Category: Oliver D. Smith

Philip Klass: Bibliography

Philip Klass (photo credit: Gary P. Posner, 1999).

This post compiles Philip J. Klass’ publications on UFOs, Bermuda Triangle, as well as alien abductions. Not included are his articles for the Skeptical Inquirer1 (listed here) and his Skeptical UFO Newsletter. Klass self-published several pamphlets or booklets; these rarities, are usefully listed by Eberhart (1986, pp. 755-757).

  • “That was no Saucer, That was an Echo,” Aviation Week 59 (July 20, 1953): 26-30.
  • “Plasma Theory may Explain Many UFOs,” Aviation Week 85, no. 8 (August 22, 1966): 48-61.
  • “Many UFOs are Identified as Plasmas,” Aviation Week 85, no. 14 (October 3, 1966): 54-73.
  • UFOs – Identified (New York: Random House, 1968).
  • UFOs Explained (New York: Random House, 1974).
  • “The Great Bermuda Triangle Rip-Off,” Pasttimes 3, no. 7 (July, 1975): 12-15.
  • “UFOs: Fact or Fantasy,” The Humanist 36, no. 4 (July/August 1976): 9-13.2
  • “N-Rays and UFOs: Are They Related?,” Zetetic 2, no. 1 (1977): 57-61.
  • “The Other Side of the Coyne Encounter,” FATE 31, no. 12 (1978): 72-82.
  • “UFOs,” in Abell, George O., and Singer, Barry (eds.), Science and the Paranormal: Probing the Existence of the Supernatural (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1981), 310-328.
  • UFOs the Public Deceived (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books: 1983).
  • Bringing UFOs Down to Earth (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997).
  • The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Cover-up (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997).
  • “A Field Guide to UFOs,” Astronomy 25, no. 9 (1997): 30-35.
  • UFO-Abductions: A Dangerous Game (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998).
  • UFO-Abductions: A Dangerous Game. rev. ed. (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1999).

Notes

  1. Several of these articles were reprinted in Frazier, Frederick., Karr, Barry and Nickell, Joe (eds.) The UFO Invasion: The Roswell Incident, Alien Abductions, and Government Coverups (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997). ↩︎
  2. Reprinted in Grim, Patrick (ed.) Philosophy of Science and the Occult (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982), 247-255. The article (albeit two pages missing) can be read here. ↩︎

UFOs, Dust Devils and Fire Whirls

My article on the Ariel School UFO incident has recently been published in SUNlite (Smith, 2023). SUNlite is an online sceptical newsletter on ufology, in the same vein of Philip J. Klass’ Skeptical UFO Newsletter (SUN).1

The Ariel School UFO: A Dust Devil?Download

Although I am the first person to explain the Ariel School UFO incident by the misperception of a dust devil, the Socorro UFO incident (also categorised as a close encounter of the third kind) was suggested by the astronomer Donald Menzel to be a dust devil. However, in my opinion, a fire whirl seems more probable. On July 3, 1970,2 Menzel debated the ‘extraterrestrial hypothesis’ proponent Raymond Fowler about the Socorro UFO incident. Menzel argued what the eyewitness (Lonnie Zamora) observed, was in fact, a dust devil, but he made a misidentification because his glasses had fallen off during the observation (Zamora had a 20/100 vision). He initially reported observing a “flame in the sky” from a distance of half a mile away while he was driving; later a UFO from 400-600 feet (having briefly stopped in his car), and finally at about 100 feet, when he had gotten out of his car to investigate. Fowler (1974, p. 175) quoted Menzel’s comment:

In 1966, I was in Peru to observe an eclipse of the sun. I was driving along a road with a native driver, and all of a sudden, in front of me, I saw an object that looked almost identical with what they described – the little legs, the two little men in white around it – and I was fascinated and surprised. I recognized it immediately from the Socorro case, and, ah, my driver did not stop at all! And this thing moved across the road, and then as we went past it, I saw it take off and go up in the atmosphere. It was what we call a dust devil of a very sharply defined character. And dust devils are very frequency out in this area of Socorro, and I think that could have been what he saw. The two little men in the white suits were just part of the dust devil around the bottom of it, where you are looking through the edges of the places where the dust was being picked up from the dusty road.

References

  • Fowler, Raymond. UFOs: Interplanetary Visitors (New York: Exposition Press, 1974).
  • Smith, Oliver D. “The Ariel School UFO: A Dust Devil?,” SUNlite 15, no. 3 (2023): 7-10.

Notes

  1. An archive, containing all 76 issues of Klass’ newsletter (1989-2003), can be downloaded here.  ↩︎
  2. WBZ-TV, Boston. ↩︎

Reported Sightings of the Yeren

I planned to add a table documenting modern sightings of the Chinese wildman (yeren) as an appendix to my monograph (Smith, 2021). Unfortunately, I did not finish it in time, when I sent my manuscript to Sino-Platonic Papers for peer-review. A table of 30 yeren sightings (1922-2007) appears below with information.

