More skeptical newsletters (USA, 1990s) : "Association for Rational Thought News", "Bay Area Skeptics Information Sheet" + "South Shore Skeptic" newsletter

Continuing my recent focus on skeptical newsletters, also now in my online UFO / Fortean archive are searchable PDF copies of various issues of:

(1) "Association of Rational Thought News" [originally the "Ohio Valley Skeptics News", renamed in December 1991]

(2) "Bay Area Skeptics Information Sheet" - Issues refer to reprints being permitted as long as credit is given to the Bay Area Skeptics group.

(3) "South Shore Skeptic" newsletter - Issues refer to them being sent free to anyone that asks.

If anyone was a member of those groups at the time these newsletters were produced and is able to help fill in any gaps, that would be great.

I'm still looking into various further skeptical publications and seeking permission to upload them - including looking into details online at the links in my previous post (and also here and here).

PDFs : Further skeptical newsleters - "Arizona Skeptic", "Phoenix Skeptics News" + "Georgia Skeptics" newsletter

I have added 3 more sets of skeptical newsletters to the folder for newsletters from the USA in my UFO / Fortean online archive. These are: the "Arizona Skeptic", "Phoenix Skeptics News" and the "Georgia Skeptics" newsletter

Jim Lippard has kindly given me the green light to add copies of the "Arizona Skeptic" newsletter and the "Phoenix Skeptics News" to my free online archive. The first six issues of the newsletter were the "Phoenix Skeptics News" (in 1987 to mid 1988, being Volume 1 Issues 1 to 6). The name of the newsletter was then changed to the "Arizona Skeptic" from July 1988 (so the publication with that name begins with "Volume 2 Issue 1") and continued until Volume 7 Issue 1 in 1994 ).

Also, looking at copies of the newsletter of the Georgia Skeptic yesterday I noticed that they contain editorials stating that the material they contain "may be used by anyone" (e.g. in Volume 4 No 1), so I have added 18 issues to my online archive. This collection is incomplete. I have seen references to a dead ftp site that may have had more issues of the newsletter of the George Skeptics, but not yet been able to locate an archive of that website.

When dealing with these publications, I found several lists online of skeptical newsletters. Most of those are now (with permission of relevant researchers / groups) in my online archive. A handful are not in the archive because I have received a negative response to a permission request (or no response at all) or the material is currently online behind paywalls so I have presumed that seeking permission to make the material freely available online would be a waste of my time. However, I have now seen a few skeptical newsletters mentioned on Jim Lippard's website and also elsewhere (and also in a collection donated to the AFU by Michael Hutchinson) that I have not yet sought permission to include in my online archive. I will therefore be sending out some additional permission requests tomorrow.

PDFs: "Tampa Bay Skeptics Report" newsletter - substantially increased collection of searchable PDFs

A few years ago, Gary Posner kindly gave me permission to upload issues of the "Tampa Bay Skeptics Report".  At that time, I was able to help get scans of about 45 complete issues online as searchable PDFs with help from various members of my informal network of UFO groups / researchers. I have now used material on the "Tampa Bay Skeptics" website to create searchable PDFs from html versions of the text of selected articles from about another 50 issues. 

So, material from 95 issues of "Tampa Bay Skeptics Report" is now online.  

These additional issues of the "Tampa Bay Skeptics Report" join numerous other skeptical publications from around the world are already in my free online UFO / Fortean archive (e.g. from the UK John Rimmer's "Magonia" and his related publications in addition to Ian Mrzyglod's "Probe",  with newsletters from the USA including "Skeptic UFO Newsletter" by Philip Klass and Tim Printy's "SUNlite" and the newsletter of the "North Texas Skeptic"). More skeptical newsletters / magazines will be added very soon. I have also uploaded some other material written by leading skeptics, including a PDF archive of about 10,000 pages of Tweets by skeptics Mick West and Charlie Wiser (with their permission). I also hope to start uploading other material from a few prominent skeptics shortly. 

I don't like dealing with parts of a newsletter / magazine, so have previously generally refrained from uploading incomplete issues of a newsletter. However, I have taken the view in this instance that large parts of dozens of issues is better than not having any part of those issues in the archive. I have clearly marked the files that only contain the text of selected articles as "INCOMPLETE" in their file names. I still hope that I will get help replacing some of the incomplete issues with complete scans.

I'll see, in particular, if anyone in the "Tampa Bay Skeptics" Facebook group has scans of any further issues (or can replace any of the files marked as "INCOMPLETE").

Gary Posner also has his own website, with some further skeptical material - including in relation to UFOs. 

