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Speaker 1: The paranormal, zufos, monsters and mysteries that you're listening to

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Talking Weird, and now from a Kevin deep in the

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northwards your host, Doctor Dean Bertram.

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Speaker 2: Who.

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Speaker 3: Greetings on my weirdos and weird ads. Welcome to Talking

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Weird on the Untold Radio Network. I'm your host, Dean Bertram,

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and as always I'm delighted that you've decided to join

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me tonight. Where you're watching us live on one of

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the platforms that it goes out on most noticeably of course, YouTube,

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or perhaps you're listening and watching to it, watching it

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where it's archived there later, or perhaps you're listening to

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the audio only version of the show, which drops every

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Friday on every audio podcast platform pretty much on the planet.

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Regardless of greetings, I'm so glad you're here. I'm super

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deeper excited about tonight's guest, so I'm going to get

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to you in a minute. He's one of my favorite

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guests I've ever had on Talking Weird. He also appears

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in my documentary both the short The Shave of Mystery

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and the upcoming feature The Man who Invented Flying Sources,

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which I've all been listening to me talking about now

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for a number of years. We're slowly getting there to

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finishing the feature, but if you want to see the short,

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you can this weekend, where we've had almost a two

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year run on the festival and paranormal convention circuit with

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the short now, and this weekend I'm going to be there.

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I will be both introducing the film at the Contact

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Medalities Expo, which runs May first to third in Delevan, Wisconsin.

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We're actually screening on the Saturday, and I'll be following

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the talk with or the following the film, which I'll

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introduce with I suppose my talk or my presentation on

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what I call The Shaver Mystery Part two, because while

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the film deals primarily with the Shaver Mystery and its

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heyday in the pages of Amazing Stories, the mystery did

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not stop there. It continued and evolved and when in

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all kinds of weird and wonderful places. And that's why

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I talk about in my presentation. So if you can

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get along the Contact Modalities Expo this weekend and Delivan, Wisconsin,

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please do. You can find it pretty easily online. It's

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just contactmodalitiesxpo dot com. Although the expo is spelt without

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an E, so it's contact modalities xpo dot com. And

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if you use my name, I believe there's a place

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where you can enter a coupon code. If you use

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my first name, Dan D E A N. You can

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get discounted tickets to the Expert. I'll be there all weekend.

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If you're a listener of the show, please come and

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say hello to me, because I always love meeting folks

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at places like this, And if if you're into the

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paranormal or the weed, or the unusual, or the strange,

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or UFOs or anything these type of places, places you've

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met make literally lifelong friendships, so please come along and

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hang out. Is going to be an awesome weekend. Now

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I get to my guest tonight, which again I'm so

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excited to have him. He's a librarian, a curator, an

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author whose research focuses on UFO culture, science fiction, religion,

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and book history. So you can see where I'm so

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happy I'm getting to talk to him tonight. His past

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work includes books and theology and science fiction, curating exhibitions

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on Edgar and Poe and Mark Twain, and working as

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part of the editorial team for Philip K. Dick's Exegesis,

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which is an incredible book. I'm met such a fan

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of that book as well. And last year he published

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another book I'm a massive fan of. It's just incredible,

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The Sorceria UFOs Men in Black and the Unbelievable Life

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of Gray Barker with the Mit Press, which of course

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is a biography of the controversial ufological tricks to Grey Barker.

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His latest book, Behold the b a Myth The Collected

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Poems of Grey Barker, was released earlier this year and

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is also absolutely fantastic and at any rate, I'm delighted

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to welcome back to Talking Word, Gabrielle McKee.

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Speaker 2: I do know, it's great to be back. Thanks for

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having me, man.

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Speaker 3: It's so good to have you here. It's funny because

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we're in a space, or at least I'm in a

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space where I don't often, at least on the show,

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get to talk to people who are working more in

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the cultural historical analysis part of the field. So it's

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great when I can get to talk to somebody who

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shares similar interests in that capacity as I do, because

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it doesn't happen on talking with that often. But before

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we get into the book, which again I love. We've

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talked about the Sassarian last time and year on, and

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we're going to talk about Behold the b Myth tonight.

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Maybe for those people who aren't familiar with Gray Barker,

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because uphology is so a historical we just seem to

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forget things which happened even a year ago. Let no,

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and you know, back at the dawn of saurc of them.

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Maybe could you give a bit of an overview and

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I'll give you the stage and you can you can

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let our audience know who don't know who Gray Barker is.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, So.

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Speaker 4: Entire life in West Virginia, and he was one of

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the true ogs of the flying saucer world. He was

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the publisher of The Saucian, which was not quite the

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first but definitely one of the first flying saucer fanzines,

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which had its first issue in nineteen fifty three, so

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in that very very early wave of people kind of

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publishing about flying saucers. He is probably best known for

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his book They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers, which

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is kind of the origin of the Men in Black

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story or stories plural perhaps, And he became he was

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an author who was active into the nineteen eighties and

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kind of for my purposes. Maybe even more importantly, he

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was also a publisher, so he wasn't just writing his

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own books, but he was publishing other people's books, and

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he really was specializing in kind of.

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Speaker 2: The weirdest books of the era.

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Speaker 4: So he's definitely kind of a figure of yesterday year

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in the UFO world, but I think really a foundational

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figure in a lot of ways, both in terms of

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the stories that he was telling and sharing, but also

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the kind of way that he was shaping the rhetoric

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of how people even write about stories like this in

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ways that are kind of hard to trace, but kind

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of once you see the links, you kind of see

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his fingerprints in a lot of places.

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Speaker 3: I'm so grateful for your work. The new book is well,

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Behold the Beam, but the Sorcyrian, because there hadn't been

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any great academic work on Baki yet. There'd been some

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decent documentaries, but documentaries have to you know, there's only

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so deep a film can go in a minute, you

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know now and thirty minutes, Well, your book The Assyrian

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goes so deeply into Barka and into how important he

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was in euthology, and it really paints a fantastic picture

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of his role in mid century euthology, and he was

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such an important figure. What I drew you to Baco

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originally Gabriel.

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Speaker 4: So what originally drew me to him was the books

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that he published. So I had worked on a book

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and I think it was actually ten years ago now

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called Flying Saucers Are Real, which is kind of an

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art book of books from the collection of Jack Womack,

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who's an author but.

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Speaker 2: Also a collector of weird books.

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Speaker 4: So this was his UFO and Flying Saucer book collection,

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and my job at the time involved cataloging his book collection,

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and so I had access to this incredible collection of

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your Flying Saucer books. The Flying Saucers had not been

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something that I had been super interested in up to

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this point.

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Speaker 2: But.

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Speaker 4: Seeing the books in that collection, the ones that jumped

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out at me the most had this West Virginia imprint

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on them of Saucerian books, and just in terms of

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the aesthetics of them, the titles, the covers, the content,

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they all really kind of grabbed me. And just the

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fact that he was really focused on the most out

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there stories of the period at a time when a

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lot of people like you know, the Donald Keyhos of

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the UFO world, were really focused on, you know, the

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kind of most ironically down to earth of flying Saucer stories,

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the ones that he felt he could kind of convince

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the most people with Grave Barker didn't care about any

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of that. He wanted to tell a great story.

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Speaker 2: And the weirder the better.

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Speaker 3: That comes through. Also in in your new book, and

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a number of the poems or a number of the

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writings in Behold the Bemouth He'll he'll and because his

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extracts from some of those Sorcrian magazines as well as poetry,

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and as well as extracts I think from they knew

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too much about flying sources. But he'll be saying how

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outrageous all of this is, But then say, but I

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believe it.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, Yeah, and yeah. And there's you mentioned the

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two documentaries about him, both of which I love. I

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drew on both of them for the biography. They kind

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of were inspirational in a lot of ways and in

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telling the story of his life. And they both mentioned

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the fact that that he wrote poetry and also one

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of the reasons that his that he's had such a

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legacy is because he is such a good writer. His

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his prose books have they're really well written, and they

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have these kind of moving poetic passages. He has lots

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of kind of rhetorical tricks that he that he does

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to really draw the reader in. And so the fact

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that he wrote poetry was kind of known and and

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and out there through those documentaries and a couple tiny

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snippets of his poetry that have been published. But in

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doing the research for the book, So Barker's archive is

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in the the Waldemore, which is a local history center

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in Clarksburg, West Virginia, which as Grey Barker's archive, which

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is extensive. It has all of his correspondence, his book collection,

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most but not quite all of the things that he published,

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and all of his unpublished poetry. And so really getting

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to access that material, I really saw the way that

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he was a poet first.

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Speaker 2: So his earliest poetry goes back to his childhood, and

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he was really.

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Speaker 4: Interested in the power of language and how to kind

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of hook someone, to make them laugh, to make them scared,

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all using just words. And he really kind of cut

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his teeth with writing poetry to do those things.

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Speaker 3: I've always said, and not just when you're on here

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and we're talking about Baka, but just many times throughout

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the years of doing this show and on other people's shows,

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and just in general conversations that so much of UFO

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literature it just isn't written well a great read. But

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Barker's stuff. I think Barker and Keel and Palmer were

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probably all three people who were so good at their

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trade that when you read stories or articles or you know,

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full books written by any of those men, they grip

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you from the beginning until the end. These people were

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They could have written in any field and they would

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have been interesting. I don't think you can say that

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about many authors in the flying source of fields. Certainly.

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I can't think of anybody today. Well, there are people

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I enjoy reading Greg Bishop's great, Joshua Cutchin's great, but

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they're people who are a little more analytical rather than

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writing just in the space and telling the stories. You know,

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their work's almost academic to a degree. But people writing

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in the space there just isn't. Those people who had

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this incredible grasp of the English language and how to

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spin words, and that's one of the reasons they love

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Behold the be the c Gray's development, you know, as

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a writer poetically and with the other, with the other,

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the other extracts that are in there, and you're when

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you're reading, you're very conscious that you're not reading somebody

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who's just a stand How did youufologist? You know, it's

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a whole different kettle of fish when you read BAKA.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Virtually all of the people you named, I think started

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as writers first and then got interested in UFOs or

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whatever other odd topics a little later in life. I'd

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add to that list Whitley Strieber, who I think is

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also a stunning writer. And the course started as a

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novelist and you know, some very well received novels prior

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to having any of the weird experiences that he later

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came to be known for. I think Gray Barker's the

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same way. He had not really published as much as

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as a Ray Palmer or a John Keel prior to

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writing for his own zine, This auc Arian, but he

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had done a bit. He had written actually a really

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funny series of articles for a magazine, like a trade

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magazine for motion pictures, because he was a involved in

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motion picture presentation, you know, theater management and things, and

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he wrote a really funny series of articles about how

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to run a projector that it's you know, it's a

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kind of mad magazine style approach. So he had done

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a bit of other writing prior to that, but most

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of the writing that survives from before the Sauce area

240
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and by him is in the form of poetry.

241
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Speaker 2: And so one.

242
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Speaker 4: Of the big discoveries that I made in doing research

243
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on him was outside of his archive at the there's

244
00:13:33,080 --> 00:13:35,879
a West Virginia Regional History Center at the University of

245
00:13:35,879 --> 00:13:40,360
Morgantown in West Virginia that has the manuscript of his

246
00:13:40,440 --> 00:13:43,759
poetry from college. So it's a book called who Knows,

247
00:13:44,639 --> 00:13:47,039
which is basically all the poetry that he wrote well

248
00:13:47,080 --> 00:13:50,120
he was at Glenville State University. He donated that to

249
00:13:51,320 --> 00:13:54,039
the college library when he graduated, and they in.

250
00:13:54,000 --> 00:13:56,279
Speaker 2: Turn passed it on to this regional History center.

