It is said that “there is always a kernel of truth behind every myth.” If that is so, then it is the historian’s job to act as surgeon and find it: to dissect the truth from the fiction. Truth always gets embellished, and the embellishment is the myth.  In time all the expressions will come true, and when this one does you realize how apt it is,  for the proportion of a kernel is a subtle prophesy that the myth will be an enormous tree by comparison. 
   There are many examples— a “hall of fame” of phenomena or “unexplained,” as it is often called. Most everybody has heard of “Nessie,” the Loch Ness Monster; the Yeti of the Sherpa legends— the “abominable snowman” as we call him— a giant “man beast” that lives in the snow belt of the Himalayas; Bigfoot is called his American cousin, the Sasquatch of Canadian Indians. Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat is a tantalizing legend that has global outreach. UFOs are by far one of the most popular of the 20th century. The Bermuda Triangle finds its place amongst the most popular. The quest for Atlantis is another. There are a few others; in many ways derivatives off the main stalk of mysteries: the Yowie Man of Australia; Loch Ness Monster brings to mind sea serpents or the Mokele Mbembe of the Ndoke of the Congo; UFOs inspired “Ancient Astronauts;” the Devil’s Sea off Japan and other “vile vortices” are scions of the Bermuda Triangle.
   There is no denying that with the 20th century and its technological advances in the area of communications hitherto local myths and stories have captured the imagination of the world and have ballooned to hold global ramifications. Without mass print, radio and TV, it never would have happened . . .But one must concede there is an element in the myth itself that inexorably possesses mankind, else its spread no matter how true could never happen, no matter how oft it is reported. 
   It is not my purpose here to get navel and explore why these stories have captured our imaginations,  for even if they are true that cannot explain it. But suffice it to say that part of it is because they remain “unexplained.” We always ponder mystery and discard what we take for granted.
   There are those who are more than ready to capitalize on this interest,  here and there, to add momentum to the subject. It is the contention of this article to suggest that many of these may be facts but that the myths are hoaxes. When I did research on Bigfoot, I asked the question “Can the beast be real but the myth a hoax?” I think that can be asked of all of these.
   In this article, let’s search for the kernel to some of these. Let’s start with the 20th century’s first big headline winner: Nessie.

   Few outside of the area heard about this “Loch Ness” monster. . .until 1934 when some famous photos were taken. With modern print media, the idea of a monster living in Loch Ness circulated around the world, primarily because Britain’s world straddling empire was still intact. All English speaking newspapers picked up on successive Nessie stories, and archives were opened to reveal mention made of this “beastie” long before — an angle always used to give greater credibility to all 20th century hatchings: say they were incubating for a long time before! Somehow one is almost tempted to believe that people in that century-not-so-long-ago felt that stories prior to the media were naturally more credible.
   Everybody likes to think that this “beastie” might be a long extinct plesiosaur that, like the ever-mentioned coelacanth, has trumped natural selection and is still alive. (Although Natural Selection never said it could not be alive). Whatever Nessie may be, it is certainly the most accessible “sea monster” since the loch can be easily visited by all. It is a legend in which we can all partake— that’s why it’s the most dominant of the genre. Its Canadian cousin Ogopogo of Lake Okenagan is nothing compared: hard to get to the lake. Little retail or commercial value in that.
   By the 1970s a cache of photos were touted supposedly showing Nessie. Unfortunately, none ever showed it quite clearly enough despite the fact that at the height of Nessie fever the lake was rung by many observers looking through telescopes.

   The clincher that made many believe: BELOW, the underwater photo taken in 1972. However, it too was later discovered to be highly doctored to unequivocally suggest a plesiosaur “flipper.” (The entire upper portion was doctored.) The actual flipper looked like the common giant sturgeon known to periodically migrate to the loch. 

  It is very possible that Nessie did, at one point, exist. Dating back to the medieval times a priest was called upon once a year to exorcise the “beastie” out of the loch, for some terrifying creature was said to live in there. It is doubtful this was done for medieval tourism or to get attention. The legend—the kernel— seems to be there about a devil dragon in the loch. There are numerous reports of similar looking “plesiosaurs” around the oceans of Ireland and Scotland, and some think there may have been an underwater connection between the loch and the sea at one point, allowing the “plesiosaur” to come and go . . .perhaps even today. The modern-day myth, however, seems to have little substance as unscrupulous publicity seekers and pranksters damage its credibility.    

