I thank Jerry Clark, my fellow teen UFOlogist from the 1960s, for his lifelong friendship and his half a century of masterful writing on the UFO phenomenon, documenting and clarifying what’s happened and what’s been claimed to have happened, culminating now in the third edition of his indispensable UFO Encyclopedia.
I thank Marty Kottmeyer, UFO skeptic committed to understanding rather than debunking, for the boundless generosity with which he’s shared with me his equally boundless knowledge of UFOlogy and popular culture and his thought-provoking judgments of the ways these have interacted in the course of our lifetimes.
I thank Jeff Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University and the moving spirit behind the Archives of the Impossible collection at Rice’s Fondren Library, for the inspiration given me by his brilliant work—the birthing of a new religious studies scholarship, nothing less—and for innumerable acts of encouragement, friendship, and assistance in the creation of this book.
I’m indebted to many others as well for their help, collegiality, and the wisdom they’ve shared: Marc Bregman, Thomas E. Bullard, Barna Donovan, Stephen C. Finley, the late Matthew J. Graeber, J. Albert Harrill, Rick Hilberg, David Houchin, Eric Ouellet, Diana Pasulka, Tim Printy, Howard Schwartz, Eugene Steinberg, Jacques Vallee, Jesse Walker, and Bob Wilkinson.
Janice Dunnahoo of the Southeastern New Mexico Historical Society Archives and Elizabeth Van Tuyl of the Bridgeport History Center at the Bridgeport Public Library graciously responded to my queries and sent me important materials relating to the Roswell incident and Albert Bender’s “silencing” by the men in black, respectively. Matthew J. Graeber, Jr., showed the greatest kindness in searching through his late father’s files for a reproducible copy of the drawing that appears in this book as figure 2.
I’m grateful to Elizabeth Sheckler and the University of New Hampshire for their permission to reproduce Barney Hill’s drawing of the alien head (figure 4); to Kathleen Lambert and Directed Media, Inc., for permission to reproduce Matthäus Merian’s engraving of Ezekiel’s vision (figure 7); to Rebecca Jewett, Matt Hill, and Orville Martin of the Ohio State University libraries for providing a reproducible image of the March 1945 Amazing Stories cover (figure 11); to Phyllis Galde, editor-in-chief of Fate magazine, for generously providing an image of the Spring 1948 cover (figure 13) and granting permission to use it; and to Sara Pezzoni and the University of Texas at Arlington Special Collections for doing the same for the 1947 photo of Major Jesse Marcel with the supposed Roswell debris (figure 14). Warm thanks also to Steve Davidson, editor and publisher of the newly revived Amazing Stories, for taking the time to clarify for me the copyright status of the magazine’s 1940s artwork.
I’m blessed to have Susan Cohen of Writers House as my agent and, as my editorial and marketing team at Stanford University Press, Stephanie Adams, Barbara Armentrout, Emily-Jane Cohen, Jessica Ling, Faith Wilson Stein, and Kate Wahl. Rob Ehle designed a cover that in its beauty, mystery, and faithfulness to my conception of the book goes beyond anything I might have wished.
I am blessed also to be part of the wonderful writers’ group led by novelist Laurel Goldman in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. For the past seven years, Laurel and my fellow writers have been my teachers, my guides, my cheerleaders, my inspiration. It’s a pleasure to thank them by name: Chrys Bullard, Linda Finigan, Allison Freeman, Danny Johnson, Alice Kaplan, Kathleen O’Keeffe, Susan Payne, Martha Pentecost, and Lisa Rhodes.
The amazing Martin Brossman has been my coach, tireless and patient, in the often intimidating world of the social media. Novelist Beverly Swerling Martin guided me, as she has numberless other writers, through the equally daunting realm of agents and publishers. Alas, Beverly’s no longer here to receive my thanks. She passed away, to my great sorrow, in December 2018.
My gratitude to Dr. Rose Shalom Halperin, my beloved life’s companion of nearly forty years, knows no limits.
David J. Halperin
SEPTEMBER 2019