251
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Speaker 4: And what's really interesting is I discovered in the archive

252
00:14:01,720 --> 00:14:03,639
he did not seem to have kept a copy of this,

253
00:14:03,799 --> 00:14:07,120
So the one that he gave to Glenville seems to

254
00:14:07,120 --> 00:14:10,159
be the only copy that survived, and that forms the

255
00:14:10,200 --> 00:14:14,480
first section of Behold the Behemoth. It's his own collection

256
00:14:14,600 --> 00:14:17,759
of poetry from when he was about twenty one years old.

257
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Speaker 3: And before we get to the euthological poetry, which we will,

258
00:14:20,919 --> 00:14:22,879
I know, there's a wonderful piece, I believe it's in

259
00:14:22,879 --> 00:14:26,279
that section, which is so atmospheric. It's about walking around

260
00:14:26,279 --> 00:14:28,960
the campus at not so I'm guessing that's from his period.

261
00:14:29,639 --> 00:14:33,919
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, so he was the editor of his college newspaper,

262
00:14:34,559 --> 00:14:38,519
the Glenville Mercury, which there are scans of online and

263
00:14:38,639 --> 00:14:41,720
you can read all of what he was writing for that,

264
00:14:42,039 --> 00:14:44,240
And yeah, there's this one piece that he wrote for

265
00:14:44,279 --> 00:14:46,879
it that's just kind of a I consider it a

266
00:14:46,879 --> 00:14:49,600
prose poem, which is why I included it in the volume,

267
00:14:50,799 --> 00:14:53,799
where he's just describing, you know, a walk through the

268
00:14:53,799 --> 00:14:57,519
campus on a cold night, and really it's really kind

269
00:14:57,519 --> 00:14:58,440
of powerful writing.

270
00:14:58,840 --> 00:15:00,360
Speaker 2: You know, he's young.

271
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Speaker 4: It's not the most polished thing, but it has some

272
00:15:03,559 --> 00:15:07,799
really nice images and really great atmosphere, and it's exactly

273
00:15:07,840 --> 00:15:10,159
the kind of thing you see him doing when he's

274
00:15:10,440 --> 00:15:12,360
writing about flying saucers a few years later.

275
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Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that's one of one of the things

276
00:15:14,639 --> 00:15:17,000
I found very interesting about the book was there were

277
00:15:17,039 --> 00:15:21,480
poems where you could see Barker's different lives because he

278
00:15:21,519 --> 00:15:24,519
lived different lives converge. Like there's a poem where he's

279
00:15:24,600 --> 00:15:27,879
talking about I should have written down the tilet but

280
00:15:27,960 --> 00:15:30,200
that you'll know it. There's a poem where he's talking

281
00:15:30,320 --> 00:15:34,960
about about about film and in it he mentions everybody

282
00:15:35,000 --> 00:15:37,919
from you know, Austin Wells and he's talking about Bing Crosby,

283
00:15:38,080 --> 00:15:41,000
and he's you know, talking about all various stars and

284
00:15:41,080 --> 00:15:44,279
directors and studio heads like you know Xanak and Louis

285
00:15:44,639 --> 00:15:46,720
Meyer and all these people, and then at the end

286
00:15:46,759 --> 00:15:48,279
he finishes talking about a Damski.

287
00:15:49,559 --> 00:15:54,200
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that is I think j Arthur Rank enters

288
00:15:54,200 --> 00:15:58,039
into Hollywood, I think is the name of that one. Yeah,

289
00:15:58,080 --> 00:16:01,399
he definitely had his foot in in the motion picture world.

290
00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:03,840
He wrote a couple other poems that are that are

291
00:16:03,879 --> 00:16:07,639
kind of movie based, including a couple kind of parodies

292
00:16:07,759 --> 00:16:11,960
of the j Arthur Rank production of Hamlet, which he

293
00:16:12,000 --> 00:16:14,000
was not a fan of, and he wrote some kind

294
00:16:14,000 --> 00:16:17,519
of parodies of Shakespearean monologues about how boring it was

295
00:16:17,559 --> 00:16:18,159
to sit there.

296
00:16:18,000 --> 00:16:18,440
Speaker 2: In the theater.

297
00:16:20,039 --> 00:16:25,200
Speaker 4: So yeah, he was definitely kind of drawing on movies,

298
00:16:25,279 --> 00:16:29,759
and that I think was maybe what he in Parallel universe,

299
00:16:30,399 --> 00:16:32,279
you know, Jim Moseley talks about how he was kind

300
00:16:32,279 --> 00:16:35,799
of afraid to live anywhere but West Virginia. Says, you know,

301
00:16:35,840 --> 00:16:38,120
maybe he could have lived in New York and been

302
00:16:38,279 --> 00:16:40,720
you know, more more successful writer. I think there's another

303
00:16:40,759 --> 00:16:43,440
world where he moved to California and became a movie producer.

304
00:16:46,320 --> 00:16:48,919
Speaker 3: Just fantastic. We have an interesting question from Horace Smith,

305
00:16:48,919 --> 00:16:50,480
who's been a guest on the show, and he's a

306
00:16:50,480 --> 00:16:52,360
good friend of the show, a regular listener. He's also

307
00:16:52,720 --> 00:16:56,720
professor emeritus of astronomy and Physics at Michigan State University,

308
00:16:56,759 --> 00:16:59,759
and he asks how well did Barker's first book on

309
00:16:59,799 --> 00:17:03,120
the in black sales? So he means they knew too

310
00:17:03,200 --> 00:17:05,119
much about flying sources. How was that RECEIVEE gig?

311
00:17:05,240 --> 00:17:08,759
Speaker 4: Yeah, of course it sold pretty well. It was not

312
00:17:08,960 --> 00:17:11,279
quite a best seller, didn't make it to the New

313
00:17:11,359 --> 00:17:14,640
York Times bestseller list. The publisher that put it out,

314
00:17:14,759 --> 00:17:19,200
University Books, was a bit of an upstart publisher. It

315
00:17:19,359 --> 00:17:21,759
was run by a guy named Felix Morrow who had

316
00:17:21,759 --> 00:17:24,559
worked at one of the big New York publishing houses

317
00:17:25,200 --> 00:17:27,759
and was kind of, you know, putting up his own shingle.

318
00:17:28,079 --> 00:17:30,680
And it wasn't quite the first book that he put out,

319
00:17:30,680 --> 00:17:32,440
but it was within the first one or two years

320
00:17:32,640 --> 00:17:35,720
of that publishing house existing, so we didn't quite have

321
00:17:35,839 --> 00:17:39,319
the reach of like a double day or something at

322
00:17:39,319 --> 00:17:43,119
the time it sold. But it did see three printings

323
00:17:43,519 --> 00:17:47,480
in its first edition. I believe those printings were five

324
00:17:47,519 --> 00:17:51,920
thousand copies each, but I also turned up some evidence

325
00:17:52,000 --> 00:17:54,359
that the third printing was remaindered. If you want to

326
00:17:54,400 --> 00:17:56,160
know what that is. It was one of my favorite

327
00:17:56,599 --> 00:17:59,400
pieces of information that I discovered, but you're going to

328
00:17:59,440 --> 00:18:02,200
have to turn to the Sauce arean to find the

329
00:18:02,200 --> 00:18:04,799
answer to that question. So I believe it sold probably

330
00:18:04,799 --> 00:18:08,119
somewhere between you know, twelve and fourteen thousand copies, which

331
00:18:08,160 --> 00:18:11,279
is pretty good, but is not you know, it wasn't

332
00:18:11,720 --> 00:18:15,680
kind of making crazy waves in the mainstream publishing world.

333
00:18:16,200 --> 00:18:19,240
I've done a bit of research on sales numbers for

334
00:18:19,400 --> 00:18:23,240
Flying Saucer books in this period, and unfortunately it's really

335
00:18:23,240 --> 00:18:26,480
hard to find hard numbers for anything, but we do

336
00:18:26,559 --> 00:18:29,480
have access to, you know, the New York Times bestseller

337
00:18:29,519 --> 00:18:32,559
List is kind of the gold standard for as far

338
00:18:32,599 --> 00:18:34,480
as there is a gold standard for something where there's

339
00:18:34,480 --> 00:18:37,720
no real numbers, but it's a good source of information

340
00:18:38,279 --> 00:18:41,359
and you can really kind of see the kind of

341
00:18:41,519 --> 00:18:45,599
waves of mainstream success for Flying Saucer books, and the

342
00:18:45,720 --> 00:18:48,799
kind of last one had faded around nineteen fifty three,

343
00:18:49,319 --> 00:18:51,960
and Barker's book came out in nineteen fifty six, so

344
00:18:52,039 --> 00:18:55,559
it was it did pretty well for the time, but

345
00:18:55,640 --> 00:18:58,799
I think it was really one of the last hardcover

346
00:18:59,279 --> 00:19:02,920
Flying Saucer boks that sold well until the sixties when

347
00:19:02,960 --> 00:19:04,160
there was kind of another bump.

348
00:19:05,240 --> 00:19:09,559
Speaker 3: It certainly had an incredible influence on the way we've

349
00:19:10,079 --> 00:19:13,640
viewed and talked about the UFO phenomenon scenes regardless perhaps

350
00:19:13,640 --> 00:19:16,759
of it's still obviously had a degree of commercial success,

351
00:19:16,839 --> 00:19:20,920
but I think its influence extends far beyond that monetary

352
00:19:20,960 --> 00:19:22,279
you know, earnings of the time.

353
00:19:23,200 --> 00:19:25,160
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think you know, it didn't sell,

354
00:19:25,240 --> 00:19:27,440
you know, two hundred thousand copies, but the people that

355
00:19:27,480 --> 00:19:29,920
were reading it were much more likely to be people

356
00:19:29,920 --> 00:19:33,039
who were engaged in the Flying Saucer world, and it

357
00:19:33,079 --> 00:19:36,039
did have a big impact on them. And I think

358
00:19:36,079 --> 00:19:38,000
the place that it had the biggest impact was on

359
00:19:38,079 --> 00:19:40,039
how people write.

360
00:19:40,160 --> 00:19:42,160
Speaker 2: And you really see.

361
00:19:42,599 --> 00:19:45,920
Speaker 4: I mean other people, you know, Keiho had done a

362
00:19:45,920 --> 00:19:50,440
bit of this, but you really see a kind of

363
00:19:50,480 --> 00:19:54,480
playfulness with the language and the way that the story

364
00:19:54,559 --> 00:19:59,440
is spun. That really becomes influential, you know, and that

365
00:19:59,480 --> 00:20:04,359
you start to in any Saucer book that does well

366
00:20:04,400 --> 00:20:06,759
at all in later years.

367
00:20:07,839 --> 00:20:12,440
Speaker 3: No, I've always appreciated, like I said, Barker is writing

368
00:20:12,440 --> 00:20:13,799
before and it interests me and I think we talked

369
00:20:13,839 --> 00:20:15,160
a little bit about it last time, so we don't

370
00:20:15,160 --> 00:20:18,839
have to go into see details now, But perhaps that

371
00:20:18,960 --> 00:20:23,640
interplay or the influence of some of Ray Palmer's stuff,

372
00:20:23,680 --> 00:20:25,759
like the idea there was the Shaver Mystery, which had

373
00:20:25,759 --> 00:20:28,440
paved the way for a lot of this, And then

374
00:20:29,119 --> 00:20:31,359
when he talks about what happened to Al Bender in

375
00:20:31,519 --> 00:20:33,839
they knew much of they knew too much about flying sources,

376
00:20:33,880 --> 00:20:37,039
it becomes the Bender mystery. So it seems like there's

377
00:20:37,079 --> 00:20:41,319
a play on, you know, developing a new perhaps mystery,

378
00:20:41,319 --> 00:20:44,240
which will you know, enthrall readers, the way that Palmer

379
00:20:44,279 --> 00:20:47,680
an amazing had back in the back, maybe a decade beforehand.

380
00:20:48,319 --> 00:20:48,759
Speaker 2: Exactly.

381
00:20:48,839 --> 00:20:51,079
Speaker 4: Yeah, And when he calls it the Bender mystery, he

382
00:20:51,240 --> 00:20:55,119
is directly basing that on Palmer and the Shaver Mystery.