   Unlike a plesiosaur’s reputed existence,  the “Yeti” has excited far reaching philosophies about the evolution of man; one side claims it refutes it, and the other claims its existence substantiates current theory.
   Though it was an old legend, and described by reliable mountain climbers of Everest in the 1920s, the 20th century did not hatch Yeti until 1951 when the Shipton Expedition photo of that very famous footprint was plastered in newspapers far and wide.

The Shipton Photo, taken by Eric Shipton on the Menlung Glacier in 1951. It remains unexplained to this day.

  Well, the photograph excited the world. But the Yeti was seldom “seen” and never photographed or proved, not even to this day.  The Himalayas and Tibet are so remote that only climbing expeditions would have a chance of seeing one, and then only rarely. Unless one mentioned it in the right circumstances western media would not even hear of it to repeat it.
   The Yeti entered mass culture in the west through the movies. A genre of bad 1950s horror movies contained the “abominable snowman,” like Man Beast. I only vaguely recollect this from my childhood in the 1970s from watching such stirring weekend afternoon theaters as Monster Mash, Creature Features, and Chiller Diller Theater. (For those who grew up near San Francisco, you’ll remember that KBHK TV’s Monster Mash intro was a large white hairy “yeti” doing gymnastics to the tune of “Monster Mash.”)  
   But the best “yeti movie” was released by the late great Hammer Films of England, and is indeed a classic in horror fiction: “The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas” often titled today “The Abominable Snowman.” It starred a great of English horror fiction, Peter Cushing,

with an American co-star, Forrest Tucker,  to give it universal appeal for the Anglo-American audience for which it was intended.
  Amazingly, this film did little to form our views on the yeti legend. This can be attributed to the aforementioned fact that the Himalayas are simply too remote to support a thriving global legend. But this film is indirectly largely responsible for the creation of the modern-day myth of Bigfoot, the American “Yeti.” This film was released in late 1957. It was in 1958 that Bigfoot became popular.  The far greater population of the Pacific Northwest of the United States and Canada was able to fuel the legend with dozens of sightings, then organizations, then countless books and TV documentaries until Bigfoot mania hit in the 1970s. Poor Yeti, the creature that began it all, merely gets a brief mention or chapter in them all. Yeti is not a legend we can all partake in— the Himalayas are just too remote.   

A giant in horror fiction. Knowledge of this film is prerequisite for a modern legend.  

  If anybody denies that “Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas” was not a crucial step in the development of the Bigfoot or Sasquatch myth they know nothing of Bigfoot or the film. Although the possibility of a large, hairy ape had been reported in midwest newspapers in the 19th century, with even Teddy Roosevelt claiming to have seen something similar on a hunting trip, after the release of ABSM in 1957 the descriptions of this “creature” suddenly conformed to those in the movie.
   The pre-1900 sightings, as presented in the Bigfoot Case Book (1982 Stackpole Books), clearly describe an ape-like creature, about 6-foot high at most, with short legs and long arms. When walking upright, it often waddled on its short legs. When in a hurry, it took to all fours and scampered away, sometimes swinging up into the tree branches. It was covered with hair, sometimes whistled, was ugly but man-like (so much so that a Kansas settlement in Arcadia County refused to shoot it), and had big hands and feet.  When the Kansas incident was written up in the local newspaper, the paper assumed

  This film is incredibly famous now, and stills from it have been in circulation for over 30 years. Although it has been examined in many ways, I  was able to obtain a couple of really good photos of it and perhaps am the first one to enlarge them with new computer technology. Since this article is not devoted to Bigfoot, a review of my discoveries can be found here, which you should read before continuing.
  I guess you understand my opinions. If not, I’ll sum them up here. There may indeed have been, and may still be,  a large 6-foot orangutan-type ape in the North American continent, indigenous primarily to the Pacific Northwest of America. The beast can certainly be real, but the post-ABSM movie myth seems to be a sure hoax.
   This may have contributed to the creature’s survival. Hunters have gone out by the droves looking for an 8- 10 foot tall bipedal gorilla a la Patterson’s film while all the time the real animal may have been high above them in the trees wondering what was going on. 

