This 136 page book, by the "Anomalist "creator, is one of my favorites pieces of UFO literature.
It provides pithy UFO accounts (by Huyghe) and intriguing interpretive illustrations (by Trumbore) of creatures or things reported by persons who say they've had a UFO or flying saucer encounter.
Classic cases are provided, along with little-known or obscure UFO cases.
This one on Page 110 is particularly interesting, to me:
In July 1951, a man named Fred Reagan [from Gordon Creighton's, "Healing from UFOs" in FLYING SAUCER REVIEW magazine, Vol. 15, No. 5, 1969, pp.20-21] was flying a small plane when, he said, his light aircraft was struck by a lozenge-shaped UFO. [Since this happened in 1951, the reference should be to a flying saucer, I think.]
As the plane plummeted to Earth, Reagan felt he was being drawn upward by a "sticky, clinging force."
He found himself inside the UFO [flying saucer], in the presence of small glistening beings, about three feet tall and looking like "huge stalks of metallic asparagus."
The beings spoke to him in English - the episode occurred in The United States - and apologized for the accident.
They gave him a medical examination and found cancer, which they removed for the trouble they had caused him.
The beings then deposited him, without a bruise, in a farmer's field near the wreckage of his airplane, which was embedded six feet into the ground.
Less than a year later, in May 1952, Reagan died at the Georgia State Asylum for the Insane, a news report writing that his death was the result of "degeneration of the brain tissue due to extreme atomic radiation."
[This account, reiterated by Mr. Huyghe from the Creighton article, sat for a decade in the files of Flying Saucer Review; the reason for its prolonged archival situation is not explained.]
There are several intriguing things in this account:
The beings (and their craft), of course.
Their appearance, in particular.
The diagnosis of cancer by them, and its alleged cure.
The remarkable status of Mr. Reagan after his airplane's crash.
The death of Mr. Reagan, by neurodegeneration of the brain, attributed to atomic radiation.
Is this an authentic event, reported as such by Mr. Reagan in 1951, or is it a confabulation by Mr. Creighton for his FSR article?
Mr. Creighton was a respected and honored member of the British Foreign Service, at one time, and a most credible UFO researcher according to the sources I accessed, so a bogus story by him seems unlikely.
Were the newspaper and media accounts of Mr. Reagan's story vetted thoroughly at the time (1951-1952)?
We cannot know for sure, now, but let's assume they were accurate or fairly so.
What really happened to Mr. Reagan and his piper cub airplane? (Any photos of either?)
Was the death certificate seen by others (reporters or family)?
Was the atomic radiation of Mr. Reagan's brain intuited by him (for the UFO diagnosis of cancer and his account)?
(Paresthesia is a tingling sensation that some people feel when parts of their body are afflicted; neurodegeneration being an extreme form of paresthesia.)
Did Mr. Reagan have a biophysically induced hallucination, of the kind that Oliver Sacks delineates in his book, HALLUCINATIONS?
Did this cause Mr. Reagan to black out, losing control of his plane, something like that of Thomas Mantell?
Or did Mr. Reagan really encounter asparagus-like, metallic beings, who cured his cancer ( or perhaps caused his brain illness)?
Or is the whole episode a wish-fulfillment by Mr. Reagan; an hallucinated cure for a disease that he knew, somehow, he had?
[Copyright 2013, InterAmerica, Inc.]
