A.J. Gulyas: Contactee-O-Rama

Historically, the subject of the Flying Saucer Contactees has been anathema to “serious” UFO research groups, and this is one of the reasons why we discuss it regularly on this program. A.J. Gulyas has just written a scholarly historical treatment of this underrated movement (entitled Extraterrestrials and the American Zeitgeist) and we dissected it on June 9th. Aaron is a history professor at Mott Community College in Flint, Michigan

Aaron says, ultimately, that the question of the Contactees boils down to this: “Why did they decide that making up easily disprovable stories about space brothers was the best way to get their political ideas out to the people?” This may surprise (and even disturb) some, but we both agree that at least some of the contactees may have actually had some sort of paranormal experiences.

We also went into a lengthy comparison of John Keel’s Mothman Prophecies as compared to Gray Barker’s The Silver Bridge and decided that Barker’s book is ultimately the hipper, cooler version of the Mothman story. We also talked about the strange book Trance Formation of America and its weird, hilarious and disturbing tales of personal abuse and intrigue by elements of the U.S. power structure. There was also a segment where we tried to top each other with vintage Contactee books that we have in our collections.

This was just the sort of rambling conversation that I always love and I hope you do too.