intelligent creature, a colatteral development along the lines of humans, as different from humans as they were from apes— typical warnings from 50s horror movies that man might wipe himself out with the A-bomb and a mightier, more worthy creature was waiting to take over.)
   Seeming to confirm this description was the Patterson Film, moving footage  taken in 1967 near Bluff Creek, California, by veteran Bigfoot hunter, Roger Patterson. In company of friend, Bob Gimlin, Patterson neared a creek when suddenly his horse reared from fright. He rushed to get his movie camera and filmed for a short but spectacular few moments a tall, massive bipedal gorilla-like creature. This creature had neither long arms nor short legs but was a massive version of a “man-ape” in that it was completely  dark and hairy like a gorilla but walking and proportioned surprisingly like a man.  

Orangutans can grow to 6 feet, are an auburn color, and inhabit parts of Asia. They have short legs and long arms, and are the most homonid or man-like looking ape.

    Every reliable piece of evidence points to such an animal: about 6 feet,  short legs, long arms, very human-like though clearly an ape and clearly not primarily bi-pedal accept when moving slowly. It has a tendency to waddle, and therefore makes its footprint look wider, and sometimes at short gait makes its footprint longer by overlapping (by placing its next step inside the previous footprint). It makes loud ape-like warbles, whistles, stinks, and can be nasty though it is often cowardly.

  The evolution of UFOs into its modern myth is perhaps the most dangerous transformation of any of the popular phenomena topics. The kernel of truth is clearly there, but UFOs have been warped into a plethora of psychic effects and pseudo-religious mumbo-jumbo until the kernel, even though only a little over 50 years old now, is well hidden by the massive tree that has grown.

  LEFT, whom I believe to be Ray Palmer, showing what the “saucers” that Arnold saw looked like. Palmer would later collaborate with Arnold on a privately printed and rare book, BELOW.

  Any book describing UFOs was a hot seller. By the 1950s dozens had hit the stands. These books were chocked full of sightings and reports. . . that and what it all could mean, of course! They seldom went beyond this point. But since the phenomenon was new, this was more than enough to sell the books.
   A few branched out. One of the first was Variety writer Frank Scully in his 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers. Although only a  couple of chapters were

devoted to the possiblity that a flying saucer crashed in New Mexcio, this became of immediate interest. But Scully’s research and analysis were often faulty. As a columnist

for Variety he was not necessarily ready for investigative reporting. He billed his “inside source” for this “crash”  as Dr. “G,” whom he described as “having more degrees than a thermometer” and the scientist in charge of carting off alien bodies, but who turned out to be in reality a Phoenix, Arizona, hardware dealer. J.P. Cahn exposed Scully in a True magazine article, and the book was ruined.
   Another was George Adamski, who was billed  as the first “contactee.” He wrote 2 books. The first, Flying Saucers Have Landed, told of his being captured and taken to Venus  and given the special message with which he was to return to earth and tell his fellow man. Adamski subsequently became a pseudo-religious lama for such crowds as need them, long before it became vogue, but was never taken too seriously by the mainstream.
   Frank Edwards, well known commentator and pro-UFO journalist of the Mutual Network,  was later to sum up his personal encounters with Adamski, which gives a rather clear reason why Adamski’s claims remain laughable. In his 1967 book, Flying Saucers: Here and Now he writes:  

