UFOs, Sea Serpents, Ridicule and Disinformation

Ridicule... it wasn't invented for flying saucer witnesses.

Neither were little green men. That was an old phrase used to describe the wee folk way before saucers, and if someone was seeing the LGM, chances were good they were drunk or had a screw loose.

The Song of the Little Green Men 
from "The Christian Advocate" magazine, Dec. 1, 1910. 

These little men were not necessarily green, but these tales started circulating thanks to Silas Newton's Aztec saucer crash story in 1949. This cartoon is by John Carlton from April 2, 1950 and was syndicated nationally by the Associated Press. A good look at how the public felt about the AF's handling of the saucer situation, and how the whole topic was silly.

Long before 1947, people tended to doubt the word of witnesses reporting weird things, and ridicule was a frequent response. Here are some examples from the heyday of the Sea Serpent era.
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The Broadford Courier, March 1, 1895 from Victoria, Australia

No, ridicule of strange sightings was not invented for UFOs. A frequent gag was that the person was seeing things as the result of drinking too much. A cartoon from the Reading Eagle, Aug. 30, 1914.

The Reading (PA) Eagle,  Aug 30, 1914 

That Sea Serpent

Q "What has become of the sea serpent that used to show up every summer?"

A: "They had to chase him off the coast. He caused so many men to take the (sobriety) pledge that he was killing business for the bar."

Another example, an even older one, from The Toronto Daily Mail, September 8, 1885!

The Toronto Daily Mail, Sep 8, 1885 

Unfortunately, ridicule and disbelief are part of human nature. It's certainly not of anti-Disclosure UFO disinformation scheme. That would be silly.

The Saucers That Time Forgot

The Saucers That Time Forgot, is a new blog focused on presenting the cases that UFO historians either missed, or would like to keep buried. 

The stories will mostly center around newspaper articles documenting forgotten sightings, hoaxes, mistakes, denials, explanations and the media's commercial exploitation of the public's fascination with UFOs.

In a sense, we take our lead from ufologist Gray Barker, who in his historic 1956 book, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, said,

"And so ended another flying saucer story few people would believe... a story that would be discounted by the Air Force and forgotten by all but a few who had the temerity to collect and file away data on such unusual and unlikely events."

The Saucers That Time Forgot

http://thesaucersthattimeforgot.blogspot.com/

Dr. J. Allen Hynek: Ufology is a Mess

“Ufology today is in the state I would say chemistry was when chemistry was alchemy,  a mixture of superstition, wild ideas, unproved claims, and yet out of that whole mess, finally the very first class science of chemistry evolved. And I think the same thing is going to happen eventually with Ufology, but right now, it is a mess. 

There’s a fantastic amount of wishful thinking, of desire, of pseudoscience, of pseudo-religion, of cultism, but eventually, I think that will all finally sink to the bottom, and we’ll have out of the whole thing a clear liquid of something we that can really see, and I hope, understand.” 

- Dr. J. Allen Hynek in The UFO Experience (documentary, 1983)

The Close Encounters Man

Hynek is back in the news, due to the biography by Mark O'Connell, The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs.  O'Connell interviewed people who knew and worked with Hynek, and was given unprecedented access to Hynek’s professional files as an astronomer, and the UFO documents and correspondence at the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). 

It's not exactly a UFO book, but it touches on a lot of the topic's history in telling the story of the man, Josef Allen Hynek. So in that sense, it's a book that' is accessible to non-saucer buffs, and also provides an interesting look UFOs as part a cultural phenomenon, and Hynek's evolving role in making it happen.

More details about the book and the author can be found at this page at The Book Cellar.