383
00:20:55,279 --> 00:20:57,480
That is the specific sense in which he means the

384
00:20:57,480 --> 00:21:02,640
word mystery there. But Yeah, he is definitely very influenced

385
00:21:02,640 --> 00:21:06,440
by Ray Palmer. We know that he read The Coming

386
00:21:06,480 --> 00:21:08,079
of the Saucers. He reviewed it in one of the

387
00:21:08,119 --> 00:21:11,599
first issues of The Sauce Arean And so I think

388
00:21:11,640 --> 00:21:15,480
the kind of mysterious figures in dark suits that we

389
00:21:15,519 --> 00:21:19,160
see in that book definitely turn up later in a

390
00:21:19,200 --> 00:21:22,200
bit more of a pointed way in Barker's work, for sure.

391
00:21:23,400 --> 00:21:26,960
Speaker 3: I think Barker and perhaps just because of his background, well,

392
00:21:27,160 --> 00:21:29,359
I mean he has, like he said, various lives, but

393
00:21:29,400 --> 00:21:32,400
perhaps because he understood showmanship and he understood movies, he

394
00:21:32,480 --> 00:21:35,799
understood what would make a good mythic tale in euthology,

395
00:21:35,920 --> 00:21:38,440
so he was able to somehow, you know, go well,

396
00:21:38,480 --> 00:21:40,559
this is the these are the points which are going

397
00:21:40,680 --> 00:21:41,640
to make a mystery.

398
00:21:41,720 --> 00:21:41,920
Speaker 1: You know.

399
00:21:42,400 --> 00:21:44,079
Speaker 3: Maybe a lot of people wouldn't have been able to

400
00:21:45,240 --> 00:21:47,920
gauge what to focus on in a book the way

401
00:21:47,960 --> 00:21:49,799
that the Barker could well.

402
00:21:49,839 --> 00:21:52,839
Speaker 4: And I think his origin in West Virginia is a

403
00:21:52,880 --> 00:21:55,720
big part of it too, because that's a region where

404
00:21:56,200 --> 00:22:02,720
folklore and scary stories are really deeply ingrained into the

405
00:22:02,759 --> 00:22:06,240
way people live their lives and are brought up. And

406
00:22:06,319 --> 00:22:09,880
so there's this one great letter that he wrote where

407
00:22:09,920 --> 00:22:13,920
he's really it's as clear a picture of we have

408
00:22:14,039 --> 00:22:18,200
as his early childhood as anywhere in this one letter.

409
00:22:18,240 --> 00:22:21,839
And he's actually telling the weird stories that his family told.

410
00:22:22,839 --> 00:22:25,079
So there's one about this kind of weird hairy monster

411
00:22:25,200 --> 00:22:28,359
that his aunt saw. His other aunt claims to have

412
00:22:28,400 --> 00:22:32,160
seen the devil in a field by her house, and

413
00:22:32,200 --> 00:22:35,279
so these were stories that his family was telling. One

414
00:22:35,319 --> 00:22:39,720
of them he actually published in an issue of Fate Magazine.

415
00:22:40,680 --> 00:22:44,039
It's a story that his mother had told him about

416
00:22:44,119 --> 00:22:47,920
a kind of mysterious premonition of her sister's death, and

417
00:22:47,960 --> 00:22:50,839
he actually sent it into Fate under his mother's name

418
00:22:52,200 --> 00:22:54,480
in I think nineteen fifty six or so.

419
00:22:54,920 --> 00:22:56,960
Speaker 3: I might have that issue here because I've got the first,

420
00:22:57,039 --> 00:22:59,359
like I've got it maybe the first seventy one hundred

421
00:22:59,400 --> 00:23:01,559
issues of Faith, like through the Palmer Run and a

422
00:23:01,559 --> 00:23:04,400
little beyond, you know. But he of course, also speaking

423
00:23:04,440 --> 00:23:07,599
of Fate, he's a person who popularizes the flat Woods

424
00:23:08,079 --> 00:23:11,000
Monster in the pages of Fate Magazine, right, like it's

425
00:23:11,000 --> 00:23:12,799
the really it's the first real article we have in

426
00:23:12,839 --> 00:23:15,839
the paranormal press. You know, it's from It's from Gray Barker.

427
00:23:16,440 --> 00:23:22,400
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right, because the Flatwoods Monster sighting was just

428
00:23:22,440 --> 00:23:24,960
a few miles from where Barker grew up. So flat

429
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:27,039
Woods is next to Sutton. He grew up in the

430
00:23:27,119 --> 00:23:31,240
hills outside of Sutton essentially, and so it was basically

431
00:23:31,279 --> 00:23:36,160
in his backyard where that occurred. So yeah, he that

432
00:23:36,359 --> 00:23:38,920
was kind of what got him interested in flying saucers

433
00:23:38,920 --> 00:23:41,000
in the first place. And I think it's fitting that

434
00:23:41,039 --> 00:23:44,079
it's not just a standard saucer sighting, that it's this

435
00:23:44,160 --> 00:23:47,759
weird monster you know that's associated with it and you

436
00:23:47,759 --> 00:23:52,319
know better, better story to tell around the campfire. But yeah,

437
00:23:52,400 --> 00:23:56,920
so he his first kind of national byline that we

438
00:23:57,039 --> 00:23:59,599
know that we that we kind of remember because he

439
00:23:59,599 --> 00:24:02,759
had written for some of these motion picture and the

440
00:24:03,039 --> 00:24:07,880
education magazines in the later forties is The Monster and

441
00:24:07,920 --> 00:24:11,039
the Saucer and Infate Magazine, which is a it's not

442
00:24:11,599 --> 00:24:13,480
very long, I think it's four or five pages long

443
00:24:14,039 --> 00:24:17,039
account of the Flatwood's Monster. And then he did a

444
00:24:17,119 --> 00:24:19,839
much much longer version about a year later in the

445
00:24:19,839 --> 00:24:21,279
first issue of The Sauce Arean.

446
00:24:22,839 --> 00:24:26,240
Speaker 3: I love how again in the poetry in your wonderful book,

447
00:24:26,240 --> 00:24:29,160
Behold the b Myth, how you see it's almost like

448
00:24:29,200 --> 00:24:32,960
you have insights that you wouldn't have if this poetry

449
00:24:32,960 --> 00:24:36,559
hadn't been discovered. It's just so funny to see him

450
00:24:37,839 --> 00:24:41,279
talking about things which are kind of either personalities or

451
00:24:41,319 --> 00:24:45,240
events which are euphologically legendary. And here like there's stuff

452
00:24:45,279 --> 00:24:50,319
about you know, Karl Lende and the the the what's

453
00:24:50,359 --> 00:24:53,240
the experiment called the Philadelphia Experiment, And there's things about

454
00:24:53,240 --> 00:24:56,720
the strath Letter, and there's things about M. K. Jessip

455
00:24:56,759 --> 00:24:59,680
and the Jessip stories. The Jessip poem which maybe you

456
00:24:59,680 --> 00:25:03,599
can talk Quebec was mkjess was a significant figure in euphology.

457
00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:08,119
It's both touching and also this really kind of mercenary

458
00:25:08,240 --> 00:25:10,759
ending to that poem. I was really like wow when

459
00:25:10,759 --> 00:25:11,599
I read that one.

460
00:25:11,880 --> 00:25:14,599
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well would you like me to read that one?

461
00:25:14,599 --> 00:25:16,920
Maybe I'll talk for a minute about who Jessup was

462
00:25:17,039 --> 00:25:20,720
sure that'd be great. So jess MK Jessup or Morris K.

463
00:25:20,920 --> 00:25:26,519
Jessup wrote a book that did probably about as well

464
00:25:26,559 --> 00:25:29,440
as they knew too much about flying saucers did, which

465
00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:32,839
is called The Case for the UFO, And he wrote

466
00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:35,039
a couple other flying saucer books within a couple of

467
00:25:35,079 --> 00:25:40,559
years after that, with kind of diminishing sales, diminishing returns,

468
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:46,119
and then in I believe nineteen fifty nine he committed suicide.

469
00:25:46,799 --> 00:25:50,440
So he had had some trouble in his marriage, his

470
00:25:50,519 --> 00:25:53,039
finances weren't doing well because he had really wanted to

471
00:25:53,640 --> 00:25:56,519
go all in on being a writer, but you know,

472
00:25:56,680 --> 00:25:59,160
the UFO thing was not going to get him there,

473
00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:02,759
and so he had a lot of personal problems. But

474
00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:06,920
some people in the Flying Saucer world saw this as

475
00:26:06,920 --> 00:26:12,359
an opportunity to turn a tragedy into an enduring legend. So,

476
00:26:12,799 --> 00:26:17,200
and I say some people, Gray Barker was person's number one,

477
00:26:17,519 --> 00:26:21,319
two and three in that in a kind of making

478
00:26:21,359 --> 00:26:24,039
this like, oh, well, he did he really die by

479
00:26:24,039 --> 00:26:27,160
suicide or was this something more mysterious because he perhaps

480
00:26:27,240 --> 00:26:33,160
knew too much? So there's a poem in this so

481
00:26:33,359 --> 00:26:36,279
in a collection of poetry that Barker wrote in the

482
00:26:36,359 --> 00:26:41,079
early sixties. It is actually probably my favorite section of

483
00:26:41,119 --> 00:26:42,640
this book, though I think I've said that about a

484
00:26:42,680 --> 00:26:47,200
couple other sections as well. But it's called a Portfolio

485
00:26:47,279 --> 00:26:52,799
of Psychotic Verse, subtitle written World Drunk, and the poem

486
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:56,400
is called a cheap edition of Jessup. So I'll read

487
00:26:56,400 --> 00:26:57,440
that one for you now.

488
00:26:58,920 --> 00:26:59,279
Speaker 2: Tonight.

489
00:26:59,319 --> 00:27:02,480
Speaker 4: I was thinking of about producing a cheap mimiographed edition

490
00:27:02,799 --> 00:27:07,160
of MK Jessop's UFO and the Bible. I opened my

491
00:27:07,279 --> 00:27:10,599
only remaining hardcover copy of this out of print book,

492
00:27:11,319 --> 00:27:15,160
and it contained an inscription to Gray Barker from the

493
00:27:15,200 --> 00:27:17,480
old man of upology, Morris K.

494
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:18,000
Speaker 2: Jessop.

495
00:27:19,319 --> 00:27:22,759
Speaker 4: This indeed inspired old memories of ufology and what it

496
00:27:22,799 --> 00:27:27,279
once was, and gave me real food for thought. Should

497
00:27:27,319 --> 00:27:29,440
I shoot it offset at two dollars per page for

498
00:27:29,519 --> 00:27:31,920
negatives or try to get some girl to check it

499
00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:32,920
up on paper plates?

500
00:27:36,200 --> 00:27:38,440
Speaker 3: Say so? Touching the beginning and then at the end,

501
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:41,240
it's just like this is you know, this is this

502
00:27:41,319 --> 00:27:43,480
is the reality of what I do. But he's conscious

503
00:27:43,480 --> 00:27:46,119
of it, which I think that self reflection, that awareness

504
00:27:46,119 --> 00:27:47,559
in that poem is very telling.

505
00:27:48,079 --> 00:27:51,680
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's very, very conscious of the fact that what

506
00:27:51,799 --> 00:27:57,920
he does is he takes other people's stories and exploits them,

507
00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:00,440
and not just for money, because that it's kind of

508
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:04,400
the reason that people assume that he did things was well, well,

509
00:28:04,400 --> 00:28:06,119
he could make a buck doing this, and I think

510
00:28:06,160 --> 00:28:08,920
he lost way more money on flying saucers than he

511
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:13,160
ever made. It was a real passion for him, So

512
00:28:13,200 --> 00:28:17,279
I think the exploitation is not so much a monetary

513
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:24,000
thing as an effort to turn small stories that might

514
00:28:24,039 --> 00:28:28,359
be forgotten into enduring legends. So I kind of hinted

515
00:28:28,359 --> 00:28:32,200
at this before with turning Jessop's death from a tragedy

516
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:36,160
to a legend. But there is this kind of mercenary

517
00:28:36,200 --> 00:28:40,839
aspect of you are doing something different than we usually

518
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:45,519
do with you know, a friend who has died, if

519
00:28:45,559 --> 00:28:49,519
instead of just remembering the good times, if you're trying

520
00:28:49,559 --> 00:28:54,680
to turn them into something kind of bigger than they were.

