Speaker 1: UFOs is Sky Creatures by UFO history buff and author
Charles Lear, read by sam Milo Dragovic. Among the many
possible explanations for UFOs is that some might be creatures
that live in the sky. The person who became best
known for this idea was Trevor James Constable, who presented
it along within fred photos of what he claimed were
bioforms invisible to the naked eye, in his nineteen fifty
eight book as Trevor James, They Live in the Sky.
James wasn't alone in his belief, and the concept of
sky creatures goes back farther than nineteen fifty eight in
both speculative literature and science fiction. A good starting point
for the history of the sky creature's hypothesis is the
nineteen ninety seven paper by Jerome Clark, Spacemen, Demons and Conspiracies,
published by the Fund for UFO Research. Clark explores the
many explanations for UFOs put forward throughout the years and
looks at the scch in the section Secret Weapons and
Space Animals. After going into the speculation by people such
as James Moseley, Leon Davidson, and Jacques Valet that flying
saucers or UFOs can be explained as classified secret weapons.
Clark delves into the history of the sky creature concept.
According to Clark, sky creatures originally appeared in fictional form,
possibly for the first time, in the story by Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Horror and the Heights, published in
the November nineteen thirteen issue of The Strand magazine. The
first person to offer the speculation that our skies might
truly be full of living creatures was Charles Fort his
nineteen twenty three book new Lands and what Clark calls
a casual Aside, Fort wrote, it seems no more incredible
that up in the seemingly unoccupied sky there should be
hosts of living things than that the seeming blank of
the ocean should swarm with life. In his nineteen thirty
one book Low, he wrote, unknown luminous things or beings
have often been seen, sometimes close to this earth and
sometimes high in the sky. It may be that some
of them were living things that occasionally come from somewhere else.
After Kenneth Arnold's June twenty fourth, nineteen forty seven sighting,
on July seventh, John Philip Besser wrote the Army Air Forces,
giving his opinion that what Arnold and the many others
that had followed him had seen were a form of
space animal or creature of a highly attenuated ectoplasmic substance
capable of materialization and de materialization, whose propellant is a
form of telekinetic energy. Besser posited that their presence might
explain blood and meat falls reported throughout history. Fort wrote
about such events, and in the assumption that they were
hostile predators with the taste for human flesh, might explain
missing persons. As silly as Besser's theory might seem, according
to Clark, an Air Force spokesman replied to Besser saying
it was one of the most intelligent theories we have received,
and in nineteen forty nine summary of Projects Signs Investigations,
it was noted although the objects has described act more
like animals than anything else, there are few reliable reports
on extraterrestrial animals. Clark adds that aerospace engineer Alfred Letting,
who worked with Projects Signed as a civilian he was
a core member when it was established, is quoted in
the October tenth, nineteen fifty four Trenton Times advertiser as saying,
I suspect that UFOs may be a kind of space animal.
Much of Clark's paper seems to have been sourced from
the December fifteenth, nineteen fifty seven Civilian Saucer Intelligence of
New York newsletter CSI n Y was a science minded
organization found that in nineteen fifty four by Isabel Davis,
Ted Bletcher, and Lex Mabane. On page thirty one of
the news letter. Is the article page thirty three of
the pdf, headlined who Discovered Space Animals, which has most
of the same information provided by Clark. Clark references another
CSI article on the subject that appeared in the September
nineteen fifty seven issue of Fantastic Universe. The newsletter article
begins with a reference to the Fantastic Universe article. After
we'd written an article for the September Fantastic Universe suggesting
that angel hair might be interpreted as organic tissues cast
off by stratospheric creatures, we began to wonder who was
the first to think of UFOs as animals. Ivan T.
Sanderson as the first person mentioned as possibly being the
most eminent advocate of the idea at the time, and
is said to have been principally influenced by an article
by contest zoe Wasilko Sireki published in the September nineteen
fifty five American Astrology. Clark provides an excerpt and says
her article was the most influential of all articles written
on the subject because it gave the theory concrete shape.
It summed up in the CSI newsletter this way, this
theory postulated ionospheric energy feeding quasi electrical entities. According to
the CSI article, others came up with their own sky
creature theories at about the same time. French engineer renee
Foer published his theory. In the summer nineteen fifty four,
Paris mom parness that UFOs were disc beings. Commander Walter
Kreeg suggested that UFOs behaved more like puppies than spaceships,
and Desmond Leslie suggests that in flying saucers have landed
that in the CSI reporter's words, the cylindrical UFO of
Oleragayek might have been a huge living thing. The CSI
article brings up the same early post nineteen forty seven
theorists as Clark and adds Arnold to the list sometime
during this period two We don't have definite references. The
idea was publicly advanced by pioneer saucer investigator Kenneth Arnold.
A search on our part came up with a quote
from Arnold in the article by Fred Schneider headlined Eerie
blue Lights settle Live Thing in the January twenty nine,
nineteen fifty five issue of The Observer out of La Grande, Oregon.
I believe that whatever they are, they are living organisms
and not controlled by any type of man from Mars.
Going back further in time, the CSI article, like Clark's,
ultimately attributes Charles Fort with the origin of the scch
and includes the same quote from new Lands at the end.
The Civilian Saucer Intelligence article on the subject that appeared
in the September nineteen fifty seven issue of Fantastic Universe
is mostly about the angel hair phenomenon. The first part
of a series had lined Shapes in the Sky. It
begins with a description of an investigation by CSI of
an angel hair report, begun after the witness had contacted
Ivan T. Sanderson. Other contemporary cases are described, with the
source provided for each of them, and then there are
several more cases presented going back to seventeen forty one.
The readers told that the latter cases were mostly taken
from fort but we quote in all cases from the
original reference. This all leads to the speculation that angel
hair might come from live large flocks of spherical entities
or creatures about six feet in diameter, which the authors
admit is unquestionably in conflict with present scientific view of
what is possible. The two possibilities offered are that these
jellybirds shed their appendages after mating or burst open after death,
leaving behind their cobwebby remains. A nineteen fifty case in
Philadelphia is reference that is said to have been described
in the second of the Shapes in the Sky series,
published in the May nineteen fifty seven issue of Fantastic Universe.
Clark also described this case in his article, and its
source is the September twenty seventh, nineteen fifty Philadelphia Inquirer.
According to the article, flying Saucer just dissolves. At around
ten pm the night before, patrolman John Collins and Joseph
Keenan spotted what seemed to be a parachute and watched
through their patrol car windshield as it settled into a
field near twenty sixth Street there Boulevard. They called in
street sergeant Joseph coin Book and patrolman James Casper, and
the four of them went to investigate. According to them,
when the object was hit by the light of their flashlights,
it gave off a purplish glow, almost a mist, that
looked as though it contained crystals. Collins went to pick
it up in the area where he made contact, dissolved
and left the sticky, odorless residue. Within twenty five minutes,
the entire object, which was so light it didn't even
bend the reeds it sat on, dissolved. Cook notified the FBI,
but there was nothing to show but a magic circle
on the ground where something purple and quite evanescent once
had been. According to many sources, including the Classic Movie
Hub blog, the case was the inspiration for the nineteen
fifty eight movie The Blob. As for sky creatures appearing
as movie monsters, it wasn't until twenty twenty two that
such a creature was featured in a major film. The
creature has the unmonster like name of Jean Jacket. And
is the nemesis of earth bound humans in Nope. Charles
Lear is the author of The Flying Saucer Investigators in
its second edition on Amazon dot com.