the US Air Force. These books unquestiably started the conspiracy vogue against the US government, though Keyhoe always tried to make it look like a small faction was responsible and that many military men were opposed it.
   Despite the appearance of Keyhoe’s books, his account of an incident was not necessarily unflawed, and any attempt to set the record straight could not be viewed as an Air Force plot to silence and discredit him. Keyhoe viewed the Kinross Incident as a crucial case and devoted much to it. Keyhoe, however, could not even seem to get the name correct in spite of the fact he supposedly had all the updated and incoming data and had to go over gally proofs of his manuscript before it was published. The Waynesville Incident was clearly related to the Air Force jet catching fire from an internal fuel leak,  but Keyhoe writes it up as a  flying saucer death ray. I have this report, once classified Top Secret. A large part of it is pictures devoted to the engine and the fueling system, attempting to expose the source of the fire. The jet fighter crashed in a suburban area, killing 4 people, because the crew bailed out too soon before it cleared the area (it was on a training mission before it was diverted to check on 2 unknown blips).
   Most every ludicrous thing that circulated in the late 1960s through 1970s can be found first in Keyhoe’s books. For instance,  that Earth may have been a colony, perhaps from Mars; or the nonsense that the Piri Reis map(s) (he uses the plural though there

   But others did not see them this way. Hollywood thought man needed humbling and not just galactic leadership. War of the Worlds and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers were to show man’s vulnerability. Many truly believed this.
   This was in the back of the mind of unquestionably the most well-known and respected “Flying Saucer” author (UFO as an acronym was not commonly used in the 1950s), Major Donald E. Keyhoe. The status of being a retired Major from the US Marine Corps helped Keyhoe tremendously—he appeared to be on the inside, receiving information from his many friends at the Pentagon. Also, Keyhoe’s style of presenting the facts as undisputed was all very captivating, especially when coupled with his crescendo-style of writing which left the reader to believe that an alien landing was very real and immanent.

   Keyhoe was,  however,  not an investigator but more of a gadfly retelling things as he had been told. His books often had chapters whose entire body were conversations which he recalled sufficiently to place in quotes. Analysis of individual incidents can seldom, if ever, be found in his books. He was launched into action by the latest phone call about a sighting. Then he retold it, supposedly with stark clarity, as it had happened. His books often seemed to be the product of a person who was at the nerve center of a new phenomenon, and had the dope firsthand or from reliable sources. This network developed into one of the phenomenon’s earliest civilian groups, NICAP —National Investigating Committee on Aerial Phenomena.
   Keyhoe’s 1949 article in True Magazine The Flying Saucers are Real is considered one of the most widely read articles of all time. His follow-up paperback with the same name in 1950 was a top seller. But no book sold as well as Flying Saucers from Outer Space in 1953. An unfortunate attempt on the Air Force’s part to discredit some of the cases Keyhoe promoted as confirmed by them infuriated him. In his next books he built the Air Force up as a conspiratorial group out to quash the reality that Flying Saucers were real and from outer space.

Keyhoe: he towers respectably in the history of UFOs, but might one day be viewed as the phenomenon’s greatest dupe.  Captain Ed Ruppelt, former head of Blue Book, and definitely open-minded about UFOs (a term which he coined), wrote disfavorably of Keyhoe’s “facts.”

is only one map) came from an ancient aeriel mapping of the Earth by a space ship; All this is gleaned from his conversation with a Navy Captain and Commander at the Pentagon, both of which tell him of its fantastic detail and accuracy. He rewrites this verbatim in his 1960 book. The idea that Flight 19 and several other disappearances were caused by intentional UFO destruction and kidnapping also first make their appearance in his 1955 

A typical Keyhoe book cover: streaking, ambiguous lights. A good reflection of the content. This unchanging approach to the subject would eventually turn sour. But Keyhoe was too honest to ad lib and delve into the new genre of abductees,  to his credit. His influence quickly ebbed.

A great way to promote Scully’s book: a 1950s paperback of it.

  Free of Air Force regulations, Hynek branched out and was soon the dominant figure in UFOlogy. Using donated funds from the organization he started (Center for UFO Studies, beginning as a one-man operation), and with the backing of other civilian groups like APRO, he was able to travel to locations and examine UFO “witnesses.” It wouldn’t be long before Hynek spiraled into the most popular chapter of UFOs— abductions. He even admitted that author John Fuller convinced him to believe in them, which at first he was hesitant to do. Fuller, amazingly, had achieved notoriety for writing a book about how Eastern Airline’s airliners were haunted by the “Ghost of Flight 401,” the spirit of the plane captain of an airliner that crashed in the Everglades in 1972.
   Hynek’s education in astronomy didn’t qualify him for the the tawdry world of 1970s abductions, complete with lie detector tests, whooping tabloid covers, and all the psychologists trying to determine who was lying and what was their motivation. His book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry came out in 1972, but amazingly added little to public knowledge. This is especially amazing considering he had been the Air Force’s consultant for almost 2 decades.
   J. Allen Hynek did not dominate the UFO scene as had Donald Keyhoe. It was true he was not as charismatic, but this was not why. The 1970s saw a new genre in UFOs, in which the abductees and contactees became the stars  through their tales of travel and lurid sex experiments;