521
00:28:56,200 --> 00:28:59,400
I do think that Barker did that with love. I

522
00:28:59,400 --> 00:29:02,440
think he would much rather think of Jessup as someone

523
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:06,960
who can go on and inspire new people to see

524
00:29:07,000 --> 00:29:09,519
mystery in the world, even if it's a sinister mystery,

525
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:12,559
then to just be sad that his friend died.

526
00:29:13,759 --> 00:29:16,440
Speaker 2: So it's but it's it's it's frat, it's frat.

527
00:29:18,119 --> 00:29:20,039
Speaker 3: This is meant to be kind of a family network,

528
00:29:20,079 --> 00:29:21,960
so we're not meant to swear on it, which makes

529
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:26,000
it difficult dealing with barkism most famous and perhaps his

530
00:29:26,119 --> 00:29:29,400
greatest poem, at least for those of us interested in uphology.

531
00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:32,960
But the poem, which is called Ufo, is a bucket

532
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:35,359
of I guess we'll say crap. Although it's the s

533
00:29:35,519 --> 00:29:40,200
H I T word that book, isn't that That poem

534
00:29:40,240 --> 00:29:42,799
is another example of him being so conscious that he's

535
00:29:42,839 --> 00:29:49,559
engaged in this, this community or this this endeavor, which

536
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:53,119
to him he's aware of. So much of it is

537
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:55,680
just nonsense, but he's there in the midst of it.

538
00:29:55,720 --> 00:29:58,400
And it's obviously the poem features, as I think you

539
00:29:58,440 --> 00:30:01,960
mentioned in the book, very very significantly in the Shades

540
00:30:02,000 --> 00:30:04,640
of Gray documentary, there's a wonderful moment when an arraider

541
00:30:04,680 --> 00:30:07,680
reads it. But it's such a powerful poem, and there's

542
00:30:07,799 --> 00:30:10,359
few people, I think ever in the euthological field who

543
00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:12,279
had that kind of level of self awareness.

544
00:30:12,839 --> 00:30:13,119
Speaker 2: Yeah.

545
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:17,079
Speaker 4: Yeah, and his poetry is where he really, I think,

546
00:30:17,240 --> 00:30:20,359
more than anywhere else, even in his court than in

547
00:30:20,400 --> 00:30:24,359
his correspondence, kind of gives hints of what maybe he

548
00:30:24,480 --> 00:30:28,240
quote unquote really believed. I have issues with that phrase

549
00:30:28,279 --> 00:30:30,400
because I think it's way more complicated than that for

550
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:33,920
Gray Barker especially, but I think also for a lot

551
00:30:33,920 --> 00:30:38,279
of people. One of the reasons that he that we

552
00:30:38,359 --> 00:30:41,200
kind of see so much behind the veil in the

553
00:30:41,200 --> 00:30:44,759
poetry is that almost all of this material was only

554
00:30:44,839 --> 00:30:49,480
ever shared with Jim Moseley. So, Jim Moseley the editor

555
00:30:49,559 --> 00:30:54,519
of Saucer News, an Barker's best friend from about nineteen

556
00:30:54,559 --> 00:31:00,319
fifty four till his death, and they both have had

557
00:31:00,880 --> 00:31:06,960
a kind of less than than fully reverent approach to

558
00:31:07,039 --> 00:31:11,759
the Flying Saucer subject. Jim Moseley was somebody who was

559
00:31:11,920 --> 00:31:15,640
very much stirring the pots in Saucer News and interested

560
00:31:15,680 --> 00:31:19,640
in in being very controversial and making people mad because

561
00:31:19,640 --> 00:31:22,519
then they would write him letters that he could publish

562
00:31:23,160 --> 00:31:26,720
and and didn't believe what. You know, the bulk of

563
00:31:26,799 --> 00:31:30,680
people in the Flying Saucer world believed he had his

564
00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:32,920
own ideas and he was not gonna going to be

565
00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:40,000
swayed by by what was popular. And so Barker, uh,

566
00:31:40,400 --> 00:31:43,279
you know, shared his shared the poetry with him, and

567
00:31:43,319 --> 00:31:47,960
the poetry that's about UFO and related topics specifically. You know,

568
00:31:48,039 --> 00:31:50,400
he's he's throwing a damn Ski's name out there and

569
00:31:50,440 --> 00:31:52,839
mentioning the Straight Letter because Jim Mosley is the one

570
00:31:52,880 --> 00:31:56,359
guy who knows exactly who those are and exactly what

571
00:31:56,400 --> 00:31:59,160
Barker thinks of of those subjects.

572
00:31:59,599 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 3: You know, I was fortunate, I'd probably told you before,

573
00:32:02,279 --> 00:32:05,240
I was fortunate to meet Jim Moseley at a UFO

574
00:32:05,359 --> 00:32:08,000
convention in Clearwater, Flora. I used to be a subscriber

575
00:32:08,039 --> 00:32:09,799
to his sources sameir, and I was a big fan

576
00:32:09,839 --> 00:32:11,880
of it, and so he agreed to meet me, and

577
00:32:11,960 --> 00:32:14,359
we hung out for some time, and he was very generous.

578
00:32:14,400 --> 00:32:15,839
We got drunk in a bar and he bought all

579
00:32:15,880 --> 00:32:18,960
the drinks, you know, which was hilarious. There's very few

580
00:32:19,039 --> 00:32:21,559
drunks I've had which were more enjoyable than that one

581
00:32:21,640 --> 00:32:24,480
with Jim Moseley. But maybe you could tell people about that,

582
00:32:24,559 --> 00:32:27,680
thea Strath letter and the scandal, and because it's such

583
00:32:27,680 --> 00:32:30,759
a fascinating story, and then because there's poetry which references

584
00:32:30,759 --> 00:32:31,680
that in the book as well.

585
00:32:31,880 --> 00:32:38,359
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, So the Straith Letter was a hoax that

586
00:32:38,680 --> 00:32:42,880
was perpetrated by Barker and Moseley in nineteen fifty seven.

587
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:46,920
They got together one night. They had gotten their hands

588
00:32:46,960 --> 00:32:51,359
on some legitimate government stationary, and some of it was

589
00:32:51,359 --> 00:32:53,720
from the State Department a couple other places as well,

590
00:32:53,759 --> 00:32:56,160
and they wrote a whole series of hoax letters to

591
00:32:56,240 --> 00:33:00,079
various people in the UFO world, some of them some

592
00:33:00,119 --> 00:33:04,640
of them they mailed, a couple they destroyed, and almost

593
00:33:04,720 --> 00:33:07,680
all of them sank without a trace, but the one

594
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:10,880
that they sent to Georgia Dampski, A Dampski kind of

595
00:33:10,920 --> 00:33:14,039
held up as proof that someone in the State Department

596
00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:19,359
liked him. Somebody up there liked me. And you know,

597
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:23,720
this kind of became a tempest in a teapot for

598
00:33:23,759 --> 00:33:26,839
a few months, but it started. There started to be

599
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:30,440
a little heat on Barker because some people successfully are

600
00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:34,759
incorrectly identified him as the source of the letter, and

601
00:33:34,960 --> 00:33:37,960
there were some rumblings that the FBI might be looking

602
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:40,960
into him. I was not able to find any proof

603
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:43,039
that the FBI actually spoke to him. The only place

604
00:33:43,039 --> 00:33:45,400
where that was actually stated was in a letter that

605
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:48,960
Barker himself wrote. And I think anything that he is

606
00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:51,839
writing you needed to have a bit of a grain

607
00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:56,359
of salt with But he certainly, I do believe he

608
00:33:56,440 --> 00:33:58,440
was investigated by the State Department because it was their

609
00:33:58,480 --> 00:34:01,400
stationary and they to know, you know, who had gotten

610
00:34:01,400 --> 00:34:07,039
it and how So eventually the story died down that

611
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:10,199
no one was ever prosecuted for it, but a few

612
00:34:10,280 --> 00:34:12,880
years later it surfaced again in the UFO world because

613
00:34:12,920 --> 00:34:15,639
Barker himself was publishing on it, saying I was framed.

614
00:34:16,639 --> 00:34:20,280
So but one of the places that it recovered it

615
00:34:20,360 --> 00:34:22,559
that it came back is in Barker's poetry. So if

616
00:34:22,559 --> 00:34:24,079
you don't mind, I'll read the poem.

617
00:34:24,280 --> 00:34:28,760
Speaker 3: Our e strait speaks I would love you too, So.

618
00:34:28,800 --> 00:34:32,440
Speaker 4: This is in the voice of our streath. Well, it

619
00:34:32,519 --> 00:34:35,360
is not the custom of our department to state our views.

620
00:34:35,880 --> 00:34:38,000
I think I could say personally that I would like

621
00:34:38,039 --> 00:34:41,599
you to drop in sometime for lunch in Washington. I

622
00:34:41,679 --> 00:34:44,800
must say, however, in way of explanation, that a new

623
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:49,639
regulation prohibits are entertaining anybody but dignitaries and heads of state.

624
00:34:50,679 --> 00:34:52,480
In view of this, I am certain you will not

625
00:34:52,519 --> 00:34:53,840
be embarrassed.

626
00:34:53,360 --> 00:34:54,360
Speaker 2: In picking up the check.

627
00:35:00,119 --> 00:35:00,840
Speaker 3: It's so great.

628
00:35:01,599 --> 00:35:05,960
Speaker 4: So many of his poems are our jokes there. Some

629
00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:08,000
of them are are jokes with a clear punchline. I

630
00:35:08,000 --> 00:35:09,480
think that one that one has a has a pretty

631
00:35:09,519 --> 00:35:13,880
good punchline. Some of them seem like setups without a punchline.

632
00:35:14,159 --> 00:35:16,760
Some of them seem like punchlines without a setup, but

633
00:35:16,840 --> 00:35:20,360
I think they There is a kind of joking component

634
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:23,239
to a lot of his poetry here.

635
00:35:24,320 --> 00:35:26,239
Speaker 3: Like I said, some of them, sometimes I'd be reading

636
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:27,960
it and I wasn't expecting it, and it'd be this,

637
00:35:28,079 --> 00:35:30,519
you know, this, this kind of right angle turn, and

638
00:35:30,559 --> 00:35:33,599
I'd be like it would be or would alternatively it

639
00:35:33,599 --> 00:35:35,199
would be sad. All of a sudden, you go, wow,

640
00:35:35,280 --> 00:35:37,719
this is there's some real potency here. We have another

641
00:35:37,800 --> 00:35:41,280
wonderful question from Horace, and that is, have any of

642
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:43,719
Barker's poems been turned into songs or do they not

643
00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:46,880
lend themselves to such a transformation. Maybe they were too

644
00:35:47,039 --> 00:35:48,400
unknown up until now.

645
00:35:49,039 --> 00:35:52,480
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good question. So mostly he wrote a

646
00:35:52,599 --> 00:35:55,480
kind of blank verse, so it doesn't tend to rhyme,

647
00:35:56,880 --> 00:35:59,199
not you know, a deal breaker for for songs.

648
00:35:59,239 --> 00:35:59,960
Speaker 2: Not all songs rhyme.

