money. It cost 30 shillings (£1.50) which was a sizeable amount of money fifty years ago (about £26 in today’s money). 

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FIRST READ - JACQUES VALLEE

Jacques Vallee. Anatomy of a Phenomenon: Unidentified Objects in Space - A Scientific Appraisal. Neville Spearman, London, 1966. By John Harney

When I first read this book nearly fifty years ago I, along with many other ufologists, thought it was a valuable contribution to the serious study of the subject, in contrast to some of the wild speculation and nonsensical contact stories available at that time (and ever since).
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FIRST READ - SUSY SMITH

Susy Smith. World of the Strange. Pyramid Books, 1963.

 In and of itself there is nothing special about this popular introduction to the paranormal, covering, as its cover blurb says - ghosts, witchcraft, ESP, hypnotism, magic, astrology, mediums, not to say predictions and poltergeists, which I bought at a newsagents and sweetshop in Urmston in the week between Christmas and New Year 1963.

FIRST READ: WAVENEY GIRVAN

Waveney Girvan. Flying Saucers and Common Sense. Frederick Muller Limited, London, 1955 -- John Harney looks back.

When I first read this book I got the impression that it was generally a fair summing up of the state of the UFO controversy as it was in the early 1950s. I remember thinking, though, that some of Girvan's comments betrayed a lack of scientific and technical knowledge which led him to be too credulous about what became known as contactee stories.

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FIRST READ: BEFORE I MET MR FORT

Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels. The Dawn of Magic (The Morning of the Magicians) McGibbon and Kee, 1963. 

Peter Rogerson recalls - You could call this book “The book that launched a dozen pseudo-sciences”, with its hints of mysterious secret societies holding even more mysterious secrets handed down from lost civilisations, of the occult roots of Nazism, of mutants with vast powers and hints of extraterrestrial visitors.

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FIRST READ: THE EARLY BRITISH FORTEANS

Rupert T. Gould. Oddities: A Book of Unexplained Facts. 2nd edition, Geoffrey Bles, 1944.

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Rupert T. Gould. Enigmas: Another Book of Unexplained Facts. 2nd edition. Geoffrey Bles, 1946.

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Eric Frank Russell. Great World Mysteries. Mayflower Books, 1962.

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I have mentioned earlier that my interest in all things Fortean and Paranormal was sparked by watching a TV programme called 'Court of Mystery' back in the summer of 1961. These books follow very much in that tradition. 

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FIRST READ: THE BRITISH UFO PIONEERS

Harold T. Wilkins. Flying Saucers Uncensored. Arco, 1956.

Compared with this wild book, the UFO books I had read before were pretty tame stuff. In some respects this is not really a coherent book at all, it reads like a collection of random jottings and rambling thoughts.
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FIRST READ: RETURN OF THE ROMANTICS

Arthur Constance. The Inexplicable Sky. Werner Laurie, 1956.

It was here that I first read the story of Ernie Suddart the Bradford lorry driver who claimed to have met small aliens jumping down the street, and of Mr Wood who had seen a bullet shaped thing on Roundhill Street in that town, and of Captain Howard and the flying shaped changing things seen over Newfoundland.

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FIRST READ: ENTER THE SCEPTICS

Donald H Menzel. Flying Saucers. Harvard University Press/Putnams, 1953.

Yah boo hiss, here is Donald Menzel the first great pantomime villain of ufology, until that role was stolen from him by Phil Klass. In this first book Menzel sought rational explanations for UFO reports; in particular he was interested in the role of mirages, phenomena produced by ice crystals and other similar meteorological explanations.

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