Shockingly Close to the Truth!: Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist

by James W. Moseley, Karl T. Pflock

This amusing, revealing, and entertaining romp through the confused and controversial history of the UFO craze is a must for believers and skeptics alike. Shockingly Close to the Truth! is the first and only comprehensive tell-all history of ufology from two men who have been at the center of this cultlike movement for close to half a century. James W. Moseley conveys the fun he has had over the years pursuing tall tales and purported evidence of visitors from outer space. As the creator of the newsletter Saucer Smear--the source on the follies, foibles, fads, and feuds of ufology--Moseley has the inside scoop on the amazing world of serious UFO sleuths and wigged-out "saucer fiends." His co-author, Karl T. Pflock, has been tracking reports of unidentified flying objects for close to half a century and has written the most thorough investigation of the Roswell incident ever done.For Moseley it all began as a lark in 1953 when he drove across country and interviewed almost 100 UFO experts and eyewitnesses, including former president Harry S Truman. After all these years, his account of this journey is here published for the first time, a goldmine for anyone interested in modern social and "ufological" history. He also talks candidly about his encounters with and assessments of leading UFO personalities, including Budd Hopkins, George Adamski, J. Allen Hynek, and many others. In addition, he reveals the whole truth behind the infamous Straith letter hoax, the real origins of the Men in Black, and the true story of George Adamski's alleged 1952 encounter with "a man from Venus." Along the way he recounts his incredible adventures as a grave robber of pre-Columbian artifacts in Peru (Move over Indiana Jones!), to which there is also a bizarre UFO connection. Complementing the exuberant narrative are many original photos of famous persons and events from Moseley's private collection, plus facsimile reproductions of the Straith letter and the complete October 1957 special Adamski expose issue of Smear's predecessor, Saucer News. A feast for UFO buffs this book will also interest students of popular culture, social trends, and the psychology of belief.

Genres: Nonfiction

376 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2002

About the author

Prominent American ufologist.

Over his career, he exposed UFO hoaxers and engineered hoaxes of his own. Moseley didn't see himself as hardcore skeptic or "true believer" and believed himself to be more on the middle ground.

He was best known for the popular newsletter Saucer Smear, which published an expose on George Adamski's book "The flying saucers have landed". In his later career he mailed Adamski a prank letter in name of the Air Force Cultural exchange committee.

Moseley also spend a couple of years in Peru where he illegally excavated graves and exported artifacts.

Reviews

[Aaron Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jim Moseley has a certain talent for cutting through the crap cake that has been built around ufology or as he says "ufoology". Moseley finds the characters that are involved in "The Field" much more interesting than the ideas they propogated through misdirection and sometimes hoaxes.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE ‘SAUCER SMEAR’ PUBLISHER COMMENTS ON PEOPLE AND EVENTS

James Willett Moseley (1931-2012) was an American and ufologist, who was the publisher of the UFO newsletters ‘Saucer News’ and its successor ‘Saucer Smear.’ He was also quite willing to expose cases he felt to be ‘hoaxes.’

The ‘Note on Sources’ (by Pflock, I presume) of this 2002 book states, “This isn’t a scholarly work. It’s a very personal recollection of more than fifty years of UFOs, ufologists, ufology, and ‘ufoology.’ So we haven’t larded it up with footnotes and other stigmata of the scholar at work, although where we thought it appropriate, we have provided in text the information necessary for the reader to locate sources of quoted material and the like. This is not to say our book doesn’t have a solid factual and documentary foundation… Jim Moseley… [kept] a diary… almost daily up to the present time… We’ve also had the benefit of about 150 pages of … notes that Jim made… in anticipation of writing a book about saucers. That book was never written, but its spirit definitely haunts these pages.” (Pg. 11-
12)