   

259 issues of the "North Texas Skeptic" newsletter - as searchable PDFs

The "North Texas Skeptics" group, founded in 1983 as the "Dallas Society to Oppose Pseudo-science", published a newsletter originally entitled "The Skeptic : The Newsletter of the North Texas Skeptics" and subsequently entitled "The North Texas Skeptic".

Editorials in that newsletter give permission to reprint articles, so I wanted to add this newsletter to my free online archive. The North Texas Skeptics' website includes about 100 issues of that newsletter as PDFs, with html pages with the text of about a further 150 issues.  

I contacted the North Texas Skeptics via their Facebook group and that group's administrator, John Blanton, very kindly offered to generate a set of PDF once his current stay in hospital ends.  Now, I may be a lawyer, but I'm not _entirely_ heartless - so I wouldn't want to create any work for someone recovering from a stay in hospital. So, I've created a set of PDFs myself.  

Searchable PDFs of 259 issues of the "North Texas Skeptic" have now been added to the USA folder of my free online UFO / Fortean archive. For the ease of anyone that wants to download a full set, I've also uploaded them to a temporary Wetransfer link so that the entire set can be downloaded with a single click.

Searchable PDFs: "Skeptics UFO Newsletters" of Philip Klass - probably the most famous (infamous?) UFO skeptic

Back in 2013, I helped co-ordinate making the "Skeptics UFO Newsletters" of Philip Klass freely available online on CSICOP/CSI website.  That effort was shortly before I started a structured online UFO archive of my own. For ease of access, I have now added the scans to this archive as well.

Philip Klass is probably the best known UFO skeptic. He evokes strong emotions in some people in the UFO field.  He wrote several influential skeptical UFO books and was very involved in debates regarding the MJ-12 documents and various leading cases.

Klass can be seen in action debating UFOs with Stanton Friedman in the videos below of Nightline with Ted Koppel broadcast in June 1987.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLQKKwt8tm8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJM4oL2ZAbY


Klass was one of the founding members (along with various others, including Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, and Paul Kurtz) of the skeptical group formerly known as the "Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal" (CSICOP), which was subsequently renamed "Committee for Skeptical Inquiry" (CSI).

In addition to his various UFO books, Klass wrote numerous issues of a newsletter entitled the "Skeptics UFO Newsletter". He gave CSICOP/CSI permission to put those newsletters online.  


Back in 2013, Luis R. Gonzalez (a Spanish researcher, pictured below) scanned his almost complete run of xerox copies of Klass' Skeptic UFO Newsletter, and filled the gaps with the help of others. I produced searchable PDF copies of those newsletters and provided them to CSICOP/CSI.

Barry Karr of CSICOP/CSI arranged for those searchable scans to be made available on the CSICOP/CSI website and told me he had no problem with my making them available to download from a free file storage website.

So, as part of my effort to make my archive more comprehensive, I've now added the SUN newsletters to it (with thanks to Luis R. Gonzalez for the scan and to CSICOP/CSI for permission, which in turn had previously been granted permission by Phil Klass to make his newsletters available online).

Here's an illustration of search results from that newsletter on Richard Doty:

Updated collection of "SUNlite" magazine (2009 - ), by leading UFO skeptic Tim Printy

"SUNlite" has been edited by a leading UFO skeptic, Tim Printy, since 2009 and features articles by him and various other researchers (mainly other prominent skeptics).  

"SUNlite" was named by Tim Printy in tribute to the earlier well-known "SUN" newsletter ("Skeptic UFO Newsletter") by Philip Klass - which I helped get online about a decade ago.

Tim makes this magazine available on his own website, but he kindly gave me permission several years ago to add them to my online archive. I periodically update that collection. I have just done so again, so there are now 76 issues in that folder.

(Tim was in the Roswell Slides Research Group with me and various others. We helped address the infamous "Roswell Slides" back in 2015. Those slides were a relatively big deal at the time, but since they were debunked they have largely been forgotten. I'd guess they are largely unknown to the influx of new UFO researchers / enthusiasts in 2017 onwards). 

Another rare Canadian UFO newsletter now online (free, of course) - "Quest" (1960s-1970s), with permission from Kurt Glemser

The focus of most issues of Kurt Glemser's "Quest" (Canada, 1960s-1970s) was mainly upon UFOs, with some articles on other Forteana (such as witchcraft, satanic cults, werewolves, vampires, mummies and the Loch Ness monster). 

Kurt Glemser kindly gave me permission some time ago to upload his UFO publications, with thanks to Ray Boeche for help liaising with Kurt. 

