Alien world or common hoaxes?

"Alien World" is a book edited by ufologist Peter Brookesmith, with several contributions by Hilary Evans.

The book looks like a collection of magazine articles. Indeed, the material was originally published in the British partwork magazine "The Unexplained". It's also part of a series of books called "Mysteries of Mind, Space and Time". At least in Sweden, "Alien World" was the first volume of this series, but I'm not sure in what order they were published in Britain or the United States. Today, "Mysteries of Mind, Space and Time" has been quietly forgotten, but both the books and the original magazine were very popular during the 1980's.

Personally, I find "Alien World" to be extremely entertaining. Both Brookesmith and Evans obviously belong to the more sober-minded, near-sceptical wing of ufology. While not ruling out the existence of UFOs as such, they are nevertheless very critical to the sensationalism, hoaxing and pseudo-religious "messages" that characterize much of the UFO subculture. I almost suspect that they don't *really* believe in UFOs at all. To balance these ufology house sceptics, the book also contain articles written by less sober minded people, giving it a somewhat confusing appearance. Still, there is so much sceptical material in "Alien World", that it will probably drive the true believers mad!

Another funny detail is the seemingly sensationalist style of writing adopted by Evans. Just when you think he's about to drop the big one (that the aliens do exist!), he tells you that...well, they might not, after all. I wonder how many readers of the original magazine bought it in the belief that it contained evidence for aliens, only to realize that they've been taken for a ride by...a sceptic? LOL.

Several UFO cases, who may have been forgotten today but were big news at the time, are meticulously exposed by the main authors. There is the notorious case of Billy Meier (which I heard about in junior high), a Swiss farmer who claimed to have been visited by aliens from the Pleiades, one of whom was the lovely female Semjase. In his case, the hoax was more transparent than usual, and yet he quickly gained a following in the United States, including Wendell Stevens and a curious group known as Genesis 111. A detail not mentioned in the book is that Meier also published a "secret gospel" about Jesus, in which aliens from the Pleiades are included among Jesus' ancestors! Incredibly, Meier is still going strong after all these years, promoting his books through the web.

"Alien World" also tackles the UFO mysteries in the Broad Haven Triangle (a.k.a. Terror Triangle), named after the Bermuda Triangle, but situated more comfortably in Wales. This quiet backwater was the scene of a massive UFO hysteria in 1977, prominently featured in the British media, naturally including the tabloids. It all began when the children at a Broad Haven public school assumed they saw a UFO behind some bushes outside their school. Strangely, the UFO was still around hours later! Evans suspects that the easily impressionable kids had actually seen a maintenance vehicle of some kind. Yet, this observation opened the floodgates to countless bizarre claims, many of them centred on a nearby farm, where the cows had been teleported and menacing aliens where looking in through the kitchen window. Soon, other locals began to suspect that UFOs were using a nearby rock island as home base. Apparently, aliens were crawling all over the rocks, crafts were landing, etc. Evans, who investigated the case in person, soon realized that there was very little substance to these stories. The teleported cows turned out to be the most notoriously stray cows in the area, so their periodic "disappearances" were hardly a mystery, the rock island was too far away for anyone to observe aliens sneaking around the cliffs, and the menacing aliens were notorious human pranksters. Weirdly, there are still some people who take this silly season story seriously, most notably...Colin Wilson. Who else?

Finally, "Alien World" dissects a French case I never heard about previously, involving an unscrupulous science fiction writer, a couple of drifters, and a self-proclaimed New Age prophet. The case started with the supposed alien abduction of an 18-year old teenager, but it was soon taken over by one of his older peers, who never claimed to have been abducted, but who nevertheless "revealed" contacts with the usual blonde female aliens under hypnosis. Due to heavy promotion by the successful writer and cultish ufologist Jimmy Guieu, the case became very celebrated, and several books where published. It was, of course, a hoax.

I mean, what a pity, right? :-D

Recommended. If you can stomach some healthy and entertaining scepticism!