"Flying saucer writer dies of thirst in desert" or was it murder?

Possibly the strangest article I've ever written...Check out the title...

"Flying saucer writer dies of thirst in desert or was it murder" 

Here's the link to the article.

And here's how the article begins:

The words above in quotes are the headline of the July 11, 1954 edition of the Statesman Journal, which is published in Salem, Oregon. The story that accompanies the headline is a genuinely strange and barely-known one. Certainly, I had never heard of it until today. It’s made even stranger by the fact that – as the Freedom of Information Act has shown – the FBI was informed of what went down shortly after the news surfaced. Before I get to the story itself, however, I should explain how I came across the weird saga. As some of you may know, one of my big interests is the Contactee movement of the 1950s. Without a doubt, the most famous of all the Contactees was George Adamski. Others included Daniel Fry, Orfeo Angelucci, George Van Tassel, Truman Bethurum and George Hunt Williamson. While the stories of the Contactees sometimes differed, they had one thing in common: they were all the subjects of FBI surveillance files. The fact that at least some of the Contactees suggested their alien friends had communist-like societies led J. Edgar Hoover and his Special Agents to keep watches on them. The FBI file on George Van Tassel is no less than 319 pages in length. It’s filled with FBI memos, background checks on Van Tassel, copies of his saucer-based publications, and much more. And, it’s in the Van Tassel file that the tale of the unusual death referred to above can be found.

Birds and the Afterlife

A genuinely weird phenomenon? Wishful thinking? I'm not sure what to think.

Here's the link to my latest article...

 

UFO Murder

In a new article, Rich Reynolds addresses the issue of ufological deaths "by murder," focusing on James Forrestal and Wilhelm Reich. Check out Rich's insightful article here.

Birds, Death, and the Afterlife

That's the subject of another new Mysterious Universe article me. And here's how it starts:

"The first few months of 2010 were overshadowed by my mother’s increasingly worsening state of health. She was, at the time, suffering from one of the most horrific and destructive conditions around: Alzheimer’s Disease. Worse still, she had been diagnosed with it while she was only in her late fifties. Fourteen years after the diagnosis, my mom lost her fight with Alzheimer’s, dying from its effects in the summer.

"Just like almost everyone who has lost someone, my family and I mourned a passing and celebrated a life. There was, however, something very odd which occurred at the time of my mother’s death. It’s something I have never forgotten. On one particular morning, at my dad’s place in England, we were sitting in the living-room when our conversation was briefly brought to a sudden end. By a loud, single thump. It clearly came from somewhere outside.

UFOs: Microwaved to Death?

That's the controversial question I ask in my latest feature for Mysterious Universe.



Read on...