Since then. I've struggled for a few years to get hold of a complete set of Kurt Glemser's "Quest" newsletter.  I still don't quite have a complete set, but I thought I should share what I've obtained (mainly from the AFU in Sweden). I'll continue trying to fill in the few remaining gaps, although I'm really trying to put less time and effort into coordinating digitising of UFO material around the world so that I can focus on developing a new UFO project that I think may be more interesting.

Oh, and some issues have photos of topless women in them.

I've added this newsletter to the folder for Canadian UFO newsletters / magazines.

PDFs : More Soviet UFO newsletters - O zagadkah UFO, Za chertoy realnosti, Visit, UFO Review

I've previously uploaded large collections of material from across Russia and Eastern Europe, thanks in particular to help from Ukrainian researcher Igor Kalytyuk in obtaining material and in securing permissions from various UFO researchers and groups.

Thanks again to Igor Kalytyuk, another 4 sets of Soviet UFO newsletters are now online: 

(1) O Zagadkah UFO (Club Youth of Estonia) ["About the mysteries of UFOs"]

(2) Za Chertoy Realnosti (Red North) ["Beyond the reality"]

(3) Visit (Sverdlovsk Ufologists Group)

(4) UFO Review

This upload adds to my first collection of UFO newsletters from the USSR and a second pile of material from the USSR on UFOs and "Non-Recurrent Ultrafast Phenomena" - in addition to the more recent material from Ukraine and Russia that Igor and various other local researchers, including George Fedorovskiy and Mikhail Gershtein, have previously helped me obtain and share online.

Canadian "Cosmos Express" newsletters (UFOs, 1970s): articles include "UFOLOGY : IS IT A SCIENCE?"

Looking at a Canadian UFO newsletters from the 1970s ("Cosmos Express") during my lunch break, I noticed that an editorial in it stated that this publication could be reprinted or quoted in whole or in part (in issue 7 at page 18).

So, I've uploaded 4 issues to my free online UFO / Fortean archive hosted on the website of the AFU in Sweden (issues numbers 1, 5, 6 and 7), in the folder for Canadian UFO newsletters.

This set is incomplete. Barry Greenwood in the USA has further issues and I'll ask him if he has time to scan some of them, but I thought I'd share these 4 issues first and see if anyone else in the UFO community has already scanned any other issues. As always, I want to avoid reinventing the wheel.

Issue 1 of "Cosmos Express" begins with an article entitled "UFOLOGY : IS IT A SCIENCE?". That article includes the following:

"the evident lack of coordination between the diverse research teams cascade multiple efforts that in the long run come to no avail...".

If anyone else spots any similar statement in a UFO newsletter that it can be reprinted in full or in part, let me know if I haven't already uploaded it.  Most UFO newsletters and magazines (and UFO books for that matter) from around the world have been scanned and it's very easy to get them online, if permission has been granted. 

21 issues of "PaleoSeti" - Canadian magazine for "Ancient Astronaut & Lost Civilizations research" - now added to archive

Herbert Eisengruber has kindly given me permission to add copies of his magazine, "PaleoSeti", to my free online UFO / Forteana archive hosted on the website of the AFU.

"PaleoSeti" describes itself as a magazine "for Ancient Astronaut & Lost Civilizations research". The first issue (in 2014) contained an editorial by Herbert Eisengruber which included the following:

"Was Earth visited thousands of years ago by extraterrestrials? Was there ever a culture on Earth that predates all known Civilizations? What seem to be outlandish questions make a lot of sense if you are willing to look a bit closer. Both Theories are nothing new and were mentioned on and off throughout the last century. The Ancient Astronaut Theory got its real ‘push’ from the books by Erich von Däniken, the first of which was his 1968 bestseller ‘Chariots of the Gods’ (Econ Publishing). A lot happened since this book. Research didn’t stand still in main stream archaeology as well as in the Ancient Astronaut field. Erich von Däniken has become the most successful non fiction author in the world. And the reason for that – besides the fact that he is a good writer – is that the Ancient Astronaut Theory is capturing readers worldwide". 

Herbert Eisengruber's editorial went on to state that the research necessary for the Lost Civilization Theory is very much related to the PaleoSeti (Ancient Astronaut) Theory" and it therefore made sense to combine the two in one publication. 

This publication has already been made available free of charge by Herbert Eisengruber on his own website, at http://www.paleoseti.com/, but I thought it worth adding searchable copies to my online archive.

(I hope to get permission to upload some further "Ancient Astronaut" material, including a considerable volume of skeptical material, in the near future).

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