Hynek is regarded as the man that made UFOs respectable. His bungling on some noteworthy cases as consultant to the Air Force, however, earned him their contempt. He insisted that they fess-up to owning an egg-shaped experimental aircraft in order to account for the “Socorro Landing.” But he was self-effacing enough to admit he was chosen only because he was the closest astronomer to Wright-Patterson AFB where Blue Book was based.

A shot from the famous Patterson Film. It is mostly jumbled, only a few moments are steady footage.

The best photos have turned out to be outright hoaxes.   The most famous, LEFT, called the “Surgeon’s Photo,” taken in 1934. Notice the shadows of the swells. This “beastie” is incredibly small. A miniature mockup using a small carved piece of wood has reduplicated this exact image.

  One thing that is most interesting is that Shipton, a veteran mountain climber, knows what human and known-animal footprints look like when the ice has melted around them. When he saw this  he knew it was something peculiar, enough to follow the tracks and take 2 photos of the clearest print.
   Despite the very levelheaded work of many in the field of anthropology, including John Napier of the Smithsonian Institute, what Eric Shipton photographed has never been explained. The press soon dubbed it the footprint of the legendary “abominable snowman.” 
   Although “yeti” has more than one meaning to the local Nepalese (usually meaning in a broad sense an “arboreal dweller”), there are 2 distinct forms of “yeti” to them. One is Dzu-teh and the other: Me-teh. According to several linguists, a translation of Dzu-teh can mean “Big thing” or  “Big Bear”; and Me-teh, “Man-like thing” or Man-Bear. The first one is usually considered to be referring to the “abominable snowman” since Dzu-teh is said to be 8 feet or larger and hairy.

Yeti

Bigfoot

UFOs

those who wrote about them were merely their prophets.
   A succession of short lived preeminence for a few UFO “researchers” reflected this, such as with New York artist Bud Hopkins, who achieved fame in the 1980s for his books Missing Time and Intruders on abductions. His amateur hypnotism even revealed abductions in people who hadn’t imagined they had one. All that was necessary was that they had unusual dreams, which Hopkins decided he should interpret.
   His standing quickly ebbed to Whitley Strieber, who was a professional author. His book, Communion, detailing his own experience (based on bizarre dreams) sold fantastically in 1987 while Hopkins then-new book Intruders slowly chugged along, not even selling through its first printing while Strieber’s broke records.

   UFOology’s evolving chapters, starting with sightings (1950s) to landings (1960s) to abductions (1970s) to paranormal experiences via dreams and “alternative reality” (1980s) to the religio-metaphysics (1990s) plainly testifies to the phenomenon’s dependence on retail. New stories sell, not the old and by-now mundane.
   It is natural in such an increasingly obvious pattern that skepticism would become a readily marketable view point on the subject. The 1950s could always boast Air Force skepticism as balancing the often-times urgent warnings of Donald Keyhoe to prepare for an alien landing or invasion from the moon or Mars. But Americans always seem suspicious of officialdom.
   But when the UFO movement turned from ambiguous sightings to claims of landings, tangible investigation could be done by anybody. Witnesses could be independently questioned, and their accounts could be double-checked, unlike those of a report of a sudden streaking light or saucer in the sky.
   Independent skepticism emerged in the 1960s, in the fad of “landings.”  Philip J. Klass, an Editor for Aviation Week and Space Technology, emerged as the foremost. He actually visited the locations, talked to people, read everything all the other UFO investigators were putting out, and had a steel trap mind. Bennet Cerf of Random