649
00:36:00,800 --> 00:36:03,760
Speaker 4: He did write a couple of things that were intended

650
00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:06,760
as songs. So there is a poem called the Three

651
00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:11,360
Men in Black, which he wrote with one of his nephews,

652
00:36:11,599 --> 00:36:14,800
and it was published in an issue of Saucer News

653
00:36:15,119 --> 00:36:19,000
in the early seventies or late sixties, and so that

654
00:36:19,119 --> 00:36:21,360
was kind of intended to be to be a song.

655
00:36:22,599 --> 00:36:24,360
But for the most part, and some of the poems

656
00:36:24,360 --> 00:36:27,800
are extremely short, some as short as one or two lines.

657
00:36:29,719 --> 00:36:32,960
Some of the of the longer ones, you know, could

658
00:36:33,039 --> 00:36:38,159
potentially be have some potential as songs, but the ones,

659
00:36:38,679 --> 00:36:40,960
the ones that you know would make the most sense,

660
00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:44,000
were kind of clearly intended to be to be songs

661
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:44,599
to begin with.

662
00:36:46,199 --> 00:36:48,360
Speaker 3: Do you think do you think I mean, obviously I

663
00:36:48,360 --> 00:36:50,199
think Back would be happy now if the New York

664
00:36:50,360 --> 00:36:51,800
the book could come out. But at the time, do

665
00:36:51,880 --> 00:36:53,800
you think he ever had an urge to publish his

666
00:36:53,840 --> 00:36:56,880
poetry more widely or was he just happy for, you know,

667
00:36:57,000 --> 00:36:59,239
for to have the small type of audience that he did.

668
00:36:59,679 --> 00:37:02,639
Speaker 4: I think I think there were moments where he was

669
00:37:02,679 --> 00:37:05,920
maybe interested in seeing some more of it get out there.

670
00:37:06,440 --> 00:37:10,440
So some of the poems he was sending to friends

671
00:37:10,480 --> 00:37:13,079
who had publications in hopes that maybe they would they

672
00:37:13,119 --> 00:37:17,519
would print them, mostly in the kind of science fiction

673
00:37:18,039 --> 00:37:21,239
fanzine world. So there are a couple of things in

674
00:37:21,239 --> 00:37:23,519
the early period, and one or two of them actually

675
00:37:23,519 --> 00:37:29,039
did see print in in science fiction fanzines. And then

676
00:37:29,519 --> 00:37:33,400
there were a couple that got published by by Jim

677
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:37,760
Mosley and Saucer News. But for the most part, I

678
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:41,320
get the sense that it was really kind of a

679
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:45,760
private practice for him, kind of something to share with

680
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:48,000
with Jim Mosley, maybe with one or two other people,

681
00:37:49,039 --> 00:37:53,119
but not necessarily something that that he saw any need

682
00:37:53,199 --> 00:37:55,199
to share more widely than that.

683
00:37:56,760 --> 00:38:00,280
Speaker 3: There. I mean, it's the posthumous. Things are always sad

684
00:38:00,320 --> 00:38:02,239
in a way by nature. But also there's a reason

685
00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:04,639
and rejoice that we have these poems. So I'm so

686
00:38:04,719 --> 00:38:08,239
grateful that you you put all of this together. I

687
00:38:08,599 --> 00:38:10,159
have a favor in the book which I don't want

688
00:38:10,159 --> 00:38:12,559
to I'll leave my favorite tool later unless it happens

689
00:38:12,559 --> 00:38:14,559
to be your favorites. Well, do you have a favorite?

690
00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:19,199
Speaker 4: I mean, I have a couple, but but I think

691
00:38:19,239 --> 00:38:20,960
there there is a reason that I called the book

692
00:38:20,960 --> 00:38:21,760
Behold the Behemoth.

693
00:38:23,559 --> 00:38:26,679
Speaker 2: So I had kind of seized on that.

694
00:38:26,719 --> 00:38:32,719
Speaker 4: Poem as important and included it in my biography The Saucerian,

695
00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:38,119
as something that that kind of embodied what I think

696
00:38:38,159 --> 00:38:44,119
Barker's approach to all manner of weird subjects was, And

697
00:38:44,559 --> 00:38:45,760
do you want me to read it?

698
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:48,519
Speaker 3: Or I would love you to, that'd be great.

699
00:38:50,440 --> 00:38:58,440
Speaker 4: So behold the Behemoth, Behold the Behemoth. His form looms large,

700
00:38:58,519 --> 00:39:02,079
and we say over and over again, behold the Behemoth.

701
00:39:03,239 --> 00:39:06,800
Because things like this sound like they do strange things

702
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:13,079
to people when they say them. So the astonishing thing

703
00:39:13,119 --> 00:39:16,360
about that poem, which I think ties in you know

704
00:39:16,440 --> 00:39:19,320
this is someone who wrote about monsters. He's probably, you know,

705
00:39:19,400 --> 00:39:21,440
next to the Men in Black, which are monsters of

706
00:39:21,480 --> 00:39:24,239
another kind. He's very well known for writing about the

707
00:39:24,239 --> 00:39:28,880
Flatwood's monster, the Mothman, and you know, kind of strange

708
00:39:28,880 --> 00:39:33,519
things in general, telling strange stories and stories about strange

709
00:39:33,559 --> 00:39:39,840
things for purposes of identity formation and self transformation. I

710
00:39:39,880 --> 00:39:43,159
think that's something that Barker did and encouraged. He wrote

711
00:39:43,159 --> 00:39:47,039
this poem in nineteen forty six, seven years before he

712
00:39:47,119 --> 00:39:50,400
was involved with flying saucers, and a year before flying

713
00:39:50,400 --> 00:39:53,159
saucers was even a thing he could be involved with. Wow,

714
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:56,880
And yet there it all is kind of right there

715
00:39:57,039 --> 00:39:58,199
in that poem.

716
00:39:58,400 --> 00:39:59,119
Speaker 3: It's prescient.

717
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:03,599
Speaker 4: So yeah, so that's why I called the book Behold

718
00:40:03,599 --> 00:40:04,000
the Behemon.

719
00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:06,440
Speaker 3: No. I think it's a great tough on.

720
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:08,079
Speaker 4: Prop of the fact that it ended up being about

721
00:40:08,079 --> 00:40:09,800
three times longer than I thought it was going to

722
00:40:09,800 --> 00:40:11,719
be when I started thinking about doing it.

723
00:40:11,800 --> 00:40:14,239
Speaker 3: So tell me a little bit about your relationship too,

724
00:40:14,320 --> 00:40:18,440
with with with ban and publication. What's an apport imprint,

725
00:40:18,480 --> 00:40:19,559
what's the actual Yeah?

726
00:40:19,639 --> 00:40:23,880
Speaker 4: So so the book was published by Apport Editions, which

727
00:40:23,960 --> 00:40:27,599
is run by Ben roy Lance. He has a bookstore

728
00:40:28,079 --> 00:40:30,559
outside Allentown, Pennsylvania called.

729
00:40:30,360 --> 00:40:31,519
Speaker 2: Apport Used Books.

730
00:40:32,320 --> 00:40:36,480
Speaker 4: He has a podcast called Consensus on Reality. I think

731
00:40:36,519 --> 00:40:39,440
your listeners would be very interested in both of those

732
00:40:39,480 --> 00:40:42,199
things if they're not already familiar with them. But he

733
00:40:42,400 --> 00:40:46,840
is a book dealer who specializes in in weird stuff,

734
00:40:47,199 --> 00:40:55,280
so UFOs, the paranormal, outsider art and outsider poetry and

735
00:40:55,639 --> 00:40:59,159
UH and radical politics and all manner of fun stuff

736
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:04,039
like that, and so I when the sauce Arian came out,

737
00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:07,199
I saw that he sometimes stocks new books because.

738
00:41:06,960 --> 00:41:09,599
Speaker 2: It's primarily he's primarily used in rare book dealer.

739
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:12,280
Speaker 4: But I sent him a message saying, hey, I'm you

740
00:41:12,280 --> 00:41:13,840
know I'm going to be It was on my way

741
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:15,760
back from West Virginia, so I said, I'm going to

742
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:18,760
be in town. If you'd be interested in stalking the book,

743
00:41:18,800 --> 00:41:20,519
I would love to come by and do an event.

744
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:22,400
And he said, oh, I don't know that that many

745
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:25,199
people will show up, you know, on a Sunday afternoon.

746
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:26,639
Speaker 2: And I said, I don't care. I'm going there to.

747
00:41:26,639 --> 00:41:31,000
Speaker 4: Shop, so if nobody shows up, you will still sell

748
00:41:31,039 --> 00:41:33,440
me some books, and you know, everything will be fine.

749
00:41:33,719 --> 00:41:38,320
But while I was there, I was idly grumbling that

750
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:43,159
Barker had all this unpublished poetry and that you know,

751
00:41:43,199 --> 00:41:44,880
a little bit of it was out there, but all

752
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:47,360
my a lot of my favorite stuff. You know, I'm

753
00:41:47,360 --> 00:41:49,880
one of the only people on earth that'd seen it.

754
00:41:50,639 --> 00:41:51,639
Speaker 2: And I had kind.

755
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:54,480
Speaker 4: Of put feelers out to a couple presses and they

756
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:57,039
had all said, you know, we're not interested in poetry.

757
00:41:57,679 --> 00:42:01,880
And he said, oh, I published poetry. So he has

758
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:05,719
has put out a couple of poetry books. He really

759
00:42:05,760 --> 00:42:10,920
specializes in reissues of kind of outsider and vanity press

760
00:42:10,960 --> 00:42:15,679
publications from the twenties and beyond. I think you have

761
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:18,400
first book he put out his reissue of a self

762
00:42:18,400 --> 00:42:21,400
publish book from the twenties, the second ones from the sixties,

763
00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:25,559
but really focused on really forgotten poetry, and that you know,

764
00:42:25,880 --> 00:42:29,079
Barker's poetry was not published. This wasn't a republication of anything,

765
00:42:29,559 --> 00:42:32,679
but it was a forgotten poetry of a different sort.

766
00:42:33,599 --> 00:42:36,800
And so we had a handshake deal that day and

767
00:42:37,119 --> 00:42:40,760
I got to work getting permission from the Barker estate

768
00:42:41,239 --> 00:42:45,039
to assemble this material, which they graciously gave, and then

769
00:42:45,559 --> 00:42:50,320
you know, going through all of my information and scans

770
00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:54,679
and things from the archive to get as complete a

771
00:42:54,679 --> 00:42:58,280
picture of the poetry as I could, and I think

772
00:42:58,320 --> 00:43:01,199
I got it all though I'm always scared that, you know,

773
00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:02,840
somebody's going to say, oh, you didn't you know I

774
00:43:02,880 --> 00:43:04,880
found this one in a folder in the back of

775
00:43:04,599 --> 00:43:06,400
the of the file cabinet in Clarksburg.

776
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:09,880
Speaker 3: You can always do a second edition, that's right. No.

777
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:12,320
I was so glad when I saw that you teamed

778
00:43:12,400 --> 00:43:14,960
up with Ben to release this book, because he's great

779
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:16,480
and he gets it, you know what I mean. So

780
00:43:16,559 --> 00:43:18,400
it was like, this is real, this is fantastic. Like,

781
00:43:18,400 --> 00:43:20,320
I was so happy when I saw this was coming out.

782
00:43:20,559 --> 00:43:22,119
This is going to be just amazing, and it is.

783
00:43:22,159 --> 00:43:27,360
It is amazing. My favorite, my favorite poem in the book.

784
00:43:27,679 --> 00:43:31,039
Now this is all about me. I actually I when

785
00:43:31,039 --> 00:43:35,679
the book came, I was so excited and I I

786
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:39,320
I opened the parcel and I was my girlfriend was here,

787
00:43:39,320 --> 00:43:43,559
Samanth wh's watching now, hey baby? And I flicked to

788
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:46,239
the mostly poems at the back because I knew mostly obviously,

789
00:43:46,239 --> 00:43:48,079
so as much as I'm interested in Bark and mostly

790
00:43:48,159 --> 00:43:51,119
somebody you know in my college days, I have this

791
00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:54,320
very this very single fond memory of you know, but

792
00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:57,039
still somebody. You have an incredibly fond memory of and

793
00:43:57,119 --> 00:43:59,079
I read the last poem in the book first, and

794
00:43:59,119 --> 00:44:00,719
I started to cheer up when I was reading that,

795
00:44:00,760 --> 00:44:04,400
piet back to You Great Baka. Yeah, could you could

796
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:05,880
you read that first, because I couldn't read it or

797
00:44:06,239 --> 00:44:08,199
I'd tear up again like I did the first time.

