Once Upon a Missing Time by long-time UFO researcher Philip Mantle is a terrific read that is compelling and entertaining, a work of integrity but never waxes ponderous

Review by KEN KORCZAK

When I saw that one of Britain’s most respected, renowned and dogged UFO investigators, PHILIP MANTLE, had published a work of UFO fiction my first thoughts were, “Uh-ho.”

That’s because I have been down this road before with researchers famous in the UFO field, most notable the great Jacques Vallée, who a few years back took a turn at fiction with his novel Fastwalker. It was pretty bloody awful.

Others in UFO or similar fields have also attempted a fictional turn with disastrous results, notably NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin who wrote a fantastically boring science fiction novel called Encounter With Tiber – and I refuse to even speak of Graham Hancock’s recent foray into fiction.

And so I was not only pleasantly surprised – but absolutely delighted by Mantle’s, “ONCE UPON A MISSING TIME.” This is a terrific book that delivered everything I expected from a tale of close encounters with strange beings – but the plot also took unexpected turns which makes this book a work of depth and pragmatic integrity.

As far as I can tell, the story is based on a bona fide UFO abduction event known as the Aveley Abduction which occurred on a dark country road in West Essex in 1974. I believe the story was first reported in Flying Saucer Review by writer and long-time UFO investigator Andrew Collins. Collins also writes about the Aveley Abduction in his recent book, LIGHTQUEST. (See my review of LightQuest HERE).

I’ve also seen the story of the Aveley Abduction bounced around in the endless echo chamber of the Internet – often with details slightly altered and with the “names changed to protect the innocent” – but with the core of the story essentially in tact. Some call it the U.K.'s “most important UFO multiple abduction case."

The events involve an ordinary family: Dad a school teacher and mum a social worker, who along with their 12-year-old daughter, enjoy a middle class lifestyle that couldn’t be more grounded and normal. But then they confront the extraordinary – or I should say – the extraterrestrials!

PHILIP MANTLE

The result is the shattering of three lives. In additional to the eschatological shock of having their world views torn to shreds, the larger effect precipitated upon the close-nit, small-town and social network of their staid Yorkshire community is vexing, to say the least.

What makes Once Upon a Missing Time truly a top-notch read is Mantle’s considerable skill at creating vivid characters. He makes us feel strong empathy for them as they struggle with their stunning situation.

Believe me, taking a run-of-the-mill school teacher and a plodding social worker and selling them to the reader as interesting and sympathetic characters is no easy task for any writer – but Mantle pulls it off.

The author gets it done – in my opinion – by not being a blowhard and trying his hand at “great literature.” Rather, Mantle writes within his own capabilities. His years spent writing nonfictional UFO accounts and serving as editor of a number of UFO publications has provided him with the pragmatic clarity of a journalist, but also the expanded skill of observation required for someone in the endlessly enigmatic, twisted and tangled field of Ufology.

The result is tale well told, the ordinary made extraordinary, and a piece of fiction that displays a keen eye for what makes common people tick. Once Upon A Missing Time has my highest recommendation.

Ken Korczak is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

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"Captured! The Barney and Betty Hill Experience" is a surprisingly absorbing read which reveals never-before-released information about this most famous alien abduction case

Review by KEN KORCZAK

I was two years old when what is still probably the most famous case of alien abduction of all time occurred in 1961 – that involving Barney and Betty Hill of New Hampshire. When I was about seven years old I was struck with a magnificent obsession for astronomy, and that naturally led to an interest in the possibility that Earth was being visited from the stars.

So I have been aware of the Hill abduction saga virtually all my life. Over the decades, I have read a book or two and dozens of articles about the case. It’s also frequently discussed in other UFO books. I vividly remember being glued to the TV as a teenager over the 1975 made-for-TV docudrama of the Hill story starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons.

Thus, ever since KATHLEEN MARDEN'S book CAPTURED! THE BARNEY AND BETTY HILL EXPERIENCE first came out in 2007, I've been taking a pass on it, thinking, “What more is there possibly to say about this already over-analyzed case?” and:

“Do we really need another Barney and Betty Hill book?”

I now know the answer is “Yes!” I decided to purchase “Captured” partly on a whim, but also because it's been too long time since I read a good UFO yarn. I was flabbergasted by how much I still did not know about the case after all these years – in fact, I can say that I have an all-knew perspective.