House personally insisted on publishing Klass’s first book, UFOs—Identified, 1967. Klass followed this with UFOs Examined in 1974, attributing his continued publication on Bennet Cerf’s personal interest in his approach to the subject. After Cerf died, Klass was published in 1983 UFOs: The Public Deceived by Prometheus Books, which published his succeeding books, UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game, 1989, and The Real Roswell Incident, 1997.
   Despite pro-UFO buffs attempting to ridicule Klass as a “debunker” out “to prove the Universe’s ultimate banality,”   he in fact was a careful investigator, and his books often did expose many of the famous cases and even demonstrated the often gullible and biased standards under which pro-UFO buffs labored. Each succeeding generation of UFOers has eventually refused to appear on TV or radio shows if Klass was to be present, including Bud Hopkins and even J. Allen Hynek, whose bungling in two noteworthy cases would not have been known had it not been for Klass (the Socorro Landing, 1966, and the Pascagoula Abduction, 1973).
   But Klass’s strong point was not “sightings,” which is something that is hard to investigate in the first place. In fact, Klass’ approach to the UFO phenomenon could not have been marketable in the 1950s, when sightings dominated the scene. If this planet has been briefly visited by spacecraft from another world, the skeptics’ methods of investigation could not even say yeah or nay to the fact.  It is not surprising there were no such “Klasses” in the 1950s.
   If only a few of all the sightings reported since 1947 turn out to be true, then the diversion created by all that has been marketed around UFOs is truly dangerous.  What has evolved in the last 4 decades is unquestionable BS, of abductions, contactees and faked landings to win National Inquirer prizes. If a few, rare real “flying saucers from outer space” sightings is what started the current public phenomenon,  its reality is hidden behind all this froth. This then becomes very dangerous.
   What did Ken Arnold see in 1947? He thought they were experimental aircraft . . .but they weren’t. What did Fred Valentich see in 1978? What did Jose Maldonado Torres and Jose Santos see in 1980?  From them, we’ll never even know their opinions since they never returned to tell about it.
  . . .The kernel of UFO mythology is more than there . . .but $omething continues to get in the way. Perhaps the reality is not so marketable as the fiction?  

Klass, the No.1 skeptic in the world, with good cause. His investigation of many cases has not only exposed them, but exposed the trite and laughable standards of many of the “investigators.” He emerged into the UFO scene late, however, almost 2 decades after it began. His books deal little with the sightings of the late 40s and 1950s. He is often times too dependent on a person’s “qualifications” rather than simply addressing the issue on its merits.

  Persons like Adamski were no doubt helped  indirectly by Hollywood churning out some films like The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951, which started the ongoing genre that aliens were naturally benign and divine.   

An unchallenged classic. The 1950s were rank with warnings about mankind’s power of destruction and his need to take heed. While corny Sci-Fi to some, many of the films were well done and carried a good moral.

   The Flying Saucer Conspiracy (Holt, 1955) and Flying Saucers: Top Secret (Putnam 1960) created the image of a man dashing to flying saucer scenes, wading through civilian reports, emerging as the head of NICAP, and fighting against the ludicrous censorship of

Frank Edwards, journalist with his own popular coast to coast show on the Mutual Network, was Keyhoe’s staunchest ally and close friend. A member of NICAP, he lent a ready radio forum to Keyhoe whenever he needed it. His books, Flying Saucers: Serious Business and Flying Saucers: Here and Now took up the slack in the mid 1960s when Keyhoe was not writing books. The 2 were the most dominant and sober of the popular pro-UFO writers. His fatal heart attack in 1967 would prove a death blow to Keyhoe and NICAP, which were swept aside a few years later by a new genre in UFOs.