798
00:44:08,239 --> 00:44:11,519
Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure, So yeah, I closed the book.

799
00:44:12,639 --> 00:44:14,639
Speaker 3: I'll give a talk about talk about a little first.

800
00:44:14,679 --> 00:44:15,920
That would be great. I'd love it if you talked

801
00:44:15,920 --> 00:44:16,760
about a little first.

802
00:44:16,840 --> 00:44:17,039
Speaker 2: Yeah.

803
00:44:17,039 --> 00:44:20,320
Speaker 4: I closed the book with a few poems by Jim Moseley,

804
00:44:21,519 --> 00:44:23,800
which you know, obviously, this is the collected Poems of

805
00:44:23,880 --> 00:44:27,199
Gray Barker. Mosley did not write a ton of poetry,

806
00:44:27,880 --> 00:44:32,840
at least not that that has survived. But what's interesting

807
00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:35,159
is that a lot of the poetry that has survived

808
00:44:35,199 --> 00:44:39,239
is directly related to Gray Barker. And so I included

809
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:42,239
a few poems by him that that I found that

810
00:44:42,280 --> 00:44:46,920
felt particularly relevant. Two of the one that one is

811
00:44:47,119 --> 00:44:50,960
in a very Barkarian style. It's called the Silence Group

812
00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:54,199
gives a Party, and that's very similar to some of

813
00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:57,800
Barker's poetry from the same period. And the other two poems,

814
00:44:58,000 --> 00:45:00,639
The Great Green God and Back to You Grey Barker

815
00:45:01,039 --> 00:45:05,239
are specifically about Barker, and the earliest of those is

816
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:07,599
kind of a you know, basically calling Barker a sellout.

817
00:45:07,599 --> 00:45:11,559
It's kind of a jokingly insulting poem. But then the

818
00:45:11,880 --> 00:45:14,960
last one, the one you mentioned, is a poem written

819
00:45:15,400 --> 00:45:20,920
very shortly after Barker died as a memorial, and you're right,

820
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:23,760
it is moving, So yeah, I'll read back to you,

821
00:45:23,880 --> 00:45:24,519
Grey Barker.

822
00:45:24,840 --> 00:45:25,039
Speaker 3: Think.

823
00:45:26,679 --> 00:45:29,239
Speaker 4: I tried to phone Grey Barker tonight, like we used

824
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:29,559
to do.

825
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:30,960
Speaker 2: I dialed the.

826
00:45:30,880 --> 00:45:33,920
Speaker 4: Three oh four area code, so close to three five

827
00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:37,920
in Florida, and the robot said, you can't dial him

828
00:45:37,920 --> 00:45:40,800
where he is now. The lions don't go out that far.

829
00:45:41,880 --> 00:45:44,760
And I sassed the robot, saying how far out do

830
00:45:44,840 --> 00:45:49,400
the lions go? And it replied mockingly, thank you for

831
00:45:49,519 --> 00:45:54,119
using AT and T. I tried to write Grey Barker

832
00:45:54,119 --> 00:45:57,360
the other day, like we used to do. I put

833
00:45:57,360 --> 00:46:00,719
on a D stamp, was there ever a C? And

834
00:46:00,800 --> 00:46:03,280
the letter came back to me together with a warning

835
00:46:03,440 --> 00:46:07,880
stamped on the envelope for domestic use. Only A man

836
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:10,840
from the Post Office department came by and informed me

837
00:46:10,960 --> 00:46:15,559
that our Eastraith is dead. I tried to reach Grey

838
00:46:15,559 --> 00:46:18,679
Barker the other night telepathically, as if in a dream,

839
00:46:19,519 --> 00:46:22,480
and I saw this circle of beings clustered around a

840
00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:27,320
smoldering cauldron. Here was Palmer and Arnold and Jessop and

841
00:46:27,440 --> 00:46:31,760
Wilkins and Lane and Edwards and Scully and Van Tassel,

842
00:46:32,400 --> 00:46:37,559
all their differences forgotten, and Georgia Dampsky with his telescope.

843
00:46:37,880 --> 00:46:40,159
And here too was Gray Barker with a drink in

844
00:46:40,199 --> 00:46:44,039
his hand, stirring the cauldron so vigorously that his hand shook.

845
00:46:44,840 --> 00:46:48,199
So I asked him, when may I join you? And

846
00:46:48,280 --> 00:46:51,880
Georgia Dampski answered, for the group time will tell.

847
00:46:54,360 --> 00:46:58,960
Speaker 3: It's so wonderful. Yeah, I'm so grateful that you put

848
00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:00,480
that in there. I really am.

849
00:47:00,960 --> 00:47:01,199
Speaker 1: Yeah.

850
00:47:01,280 --> 00:47:05,719
Speaker 4: Yeah, it felt rate to kind of not just have

851
00:47:05,880 --> 00:47:10,000
it be Barker's own words in there, but to really

852
00:47:10,039 --> 00:47:15,239
have someone who loved him kind of commenting on the

853
00:47:15,280 --> 00:47:16,400
proceedings as well.

854
00:47:17,519 --> 00:47:20,599
Speaker 3: I think that'd be a great feature, you know, a

855
00:47:20,679 --> 00:47:24,119
biopic about the friendship of Barkron. Mostly. I think that's

856
00:47:24,159 --> 00:47:25,320
a film waiting to be made.

857
00:47:25,559 --> 00:47:28,280
Speaker 4: Yeah, i'd be their opening night.

858
00:47:28,639 --> 00:47:32,800
Speaker 3: Me too, Me too. Is you've obviously, I mean, you've

859
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:36,360
done such an incredible service for the history of this field,

860
00:47:36,360 --> 00:47:39,599
with both, with both This is the sauce Arian and

861
00:47:39,639 --> 00:47:44,639
more recently the wonderful book of Barker's poetry, Behold the

862
00:47:44,679 --> 00:47:48,840
Bear Myth. Are there other people in the euphological community

863
00:47:48,880 --> 00:47:52,239
you're interested? I know I first found found you because

864
00:47:52,280 --> 00:47:56,280
you've written a wonderful paper on Richard Shaver, But I'm

865
00:47:56,320 --> 00:47:58,119
guessing you still have an interest in Shaver. There are

866
00:47:58,159 --> 00:47:59,199
other people as well that.

867
00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:03,159
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean Shaver is a big one. I'm

868
00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:07,400
I'm definitely still interested in him. I'm interested in science

869
00:48:07,400 --> 00:48:12,000
fiction's reaction to him, which was very negative science fiction fandom,

870
00:48:13,119 --> 00:48:16,280
but also on the kind of re embrace that he

871
00:48:16,400 --> 00:48:20,119
saw by the paranormal world, you know, kind of as

872
00:48:20,119 --> 00:48:24,360
a kind of to offset that. So that's something that

873
00:48:24,360 --> 00:48:26,599
that definitely interests me and I do have a little

874
00:48:26,639 --> 00:48:30,000
more kind of research to do in that in that area.

875
00:48:31,039 --> 00:48:32,800
There are a lot of figures that I that I

876
00:48:32,800 --> 00:48:36,239
have a lot of affection for or interest in, t

877
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:39,159
Love Song Rampa, the.

878
00:48:38,400 --> 00:48:40,239
Speaker 2: The the British.

879
00:48:39,639 --> 00:48:42,920
Speaker 4: Tibetan Lama, somebody that I'm very interested in.

880
00:48:42,960 --> 00:48:44,079
Speaker 2: Actually just presented on.

881
00:48:44,119 --> 00:48:48,800
Speaker 4: Him at the Popular Culture Association conference a few weeks ago,

882
00:48:49,719 --> 00:48:51,480
so I may may do a little more with him

883
00:48:51,480 --> 00:48:56,639
down the road. And let's see, I mean Ray Palmer

884
00:48:56,719 --> 00:49:01,440
is great, so so that's that's another big one. But yeah,

885
00:49:01,480 --> 00:49:05,639
I'm I am really interested in in figures and personalities

886
00:49:06,079 --> 00:49:07,519
in in the UFO world.

887
00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:08,880
Speaker 2: Another one.

888
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:11,599
Speaker 4: I don't know that there's too much of a story

889
00:49:11,639 --> 00:49:16,920
to tell or I don't know. I really like John W. Dean,

890
00:49:17,320 --> 00:49:21,480
who wrote Flying Saucers Close Up, which was a publication,

891
00:49:21,639 --> 00:49:26,159
a Saucerean Books publication. He's it was a really interesting

892
00:49:26,239 --> 00:49:29,400
character that nobody really knows too much about. He was

893
00:49:30,000 --> 00:49:31,960
in his seventies, I think when he was writing for

894
00:49:32,039 --> 00:49:35,800
Barker and in his correspondence, because he would write Barker

895
00:49:35,920 --> 00:49:41,119
very long letters, there's kind of a sad picture of

896
00:49:41,119 --> 00:49:44,199
of his life and the way that he was kind

897
00:49:44,199 --> 00:49:47,559
of using Flying Saucers as a way to kind of

898
00:49:47,559 --> 00:49:51,119
try to regain some joy in his twilight years. And

899
00:49:51,119 --> 00:49:54,519
it's it's not a happy story, but but it's one

900
00:49:54,559 --> 00:49:57,320
that that I think is is kind of moving. So

901
00:49:57,360 --> 00:49:59,760
I may want to try to do a little more

902
00:49:59,760 --> 00:50:02,440
with with John Dean, but he doesn't have the kind

903
00:50:02,440 --> 00:50:03,320
of marquee.

904
00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:05,159
Speaker 2: Value of a gray Barker, right.

905
00:50:05,400 --> 00:50:10,199
Speaker 3: Unfortunately here it's there's so many people in the field,

906
00:50:10,360 --> 00:50:12,559
like I'm unaware of who he is, and I probably

907
00:50:12,599 --> 00:50:14,719
should be aware, and i'm because that's my field, but

908
00:50:14,760 --> 00:50:17,480
I'm not. There are so many people in there in

909
00:50:17,519 --> 00:50:22,559
that that early field and me Lane is a big

910
00:50:22,679 --> 00:50:26,159
character who's all but forgotten now. Yeah, yeah, he's just

911
00:50:26,159 --> 00:50:27,840
some of the Barker's poetry as well. In fact, he

912
00:50:27,920 --> 00:50:29,239
might even have been in that one you just read

913
00:50:29,239 --> 00:50:31,239
by mostly but he's what he.

914
00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:33,039
Speaker 2: Was mentioned in there for sure. Yeah.

915
00:50:33,119 --> 00:50:36,960
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Borderland Sciences Research Association, I think they are

916
00:50:37,000 --> 00:50:41,199
still around the organization, but I don't know. But yeah,

917
00:50:41,199 --> 00:50:44,039
he's he's definitely a bit more of a deep cut

918
00:50:44,480 --> 00:50:45,679
for for a lot of people.

919
00:50:45,960 --> 00:50:48,320
Speaker 3: I know Thomas Brown, who I think runs that now

920
00:50:48,360 --> 00:50:51,920
by the way, but Thomas I think Thomas Brown, I

921
00:50:51,960 --> 00:50:54,039
think he is the head of Borderlands not but as

922
00:50:54,039 --> 00:50:56,960
a figure. Yeah, he's not really taught. He's super influential

923
00:50:57,000 --> 00:51:01,440
really on things that came after, but nobody talks about anymore. Really.

