OF THINGS SEEN IN THE SKY

Chris Aubeck,  Alien Artifacts: The Forgotten Story of How We Came to Believe in Visitors from the Stars .Volume 1: From Antiquity to 1880. Independently published, 2022.

In Wonders of the Sky co-authored with Jacques Vallee and Return to Magonia co-authored with Martin Shough, Chris Aubeck has provided us with plenty of information and analysis of historical UFO-like events and encounters. Now we get Alien Artifacts which is the first in Aubeck’s ambitious three-volume project to chart ‘the forgotten story of how we came to believe in visitors from the stars’ right up to the dawn of the flying saucer era in 1947.

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YO HO AND UP SHE RISES

Sharon Wright. Balloonomania Belles; Daredevil Divas Who First Took to the Sky. Pen and Sword History, 2019.

We should all be familiar with the foundation myth of Magonia. According to Jacques Vallee’s Passport to Magonia, in the late ninth century the pitchfork-armed peasantry of a town in the south of France captured three men and a woman who ‘fell from the sky’ in a mysterious craft. Bound up, they were due to be stoned by the angry mob, until the respected Archbishop Agobard of Lyon intervened and saved them from certain death. 

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SCARESHIPS AND SCAREOPLANES

Nigel Watson. UFOs of the First World War: Phantom Airships, Balloons, Aircraft and Other Mysterious Aerial Phenomena. History Press, 2015.

As any UFO historian knows, phantom airships were haunting our skies well before the First World War. The Great 1897 Airship Wave in the US is well documented and speculated upon, less familiar is the smaller wave of 1908.

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GRANVILLE OLDROYD (1942 - 2011)

Granville Oldroyd was was one of the earliest subscribers to Magonia, back from the days when it was MUFOB. We are saddened to receive this notice from Nigel Watson and Dave Clarke: 🔻

1897 AND ALL THAT

J. Allen Danelek. The Great Airship of 1897. Adventures Unlimited Press, 2009.

The 1897 airship is a vital part of the UFO story, and is used to reinforce a number of contrasting narratives. For the psychosocial ufologist it is a classic example of the spread of a rumour, fuelled by misleading and spurious newspaper reports. 

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THE ART AND AIRSHIPS OF CHARLES DELLSCHAU

Dennis Crenshaw (In collaboration with P. G. Navarro). The Secrets of Dellschau: The Sonora Aero Club and the Airships of the 1800's. Anomalist Books, 2009.

When he died at the great age of 92 in 1923, Texas butcher Charles A. Dellschau left behind a secret and a mystery. These were a series of note books, filled with paintings of fantastic flying machines, which only came to light when his descendants had a clearout. By a process of serendipity they came to the attention of graphic designer and ufologist Peter Navarro.

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