I have opted to move myself out of the “skeptic” column regarding the Hill abduction into the “believer” column – as difficult as that is for me to say.

Marden (who is the primary author of this book and who is Betty Hill's niece), rolls out a case that may be wholly circumstantial – but the weight and the aggregate of all this circumstantial evidence as presented here would be more than enough to hang a man in any court of law.

By contrast, the alternative explanations offered by some of the greatest skeptics and debunkers – including Carl Sagan, James Randi and Philip Klass – seem petty, sparse, cherry-picked and highly theoretical by comparison.

Kathleen Marden and Stanton Friedman

In Captured!, Marden (along with famed UFO investigator STANTON FRIEDMAN who consulted on the book and also wrote a couple chapters), presents a painstaking, point-by-point analysis of every aspect of the case, from an in-depth analysis of the hypnotic regression sessions compared with consciousness memory accounts and Betty's dreams; the lives and character of the Hills; actual physical evidence (left on her dress); the famous “Star Map”; follow-up events and sightings – and how the aftermath played out in the lives of the Hills for decades to come – the latter of which shows how the case actually has gained credibility over the years.

I noticed that some other reviewers were turned off by one of the late chapters in which the authors launch an intense and scathing attack on skeptic and debunkers. I think some will find the tone of this chapter a bit overwrought, harsh and even mean – and yet, there is not charge made that does not point to direct and obvious, egregious errors committed by debunkers – which they seem to get a free pass on.

That’s because the general public – even myself at times – still find is astoundingly difficult to wrap our collective minds around the implications which naturally fall out of the Hill abduction case. I mean, if their story is true – it means space aliens are running around, picking up ordinary people, sticking anal probes up their orifices, and conducting studies on human being like so many wildlife biologists drugging and tagging animals.

The danger, though, is in making comparisons that are mundane. The true meanings behind alien abduction scenarios like the Hill case have their actual basis in a kind overarching-meta-reality … or … or … perhaps in terms of some greater, higher dimensionality of thought and conception of the universe.

The bottom line is: Barney and Betty Hill may have had a genuine abduction experience, but what the event actually means and implies may be something that can never be known in terms of the current way we model our ideas about what is real and what is unreal. It is something that is beyond the ken of material and empirical science – but also beyond any level of metaphysical and spiritual conceptions we have managed to develop as a species at this point in our evolution.

Ken Korczak is the author of: THE MAN IN THE NOTHING CHAMBER

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For My Money, 'Searchers' Is The Most Frightening Book Of Alien Abduction

Review By KEN KORCZAK

Over the years just a handful of UFO books have been able to creep forth and poke their icy, boney fingers into the soft underbelly of the deepest subconscious fears of the public, scaring the bejeepers out of millions of readers.

Whitely Strieber’s COMMUNION, for example, seemed honest and authentic, and therefore exceedingly unsettling and creepy. John Mack’s ABDUCTION was more scholarly and clinical, but because it was the work of a respected Harvard psychiatrist, it probably made even hardened skeptics think: “Gulp! I wonder if something like this could really be happening?”

But there is one book of UFO alien abduction I have read over the years which delivered that feeling of quesy fright like none other. This is a much more obscure book -- it’s SEARCHERS: A TRUE STORY OF ALIEN ABDUCTION by RON FELBER.

An interesting aspects of this book is that Felber is an outsider to Ufology. Unlike Strieber, Bud Hopkins, David Jacobs and others who made careers and reputations by focusing on alien abduction topics, Felber is a mainstream writer and businessman. He has produced several books of fiction and nonfiction. But “Searchers” is his only work in the UFO genre. He appears to have written it only because a tip from an associate pointed his way to an extraordinary story that Felber found so compelling he had to write about it.

The book describes a sizzling night of terror as experienced by an ordinary middle class California couple, Steve and Dawn Hess. It was 1989 when the Hesses decided to head out to the Mojave Desert for a camping trip. Upon arriving and setting up camp in the middle of nowhere, the isolated couple began to see strange globes of light in the sky. They were unnerved but tried to explain them away in all the common ways. But then, events rapidly escalated to an profoundly frightening degree.