Date of SightingLocationApprox. DistanceNotesReferences
1922Hubei Province?Three observers saw a captured yeren.Dong, 2000: 175-176.
1940Gansu Province1-3 foot (1 meter)Yeren corpse was lying beside road. Eyewitness was very close but did not touch the body.Green, 1984: 88-90; Dong, 2000: 175.
1942Hubei Province?Yeren sitting on tree stump. Shot at by fifty militiamen.Marshall, 1995.
November 1947Hubei Province?Eight yeren were chased by soldiers.Wren, 1984; Shackley, 1986: 86.
1950sShaanxi Province650 feet (200 meters)No clear line of sight; dense trees.Dong, 2000: 177.
1950sShaanxi Province10 feet? (3 meters)Yeren infant and mother in wood.Dong, 2000: 177.
October 1964 Sichuan Province100 feet (30 meters)Mute eyewitness; report by hand-signaling. Unreliable.Greenwell & Poirier, 1989: 49.
October 1964 Sichuan Province 300 feet (90 meters)Yeren described as “robust” in size.Greenwell & Poirier, 1989: 49.
1967Hubei Province0 foot (0.0 meter)Shennongjia ranger; yeren touched him.Marshall, 1995.
May 1976Hubei Province6 feet (2 meters)Six eyewitnesses (all Shennongjia forestry workers).Greenwell & Poirier, 1989: 48.
June 1976 Hubei Province20 feet (6 meters)Yeren was rubbing itself against a tree.Green, 1984: 90; Dong, 2000: 180.
October 1976 Hubei Province100 feet? (30 meters)Schoolteacher and pupils saw a yeren walking up a hill.Dong, 2000: 181.
June 1977Shaanxi Province5-6 feet (1-2 meters)Eyewitness fought with a yeren for an hour. Rocks thrown.Green, 1984: 90-91; Dong, 2000: 190.
July 1977 Shaanxi Province12 feet (3-4 meters)A ditch separated yeren to eyewitness.Green, 1984: 91.
March 1978Guizhou Province?Yeren threw wood on a campfire.Wren, 1984.
September 1979Hubei Province0 foot (0.0 meter)Yeren had grabbed the eyewitness.Wren, 1984.
1980Hubei Province4-5 feet (1-2 meters)12-inch footprints found where yeren was observed.Green, 1984: 91.
Februrary 1980 Guizhou Province?Yeren was caught a in a hunter’s trap.Wren, 1984.
1981Anhui Province?Yeren seen in mist; 15-inch footprints.Shackley, 1986: 87.
April 1981Sichuan Province10 feet (3 meters)Yeren was leaning against a tree.Greenwell & Poirier, 1989: 49.
May 1981 Sichuan Province25-30 feet (7-10 meters) Two eyewitnesses; eight years old.Greenwell & Poirier, 1989: 49.
September 1981Hubei Province3300 feet (1000 meters)Long distance sighting of a yeren; from peak of a mountain.Jaivin, 1985: 38.
April 1983Yunnan Province?Eyewitness stared at yeren in moonlight.Wren, 1984.
September 1993Hubei Province65 feet (20 meters)Ten men in a bus saw a group of yeren walking.Marshall, 1995.
1995Guangxi7-10 feet (2-3 meters)Yeren observed outside house door.Krantz, 1997-1998.
1995Guangxi20 feet? (6 meters)Eyewitness saw yeren crouching.Krantz, 1997-1998.
April 1995Hubei Province1600 feet (500 meters)Long distance but use of binoculars.Meldrum & Zhou, 2012: 58.
June 2003Hubei Province?The eyewitnesses saw a yeren run across the road.Zan, 2007.
September 2005Hubei Province50 feet (15 meters)Farmer observed two yeren eating.Meldrum & Zhou, 2012: 58.
November 2007 Hubei Province164 feet (50 meters)No clear line of sight; two yeren behind shrubbery.Zan, 2007.

Errata

The following errors appear in my monograph:

  • On pages 2, 10 and 16, “A Brief History…” should read “A Brief Bestiary…”.
  • On page 7, “50 percent” should read “over 50 percent” (Poirier estimated 52%).
  • On page 16, a Grover Krantz paper (1997-1998) has a slightly incorrect title.

References

  • Dong, Paul. China’s Major Mysteries (San Francisco: China Books and Periodicals, 2000).
  • Green, John. “The Search in China for Unknown Hominoids,” in Markotic, Victor (ed.), The Sasquatch and Other Unknown Hominoids (Calgary: Western Pub., 1984), 87-99.
  • Greenwell, Richard., and Poirier, Frank. “Further Investigations into the Reported Yeren: The Wildman of China,” Cryptozoology 8 (1989): 47-57.
  • Krantz, Grover S. “A New Yeren Investigation in China [1995]”, Cryptozoology 13 (1997-1998): 88-93; republished in Bigfoot Sasquatch Evidence (Surrey BC: Hancock House, 1999).
  • Jaivin, Linda. “Is There a Wildman?,” Asiaweek (May 24, 1985): 26-39.
  • Marshall, Andrew. “In Search of the Wild Man,” South China Morning Post. September 2, 1995.
  • Meldrum, Jeff., and Zhou, Guoxing. “Footprint Evidence of the Chinese Yeren,” The Relict Hominoid Inquiry 1 (2012): 57-66.
  • Shackley, Myra. Still Living? Yeti, Sasquatch and the Neanderthal Enigma (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1986), alternatively published as Wildmen (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1983).
  • Smith, Oliver D. “The Wildman of China: The Search for the Yeren,” Sino-Plat. Pap. 309 (2021): 1-17.
  • Wren, Christopher S. “On the Trail of the ‘Wild Man’ of China,” New York Times. June 5, 1984.
  • Zan, Jifang. “Hubei Bigfoot–Fact or Fiction?,” Beijing Review. December 20, 2007.