924
00:51:01,519 --> 00:51:01,679
Speaker 1: Yeah.

925
00:51:01,760 --> 00:51:01,920
Speaker 2: Yeah.

926
00:51:01,920 --> 00:51:04,960
Speaker 4: And one of the reasons he's so influential was and

927
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:07,159
this is kind of the the area, one of the

928
00:51:07,159 --> 00:51:09,719
areas that really interests me the most is the crossover

929
00:51:09,800 --> 00:51:15,719
between flying saucers and and science fiction because he was

930
00:51:16,320 --> 00:51:20,239
writing to Amazing Stories, Ray Palmer was was mentioning him,

931
00:51:20,760 --> 00:51:24,119
you know, unbidden in respect of other people's letters in

932
00:51:24,159 --> 00:51:28,639
the in the Amazing Letter column. And also he had

933
00:51:29,199 --> 00:51:33,159
a zine Round Robin that that pre ex that kind

934
00:51:33,159 --> 00:51:36,320
of pre dates flying saucers because he was interested in

935
00:51:36,880 --> 00:51:40,880
kind of psychic stuff, you know, before flying saucers really

936
00:51:40,880 --> 00:51:45,440
were a phenomenon. But I think he was drawing a

937
00:51:45,480 --> 00:51:49,519
lot on on flying on science fiction fanzines and how

938
00:51:49,559 --> 00:51:52,199
he kind of put that together and distributed it. There

939
00:51:52,239 --> 00:51:54,639
was a lot of cross pollination with between him and

940
00:51:54,679 --> 00:51:58,719
the science fiction world and uh, and then he kind

941
00:51:58,719 --> 00:52:03,239
of brought some of that for into the flying saucer world.

942
00:52:03,239 --> 00:52:06,079
He's somebody who Gray Barker was also very interested in

943
00:52:06,159 --> 00:52:08,519
from an early period. And so I think a lot

944
00:52:08,559 --> 00:52:11,920
of what Barker did was kind of drawing on kind

945
00:52:11,920 --> 00:52:14,239
of trying to draw the Mead Lane end of things,

946
00:52:15,079 --> 00:52:18,400
you know, more towards the center of the flying saucer conversation.

947
00:52:18,719 --> 00:52:20,440
Speaker 3: All right, John Keel too, I think I think a

948
00:52:20,480 --> 00:52:22,599
lot of those early guys. Lane was a big influence

949
00:52:22,679 --> 00:52:26,800
on yeah, yeah, so yeah. I mean I don't even

950
00:52:26,880 --> 00:52:28,960
know who'll do the research on these people as as

951
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:31,800
you probably realized too. I mean, thankfully you're so good

952
00:52:31,840 --> 00:52:34,159
at researching, you know, manuscripts and things like that, but

953
00:52:34,199 --> 00:52:36,239
the act the people who knew these people are all

954
00:52:36,239 --> 00:52:39,280
but gone now. To go out there and do a

955
00:52:39,400 --> 00:52:43,119
documentary work and talk to people who knew these individuals personally,

956
00:52:43,159 --> 00:52:45,880
it's getting harder with every passing year, because it's.

957
00:52:46,960 --> 00:52:51,400
Speaker 4: Yes, I unfortunately started getting into this project really heavily

958
00:52:51,559 --> 00:52:53,719
just a couple of years after Jim Moseley had died,

959
00:52:54,239 --> 00:52:57,000
so unfortunately I did not get the opportunity to meet

960
00:52:57,079 --> 00:53:00,400
or speak with him, though he is his memoir shockingly

961
00:53:00,440 --> 00:53:03,280
close to the truth was a great source of information

962
00:53:03,599 --> 00:53:06,400
and prior prior to to my book was as close

963
00:53:06,440 --> 00:53:09,920
to a Barker biography as existed, because even though it

964
00:53:09,960 --> 00:53:12,519
was his own life story, he was also very interested

965
00:53:12,639 --> 00:53:16,320
in telling a lot of what he knew about Gray Barker.

966
00:53:17,159 --> 00:53:18,280
Speaker 2: You know in that book.

967
00:53:19,519 --> 00:53:22,599
Speaker 3: Super entertain it's a super entertaining book as well, Like

968
00:53:22,679 --> 00:53:26,320
it's just it's a great read. Other than who you're

969
00:53:26,400 --> 00:53:30,280
interested in, is there is there a book or a

970
00:53:30,320 --> 00:53:32,400
person you've got no interest in doing, but you wish

971
00:53:32,480 --> 00:53:34,079
we had, and you think we should have. Is there

972
00:53:34,119 --> 00:53:35,960
somebody out there that you think.

973
00:53:37,039 --> 00:53:38,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question. There.

974
00:53:38,679 --> 00:53:40,559
Speaker 4: There are definitely a few people who I wish someone

975
00:53:40,559 --> 00:53:43,320
else would write the biography so that I could read it.

976
00:53:43,800 --> 00:53:45,559
Speaker 2: So Laura Mundo is a big one.

977
00:53:46,239 --> 00:53:50,239
Speaker 4: I've tried to uh uh, kind of put a worm

978
00:53:50,239 --> 00:53:52,880
in in Aaron Gullias's ear about maybe him doing a

979
00:53:52,960 --> 00:53:54,159
Laura Mundo biography.

980
00:53:54,159 --> 00:53:55,360
Speaker 2: I don't think he's he's going.

981
00:53:55,360 --> 00:53:59,199
Speaker 4: To bite though, so, but I would love to read

982
00:53:59,480 --> 00:54:02,679
her life's which was fascinating. She was a children's television

983
00:54:02,679 --> 00:54:08,000
presenter turned Georgia Dampski, a follower turned kind of Georgia

984
00:54:08,079 --> 00:54:11,159
Dampski apostate because she decided that he was not telling

985
00:54:11,199 --> 00:54:14,760
the truth, that that there were there were weirder things

986
00:54:14,760 --> 00:54:18,440
about flying saucers than he was letting on. And she's

987
00:54:18,639 --> 00:54:20,960
a very interesting character for sure.

988
00:54:21,039 --> 00:54:24,800
Speaker 3: So yeah, you know that that would be that would

989
00:54:24,840 --> 00:54:27,679
be a great read. I have more people, more people

990
00:54:27,760 --> 00:54:30,719
follow your example and go out there and and write

991
00:54:30,800 --> 00:54:33,960
and dig up more materials from these you know, the

992
00:54:34,280 --> 00:54:37,519
people who were the founders of Sausagem and the people

993
00:54:37,559 --> 00:54:40,119
who carried it so well in those early years. And

994
00:54:40,159 --> 00:54:44,320
of course, perhaps because the way history is written, a

995
00:54:44,360 --> 00:54:46,880
lot of the more out there folks, including bark and

996
00:54:46,920 --> 00:54:49,440
Mosley and Mundo and Adamski and you know, you name them,

997
00:54:49,440 --> 00:54:52,000
they've they've been in many ways written out of the

998
00:54:52,119 --> 00:54:56,880
UFO history. Like you, the UFO the history of ethology

999
00:54:57,039 --> 00:54:59,440
is different to the actual history of UFO belief as

1000
00:54:59,440 --> 00:55:01,760
you and I both no, but somebody who just picks

1001
00:55:01,840 --> 00:55:05,280
up a history book today written by somebody who's sympathetic

1002
00:55:05,360 --> 00:55:08,480
to euthology or somebody who's just reading euthology, tomes to

1003
00:55:08,519 --> 00:55:12,559
write that recent euthological terms to write that history. All

1004
00:55:12,599 --> 00:55:14,320
of these people aren't going to be in there because

1005
00:55:14,800 --> 00:55:17,360
because the contact d types were just written out of

1006
00:55:17,639 --> 00:55:21,920
the narrative. David Jacob's UFO Controversy in America. Ray Palmer

1007
00:55:22,159 --> 00:55:24,360
hardly appears in that book. I think he's a footnote.

1008
00:55:25,239 --> 00:55:28,079
There's so many historians who concentrated on the I don't

1009
00:55:28,079 --> 00:55:31,480
know the post and I CAAP type direction, you know,

1010
00:55:31,599 --> 00:55:34,679
this more respectable direction of euthology. And I think the

1011
00:55:34,760 --> 00:55:37,599
more interesting people were the Barkers, were the Palmers, were

1012
00:55:37,599 --> 00:55:39,880
the Mondo's, were the Damskis you know that to me

1013
00:55:40,000 --> 00:55:40,719
is more interesting.

1014
00:55:40,920 --> 00:55:41,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.

1015
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:45,320
Speaker 4: And I think the thing that you lose and focusing

1016
00:55:45,519 --> 00:55:50,000
on the kind of more respectable side is the influence

1017
00:55:50,199 --> 00:55:53,719
of those forgotten figures on the respectable side, and that

1018
00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:56,440
you have. You know, Donald Keijo was doing a lot

1019
00:55:56,440 --> 00:55:59,079
of the same kind of manipulation of stories that Gray

1020
00:55:59,119 --> 00:55:59,920
Barker was doing.

1021
00:56:00,039 --> 00:56:01,719
Speaker 2: He just was not as upfront about it.

1022
00:56:02,760 --> 00:56:08,039
Speaker 4: And so the fact that this really was a world

1023
00:56:08,079 --> 00:56:10,320
where there was a lot of cross pollination between the

1024
00:56:10,360 --> 00:56:15,639
center and the fringe, and also the fringe tends to

1025
00:56:15,679 --> 00:56:19,400
migrate to the center in ufology that things that were

1026
00:56:19,480 --> 00:56:22,559
utterly rejected in nineteen fifty three end up being the

1027
00:56:22,599 --> 00:56:26,039
bread and butter of nineteen sixty six and beyond because

1028
00:56:26,079 --> 00:56:30,239
their stories are more fun to tell. So yeah, I

1029
00:56:30,280 --> 00:56:33,760
think that is definitely a component. The unfortunate thing is

1030
00:56:33,760 --> 00:56:37,000
that so much of being able to do a biography

1031
00:56:37,639 --> 00:56:41,079
like the Saucerian that there have been a few kind

1032
00:56:41,119 --> 00:56:43,519
of biographies of a few other figures. There's a really

1033
00:56:43,519 --> 00:56:48,119
good Jalen Heineck biography a few years ago, the Close

1034
00:56:48,199 --> 00:56:51,840
Encounters Man. There have been some others as well, but

1035
00:56:51,880 --> 00:56:57,480
you really need access to a personal archive. So we're

1036
00:56:57,519 --> 00:57:02,039
blessed that the Barker archive has survived. I don't know

1037
00:57:02,079 --> 00:57:05,880
that the Laura Mundau one has and so that's kind

1038
00:57:05,920 --> 00:57:09,079
of the piece that you really need to really do

1039
00:57:09,480 --> 00:57:12,159
that kind of story justice. You can, you can go

1040
00:57:12,360 --> 00:57:15,480
to a certain extent with what's out there publicly and published,

1041
00:57:16,400 --> 00:57:19,719
but it's really in people's private papers that you're going

1042
00:57:19,800 --> 00:57:24,800
to find the real story that deserves telling. And there

1043
00:57:24,880 --> 00:57:28,559
are some archives out there that are, you know, interested

1044
00:57:28,639 --> 00:57:33,599
in weird topics, but it's they're not necessarily interested in

1045
00:57:33,639 --> 00:57:36,599
the personalities in the way that that I think you

1046
00:57:36,639 --> 00:57:41,079
and I are. They're interested more in the phenomena and

1047
00:57:41,280 --> 00:57:45,280
less in the people who are bringing that phenomenon to

1048
00:57:45,760 --> 00:57:46,280
the public.

1049
00:57:46,760 --> 00:57:50,239
Speaker 3: That's very that's very true, and certainly with with for example,

1050
00:57:50,320 --> 00:57:53,280
Ray Palmer, who I'm obviously particularly interested in Richard Shaver.