The “lights” moved toward their camp. Steve and Dawn Hess retreat to hide in their camper, only to be accosted by an array of eerie alien beings who surround them, look into their camper window, and seem intensely bent upon getting at them and probing every aspect of their beings. They perform devastating psychological invasions of their minds – at times, the couple is surrounded by dozens of bizarre alien manifestations of wide variety.

Dawn Hess described it this way:

“They (the aliens) wanted everything we had … everything …our minds, our bodies, even our souls, I think. It was like they drew it out of us with a syringe … every molecule. And it was painful and I thought we were going to die, or already had died and were being tortured in hell.”

After enduring a night of this hell, the Hesses returned to their normal lives and jobs, but all was not well with them. Nightmares, fears, anxieties, post-traumatic stress – everything that had happened to them had shattered their sense of what it means to be a normal human being.

It’s a remarkable story, and in the hands of an extremely skilled writer – Felber holds a Ph.D. in Arts and Letters – the result is one of the most terrifying books on alien abduction ever written.

A "UFO Book" That Reads Like a Spiritual Classic

Review By Ken Korczak

Harvard educated psychiatrist John E. Mack was at the peak of a distinguished career as a doctor, Harvard professor, writer and researcher. He even won the Pulitzer Prize for literature and enjoyed universal respect. Then in 1994 he astonished everyone by daring to publish a UFO book.

It was as if every accomplishment of his entire life was now called into question. A Harvard "kangaroo committee" began to investigate him. High-level academic peers condemned him. Public ridicule followed.

Ironically, Mack's 1994 book "Abduction" was a bestseller and probably made him a ton of money - opening him up to that old skeptic's attack over anything to do with UFOs - 'he did it to cash in.' I remember other quotes in the media from egg-head academics that went something like this: "John Mack is a really brilliant guy, but for some reason, he just lost it."

But Mack was only going where the science was leading him. As a therapist, he was intrigued that he was getting an increasing number of patients who claimed to have been abducted by UFO aliens. They were distressed over their experiences, but Mack was perplexed that, outside their bizarre tales of abductions, these people seemed altogether normal and mentally healthy in all other respects. They wanted to stay anonymous; in fact, they were desperate to keep their experiences a secret. It was clear they were not just a bunch of nutty attention seekers, or deeply neurotic or psychotic lunatics. They were ordinary people who needed to deal with a traumatic event.

And so what really got Mack into hot water, especially among the academic and scientific community, is that he had the audacity to suggest that maybe these people really had been abducted by aliens! That maybe they were telling the truth! It was blasphemy!

In my view, Mack, who died in 2004, was treated in much the same way the Catholic Church treated Galileo when he dared support the idea that the sun did not revolve around the earth. In the end, Mack faced no disciplinary action from Harvard, and he didn't lose his license to practice psychiatry, but he endured a scathing wind of condemnation from the "established elite" and sacrificed his standing in the medical and academic community.

Just as I found Mack's "Abductions" a riveting read, I give stellar marks to this book, "Passport to the Cosmos." It's an amazing book in many ways - it's not even really so much a book about alien abduction as it is about spiritual transformation. "Passport to the Cosmos" bears greater relationship to such spiritual classics as "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda than to other books about UFO-related phenomenon - although there is plenty of "alien and UFO" discussion underpinning all of the content.

In addition to the experiences or ordinary Americans, Mack also highlights the UFO-like experiences of three modern day shamans - Sequoyah Trueblood, Bernardo Peixoto and Credo Mutwa. This is significant because Mack rather brilliantly shows us the UFO phenomenon through the eyes of a different culture - perspectives that are not as entangled in the highly rational, secular, materialistic, scientific mindset of Western society. It gives us another way to look at and consider just what might be going on with this whole UFO thing. It forces us to look at it in a new light.

For many readers who have read Mack's "Abductions," this book may seem like "more of the same" but my view is that Mack's thoughts and ideas about what is going on with abduction patients ("experiencers") and the UFO phenomenon have advanced and solidified, and are stated more firmly around a more coherent theory in this book.

This is an important book. I wish millions of people would read it, and give it serious thought.

Ken Korczak is the author of The Fairy Redemption of Jubal Cranch JUBAL CRANCH