While two such surveys have previously appeared, Ronald D. Story's The Encyclopedia of UFOs (1980) and Margaret Sachs' The UFO Encyclopedia (1980), both the extraordinary developments in the field and the number of new resources that have become available more than justify a new reference tool. The new Encyclopedia will cover numerous topics not touched upon in the prior works. Since the major areas not previously covered in an encyclopedic reference book concern the events and evolution of ufology over the decade of the 1980s, it was decided to concentrate this first volume on the major personalities, UFO sightings, and research organizations that have dominated its most recent history. That period is covered below in 84 entries, including lengthy entries on the major foci of recent ufology: the UFO abduction phenomenon; crashes of UFOs; government cover-up of UFO data; new theoretical approaches to solving the mystery of unidentified flying objects; and surveys of ufology in Australia, Canada, France, and Great Britain.
Features of this Edition
This first volume of The UFO Encyclopedia provides a
number of helpful features for the reader. An introductory essay provides
a brief orientation to the person approaching the topic of ufology for the first
time. It highlights some major events and trends prior to the 1980s. It also
includes a note on UFO terminology and jargon, some mastery of which is
necessary in order to maneuver freely through the complex and at times
bizarre realms of UFO phenomena.
As a prime feature, this volume has separate lengthy entries on seven topics of continuing interest to the ufology of the 1980s as it moves into the 1990s. These entries are:
Abduction Phenomenon (p. 1), which examines the controversy surrounding claims of kidnappings by UFO entities;
Contactees (p. 51), which surveys the claims of persons who report continuing contact with benevolent extraterrestrial entities and the relationship of individuals and groups built around such claims to ufology;
Crashes of UFOs (p. 56), which discusses allegations that the wreckage of extraterrestrial spacecraft and the bodies of alien beings have been retrieved by government agencies;
Earthlights and Tectonic Strain Theory (p. 77), two related hypotheses which hold that UFOs are a product of natural effects caused by stresses along geologic faults;
Extraterrestrial Biological Entities (P. 85), which reviews claims that the United States government has established communications and an ongoing relationship with beings from outer space;
Fantasy-prone Personality Hypothesis (P. 111), which reviews claims that UFO abductions have their origin in the imagination of certain kinds of individuals;
Psychosocial Hypothesis (p. 172), which argues that UFO phenomena are entirely the product of cultural processes and unusual mental states.
Twenty-six entries cover the most prominent individuals in ufology from A (Walter H. Andrus, Jr,) to Z (Jennie Zeidman). Each biographical entry offers basic biographical data while concentrating upon each person's individual contribution to or significance within the UFO community.
Twenty-two entries are devoted to UFO research and extraterrestrial-contact organizations. These vary from major scientific research facilities such as the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) to religious groups such as the Universe Society Church which have made UFOs and claims of contact with extraterrestrial and extradimensional entities integral to their religious beliefs and practices. The organizations cited in this volume have been chosen because they have been dominant organizations in ufology. Some, for example the Fund for UFO Research, are relatively new and hence have not appeared in previous works.
Appended to each entry is a list of source material which includes both the sources cited in the entry and related material for further reading. Biographical entries, for example, will list all of the UFO books authored or co-authored by the individual.
Cross-References
The volume is extensively cross-referenced. Whenever the title of an
entry is first mentioned in another entry, it has been highlighted in boldface.
Index
The reader is referred to the extensive index covering persons,
organizations and subjects for a number of topics that are discussed in
the body of this text.
Acknowledgements
Since my teenage years, I have followed the phenomena of flying
saucers and UFOs with what at times seemed like a youthful all-consuming
infatuation while at other times suspecting that the time spent on UFOs
had been all but wasted. Over the years, however, I have had the benefit
of being so positioned as a writer and editor that I had to keep up with
all developments in ufology while listening to the arguments of colleagues
on every side. They never allowed me to rest complacently in half-thought-out
opinions and always forced me to probe more deeply into the subject.
Out of what has now become three decades of reflection on the UFO
phenomenon, I have not entirely lost the enthusiasm of my earlier years,
but have arrived at a mature confidence that whatever the solution(s) to
the UFO phenomenon is (are), I have been participating in a field on
the frontiers of science.
In the mid-1970s I co-authored my first book concerning UFOs, The Unidentifed (1975, with Loren Coleman). In 1976, I joined the editorial staff of Fate, the original UFO magazine. While there, I helped plan the First International UFO Congress which met in 1977 on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the original sighting of the flying saucers by Kenneth Arnold in 1947. I eventually became editor of Fate, then published in suburban Chicago. Living in the Chicago area, I was able to work closely with J. Allen Hynek and the Center for UFO Studies, an association which claimed even more of my time through the 1980s, until my resignation from Fate and return to my native Minnesota in 1989. I remain active with CUFOS, having served as its vice-president since 1986 and the editor of its International UFO Reporter since 1985. Consequently, in 1989 when the Santa Barbara Centre for Humanistic Studies suggested that we produce a comprehensive encyclopedia of ufology, I was both delighted and well-positioned,
I would like to thank the following individuals for their generous help in seeing to it that The UFO Encyclopedia project first got off the ground and then stayed in flight:
First, while I have written the great majority of entries for this volume, I have called upon and received generous assistance with entries that required specialized knowledge, especially in the surveys of ufology in foreign lands. Thanks especially to Bill Chalker (Australia), Claude Mauge (France), Jenny Randles (Great Britain), and Chris Rutkowski (Canada). Also thanks to J. Gordon Melton who wrote the entries on Ann Druffel and the Invisible College.
Second, I wish to thank J. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion, and Aidan A. Kelly, president of the Santa Barbara Centre for Humanistic Studies, both in Santa Barbara, California, for initially promoting the project and seeing to it that this book flew and landed safely, and to my wife, Nancy, my constant source of encouragement when the project seems too immense to be accomplished by a single mortal.
Thanks also to my colleagues at the J. Alien Hynek Center for UFO Studies: scientific director Mark Rodeghier, Don Schmitt, Michael D. Swords, George M. Eberhart (whose two-volume bibliography UFOs and the Extraterrestrial Contact Movement [1986] made my job immeasurably easier), John P. Timmerman, Jennie Zeidman, and Sherman J. Larsen, and to Michael Corbin, William L. Moore, Stanton T. Friedman, Budd Hopkins, David M. Jacobs, Marcello Truzzi, Thomas E. Bullard, D. Scott Rogo, Lucius Farish, Grant R. Cameron, Barry Greenwood, Larry Fawcett, Edward Walters, Richard Heiden, Hilary Evans, Bruce Maccabee, and Richard Hall, and to all those organizational heads and magazine/newsletter editors who responded to my inquiries.
Jerome Clark
January 1990