1051
00:57:53,920 --> 00:57:57,559
The palm and shave stuff is fairly collectible, so it's

1052
00:57:57,679 --> 00:58:01,360
there's lots of private holders who have you know, who

1053
00:58:01,360 --> 00:58:03,559
have a letter is my very good friend Brian Emrick,

1054
00:58:03,800 --> 00:58:06,480
who's a producer on both a shave mystery and the

1055
00:58:06,480 --> 00:58:08,639
man who inventifying sources. I only met him because I

1056
00:58:08,679 --> 00:58:13,400
was making these films. He's the world's probably largest holder

1057
00:58:13,440 --> 00:58:17,000
of certainly Richard Shaver art. He owns most of the

1058
00:58:17,159 --> 00:58:19,679
he owns most of the paintings that we know exist.

1059
00:58:19,719 --> 00:58:21,639
There are some others around, but he has the majority

1060
00:58:21,639 --> 00:58:24,840
of them, and an extensive collection of you know, Shaver

1061
00:58:24,960 --> 00:58:28,159
and Palmer e femera, including bunches of letters, and but

1062
00:58:28,159 --> 00:58:30,119
that's in a private hand. That's in private hands. It's

1063
00:58:30,119 --> 00:58:32,559
great that Brian has it because he's somebody who's trustworthy.

1064
00:58:32,599 --> 00:58:34,960
He's open to people looking at it, and I suspect

1065
00:58:35,079 --> 00:58:37,039
one day that will end up in a you know,

1066
00:58:37,119 --> 00:58:39,760
a museum or something. But the question is who's you

1067
00:58:40,119 --> 00:58:42,280
need to find somebody who can take that material.

1068
00:58:43,199 --> 00:58:47,559
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and that's that can be tricky because it

1069
00:58:47,639 --> 00:58:49,840
has to be the right the right institution, and not

1070
00:58:49,920 --> 00:58:52,719
every institution is necessarily going to see the value and

1071
00:58:53,400 --> 00:58:57,480
you know, an archive that's on something so weird. H Fortunately,

1072
00:58:57,559 --> 00:59:00,519
I think there are a growing number of places that

1073
00:59:00,519 --> 00:59:04,079
that see the value in uh in looking at these stories.

1074
00:59:04,360 --> 00:59:08,599
Uh you know, at least from a from a cultural standpoint,

1075
00:59:08,599 --> 00:59:11,760
from a from their their role in shaping our our

1076
00:59:11,800 --> 00:59:15,000
popular culture. And so I hope that you know, if

1077
00:59:15,039 --> 00:59:17,760
if Brian does decide that he's ready for that to

1078
00:59:17,760 --> 00:59:20,280
go and see an institutional home, I'll help him find

1079
00:59:20,320 --> 00:59:21,559
the place. If it comes to that.

1080
00:59:22,960 --> 00:59:24,880
Speaker 3: I will tell Brian that, you know, he's a he's

1081
00:59:24,880 --> 00:59:27,880
a great He's been such a help with this this film.

1082
00:59:27,920 --> 00:59:31,599
It's it's so good you had people who who were

1083
00:59:31,639 --> 00:59:35,800
on your side, like the Baker Estate. The where again

1084
00:59:35,920 --> 00:59:38,239
is the baka the Bacca Library. I know it's in

1085
00:59:38,360 --> 00:59:41,480
It's in the place which holds the Bacca.

1086
00:59:41,719 --> 00:59:46,039
Speaker 4: It's in Clarksburg, West Virginia. It's called the Waldemore but

1087
00:59:46,119 --> 00:59:51,039
it's it's connected to the Clarksburg Harrison Public Library, just

1088
00:59:51,039 --> 00:59:54,519
the public library in downtown Clarksburg. But there's this kind

1089
00:59:54,559 --> 00:59:58,840
of old mansion behind the main library building and that's

1090
00:59:58,880 --> 01:00:01,559
where their their local history collection is, and it has

1091
01:00:01,639 --> 01:00:03,920
it's you know, not just Barker's Archive though I think

1092
01:00:03,960 --> 01:00:06,760
that is uh kind of the biggest out of town

1093
01:00:06,880 --> 01:00:08,159
draw but they also.

1094
01:00:07,920 --> 01:00:10,920
Speaker 2: Have a lot of genealogy information and and and.

1095
01:00:10,920 --> 01:00:12,960
Speaker 4: Other stuff for people who are interested in the history

1096
01:00:13,039 --> 01:00:16,000
of West Virginia in general and Clarksburg in particular.

1097
01:00:17,320 --> 01:00:19,639
Speaker 3: That's fantastic that they have it there. I'd love to

1098
01:00:19,639 --> 01:00:21,320
go there. Myself and visit one day, and it.

1099
01:00:21,559 --> 01:00:23,599
Speaker 4: Is it is worth some of these things you can

1100
01:00:23,679 --> 01:00:26,719
you can get lost in in in the files there.

1101
01:00:27,239 --> 01:00:31,039
Speaker 3: I bet flat Rockland. His real name's Matt Oakland. He

1102
01:00:31,039 --> 01:00:32,159
has been a guest on the show. He's a good

1103
01:00:32,159 --> 01:00:34,360
front of the show. Just said the absurdity is the point,

1104
01:00:34,880 --> 01:00:40,800
yes it. So maybe can can you direct people the

1105
01:00:40,800 --> 01:00:42,760
where they can get either of your books? I'll put

1106
01:00:42,760 --> 01:00:45,880
them up again. Let's start with the Saucerean so flush

1107
01:00:45,880 --> 01:00:46,960
start first.

1108
01:00:47,239 --> 01:00:50,480
Speaker 4: So the Saucerian I was published by them I T Press.

1109
01:00:50,480 --> 01:00:53,239
You can get that, you know, through any bookstore or.

1110
01:00:53,199 --> 01:00:54,280
Speaker 2: Your local library.

1111
01:00:54,559 --> 01:00:58,639
Speaker 4: They've they've got really really good distribution, and so that's uh,

1112
01:00:58,760 --> 01:01:02,079
you know, uh the easy one to track down. I

1113
01:01:02,079 --> 01:01:07,199
would say, Behold the Behemoth is published by Apport Editions,

1114
01:01:07,960 --> 01:01:10,719
and that is mostly available directly.

1115
01:01:10,840 --> 01:01:14,880
Speaker 2: From Apport Books and Ben Roylinz.

1116
01:01:16,119 --> 01:01:19,480
Speaker 4: It does go to a couple kind of other booksellers,

1117
01:01:20,039 --> 01:01:23,280
and so you can find it online, but you're you're

1118
01:01:23,360 --> 01:01:25,320
unlikely to find it in the bookstore unless you live

1119
01:01:25,360 --> 01:01:28,039
near a very cool bookstore, and there are.

1120
01:01:27,960 --> 01:01:29,559
Speaker 2: A couple that have it in stock.

1121
01:01:30,440 --> 01:01:34,920
Speaker 4: So I'll to the unnamable books in Brooklyn, if you're

1122
01:01:34,960 --> 01:01:38,000
ever there, I believe had it in stock Most funny,

1123
01:01:38,039 --> 01:01:40,880
that's actually where I did my first book reading for

1124
01:01:40,960 --> 01:01:43,639
my book The Gospel according to Science Fiction, which I

1125
01:01:43,760 --> 01:01:45,800
published back in two thousand and seven. I was living

1126
01:01:45,800 --> 01:01:48,320
in Brooklyn at the time. I did a reading it

1127
01:01:48,719 --> 01:01:52,039
Unnamable Books, which had just opened, and then when I

1128
01:01:52,079 --> 01:01:54,679
did the book launch for Behold the Behemoth, two guys

1129
01:01:54,679 --> 01:01:59,000
who worked there came out to the book launch event

1130
01:01:59,039 --> 01:02:01,280
that we did and they have it in stock there.

1131
01:02:01,280 --> 01:02:04,599
But no connection between those two facts. It's just a

1132
01:02:04,679 --> 01:02:05,519
very cool bookstore.

1133
01:02:07,039 --> 01:02:09,440
Speaker 3: I will have links where people can get both of

1134
01:02:09,440 --> 01:02:12,039
those books in the show notes, so anywhere everybody anybody's

1135
01:02:12,079 --> 01:02:14,280
watching or listening, they can just click into the show

1136
01:02:14,320 --> 01:02:18,519
notes and click directly through to buy either of those books.

1137
01:02:18,559 --> 01:02:21,079
Do you are there any other u URLs, like anything

1138
01:02:21,079 --> 01:02:23,599
you'd like to point people at or let people know

1139
01:02:23,679 --> 01:02:25,559
about any upcoming events or anything.

1140
01:02:25,880 --> 01:02:26,840
Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure, So.

1141
01:02:27,480 --> 01:02:31,119
Speaker 4: I currently have a website just Gabriel McKey dot com.

1142
01:02:31,559 --> 01:02:34,119
It's pretty simple where I have there's a list of

1143
01:02:34,159 --> 01:02:37,079
all my publications there. I have an events page where

1144
01:02:37,119 --> 01:02:40,280
I list kind of upcoming podcasts I'm now and other

1145
01:02:40,320 --> 01:02:42,039
events that I'm doing, though, I just realized I forgot

1146
01:02:42,039 --> 01:02:44,400
to put this one on there as upcoming, but I'll

1147
01:02:44,400 --> 01:02:46,960
put it on there as passed, and so yeah, that's

1148
01:02:47,000 --> 01:02:51,840
that's kind of my personal archive of all the stuff

1149
01:02:51,840 --> 01:02:54,039
that I've done, and so that's a good place to

1150
01:02:54,559 --> 01:02:57,000
go to see not just the books that I've published,

1151
01:02:57,000 --> 01:03:01,039
but academic papers on subjects both weird and less weird,

1152
01:03:02,239 --> 01:03:03,639
and yeah, everything else.

1153
01:03:04,440 --> 01:03:07,719
Speaker 3: Well, if anybody has any interest in ethology, the history

1154
01:03:07,719 --> 01:03:11,800
of euthology, the personality is of youthology, and one of

1155
01:03:11,840 --> 01:03:14,079
the men who made the biggest impact on what we're

1156
01:03:14,119 --> 01:03:18,960
all interested in. I can't recommend enough Gabriel's book The Saucerian. Again,

1157
01:03:19,000 --> 01:03:21,039
there will be links to that in the show notes,

1158
01:03:21,239 --> 01:03:24,519
and a wonderful companion piece to that is a Gray

1159
01:03:24,599 --> 01:03:28,079
Barker's poetry, along with some of his other writings in

1160
01:03:28,199 --> 01:03:31,079
Behold the Behemouth, which I'll also put a link to.

1161
01:03:31,159 --> 01:03:33,039
And I can't encourage people enough to get both of

1162
01:03:33,039 --> 01:03:35,920
those books because I love them, and I suspect the

1163
01:03:35,920 --> 01:03:38,880
majority of my listeners here on Talking Weird will love

1164
01:03:38,920 --> 01:03:40,880
them as well. Thank you again so much for coming

1165
01:03:40,920 --> 01:03:43,360
back to Joemy, Gabriel. It's just a great joy to

1166
01:03:43,400 --> 01:03:43,719
talk to you.

1167
01:03:44,199 --> 01:03:46,719
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks so much. Always a pleasure to talk to you,

1168
01:03:46,840 --> 01:03:48,440
so thanks for having me back.

1169
01:03:48,880 --> 01:03:50,719
Speaker 3: Thanks Matte. Until I talk to you, which I hope

1170
01:03:50,719 --> 01:03:52,840
will be sooner than it's been since I last talked

1171
01:03:52,840 --> 01:03:54,840
to you, and until I get to talk to everybody

1172
01:03:54,920 --> 01:03:57,159
else out there, which will be same weird time, nine

1173
01:03:57,159 --> 01:04:02,000
pm Central Thursday, Same weird work, the Ansold Radio Network.

1174
01:04:02,039 --> 01:04:03,719
Please keep it weird.