More along Keyhoe’s line of thinking, another classic from 1956, showing Washington DC being blown to hell by invading aliens from a dying world seeking colonization of Earth.

book The Flying Saucer Conspiracy, all through a conversation with a man named Redell. All these nice little natters could only be recounted if Keyhoe had a supernatural memory.
  But Keyhoe was never accorded the ridicule that von Daniken or Berlitz received for writing about these things over a decade later. Keyhoe is merely recording his gadfly conversation with many “credible” people, so credible that he has to use aliases for many of them. What Keyhoe’s personal opinions might be are sometimes hard to discern.
   Keyhoe’s conventional approach to the whole UFO phenomenon has placed him on a pedestal. He might be viewed in future, however, as a prominent dupe. It can be said that UFOs got us on the moon. There is no secret that to an extent the Air Force played up the phenomenon behind closed doors,  possibly to get more funding for aerospace and NASA.
   Keyhoe unashamedly repeats (and popularized) some strange ideas: that the moon might be used as a base to invade the earth; and mirrors could be used on alien satellites to reflect the sun’s rays back to burn the Earth, and so forth. (One remembers how the CIA built up the “red menace” during the cold war to achieve defense allocations. When the USSR fell we realized the “red menace” wasn’t what it was cracked up to be.
   It seems clear that by the time the moon shot was assured, the Air Force had grown tired of UFOs and even its own official investigation, Project Blue Book. They asked Dr. E.U. Condon of the University of Boulder, Colorado, to head a fact finding investigation and come up with an answer.  Since

of Ohio’s professor of Astronomy, he was the closest man the Air Force could tap for astronomical information since Blue Book was based at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio.  After the Air Force canceled Blue Book in 1969, Hynek was out of a job and out of transportation and funds.

Condon was decidedly against the idea of UFOs, this might be viewed as their orders to torpedo what they believed was no longer necessary, in light of the fact they achieved their goal.  Not surprisingly, Condon examined “all the evidence” and his conclusion, contained in the now famous Condon Report, said there was no reason to continue the investigation. The Air Force dropped investigating UFOs in 1969, as we stepped onto the moon. 

   Keyhoe would not publish another book until 1973: Aliens from Space, in which he blasted the Condon investigation for being rigged, and intermingled his rancor with the latest reports of streaking lights and saucer shaped disks seen by airliners and over country farms— essentially the same dull reports that had filled UFO books in the 1950s. Keyhoe refused to accept the ludicrous new claims of “abductees” that were headlining the press. Neither he nor Frank Edwards ever would have. Both had vigorously made fun of contactee and abductees. But by this time his great confidant Frank Edwards had been dead for 6 years, depriving Keyhoe of his influence over radio. Keyhoe’s book was not a great success, and because he refused to pay any heed to the latest mania in UFOlogy, as it was now called, the first and stalwart civilian saucer group NICAP went under. Keyhoe was to write no more books and he died in 1989.
   A new era had come to UFOlogy, with new faces, new names, and no interest in dull and ambiguous reports of streaking lights which had so permeated Keyhoe’s books.
   The 1970s saw Dr. J. Allen Hynek rise to the top of the UFO ladder. The “man who made UFOs respectable” he was often called. Hynek had been the Air Force’s Consultant for their Project Blue Book since the 1950s. Having been the University

this must have been an escaped gorilla or orangutan from a circus and even asked any showman reading this who lost such an exhibit to contact them.
  The ape-like features were underlined in other encounters, describing what seems almost to be a orangutan.
   By the 1970s, after many documentaries (not to mention the ABSM in TV syndication), Bigfoot’s description was routine as: 8 or 9 feet tall, completely bipedal, man-like but also like a gorilla. Some  footprints were discovered to be 16 inches long, suggesting a creature from 9 to 12 feet tall (in the movie the footprints were identical, 16 inches long with the creature 11 feet tall.) Bigfoot later came to have the powers of telepathy (a belief of primitive people applied to most any animal and one that was given to the “abominable snowman” in ABSM). He was almost supernatural, immortal, unkillable (in the movie the one they had killed was raised from the dead by another) and they were intelligent, always evading capture. Perhaps they were made by UFOs, for those who believed in the above noted they appeared in connection with UFOs. They may be an experiment by aliens trying to repopulate the earth with a better species or a failure in trying to create a human hybrid. (Similarly, in ABSM  it was thought they might be an

   Where it all began, RIGHT, Ken Arnold. The date was June 24, 1947. While flying in Washington State, Arnold reported seeing a number of unconventional aircraft skipping like rocks past Mount Rainier. It soon blitzed over the media wires and they came to be called “flying saucers.”

Phenomena & Popular Culture

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