Moseley states in the Prologue, “Our government… is far too inept to keep important secrets for very long. I therefore go back to the core of MY … Theory, which is that, in some strange, distorted way, the saucer occupants are a reflection of OURSELVES… Whatever may be the case, I do not believe The Answer will be found in our lifetime, or at least not in mine. Nevertheless, the trip has been fun. As much as I would like to know The Answer, I have seldom given in to frustration… A great many sane, objective, thoughtful people have entered The Field over the years, stayed awhile, found out there are NO easy answers, and gone on to other interests. Those who stay on are mostly the crackpots … the money-grubbers, and the ego-trippers… I consider myself sane and have a reasonably secure ego, but at the same time I have made very little money from UFOs over the years---though I would have no objection to doing so. (Thanks for buying this book!) To me, the PEOPLE in The Field are as interesting as the underlying phenomenon. It is mainly the foibles and fantasies of the ufologists themselves that have held my attention over the years … I have stepped on many toes, been threatened with lawsuits several times… and, in general, I deliberately have made myself unpopular with The Field’s leading lights, simply because, though I DO take the subject seriously, I don’t take the people in The Field---least of all myself---seriously.” (Pg. 16-17)

He notes, “Recently I learned that ‘Flying Saucer Physicist’ and Roswell crash booster Stanton Friedman is having second thoughts about the Aztec case, which he has long denounced as a hoax (perhaps because Roswell is crashing around him?). Thus is confirmed another ‘ufological’ principle: No case ever is closed. Wait long enough, and what was thought dead and buried … will rise from the grave…” (Pg. 95)

He recounts, “I remember the best speaker that year [1961] as being the rev. Frank Sturges, who was and remains a real professional at crowd pleasing. Frank, a quite charming and amusing rogue, is still going strong today … He is an evangelical preacher who combines his teaching of the Christiani scripture with books, lectures, and movies on UFOs---inspired, Frank says, by a meeting he allegedly had in the Pentagon with a Venusian name Valiant Thor, whose purpose on Earth was ‘to help mankind to return to the Lord.’” (Pg. 167-168)

He recalls, “In September 1964, I made my first guest appearance on James ‘The Amazing/Amusing Ran’ Randi’s all-night radio talk show… At the time, Randi was relatively open-minded about saucers and other weirdness. We became friends, and I was a regular on his show until he was somewhat mysteriously fired in January 1966. As time passed, Randi’s cautious open-mindedness dissolved, and eventually he went well beyond the thoughtful skepticism and off the deep end into dogmatic debunker… Because of what I consider to be Randi’s hypocrisy, arrogance, and philosophical extremism, I eventually became disillusioned with him, ending what had been an interesting friendship.” (Pg. 189)

He observes, “I think Stan [Stanton Friedman] yearns to be considered Hynek’s successor as ufology’s leading statesman. However, he lacks a Ph.D. and has never held an academic or research position of the sort required to gain a real-science stature anything like that enjoyed by Hynek. He also comes across as too glib and too hucksterish, while at the same time exuding evangelical true believerism, nothing at all like Hynek’s low-key, tweedy-academic style. I know I’m not alone in being unable to figure out how much of his ufological spiel Stan really believes and how much he ‘believes’ because it’s necessary for his saucering career---or if he even knows the different himself.” (Pg. 202)

He says of the teenaged Timothy Green Beckley, “who doubled as managing editor and advertising manager. Tim was and is quite a character. I finally had to fire him after he took one four-hour lunch break too many. Since then, he's made names for himself in saucerdom… and soft- and hard-core porn… Over the years Tim had peddled… every outrageous point of view imaginable about UFOs and kindred subjects, even though he believes very little of it himself. I once asked him how he could push New Age ‘sweetness and light’ and porn to different audiences at the same time. He immediately replied, ‘I give them what they want.’… I consider him to be an honest businessman and a good friend.” (Pg. 214)

He recounts an incident with Budd Hopkins, who was furious at not having been invited to a UFO press conference: “Hopkins wasn’t listening. He DEMANDED that I kick Beckley and everyone else out of my apartment, and if I didn’t, he would see to it that I never published anything again, anywhere, period. He meant it. I was absolutely stunned by this threat, and I have never forgotten or forgiven Hopkins for it. I suppose this outburst was an example of his artistic temperament, which doesn’t belong in science, even a semi-science like ufology. I will admit that Hopkins is a better artist than he is a scientific ufologist/abductionist, although I’m not favorably impressed with him in either regard.” (Pg. 239)

He explains, “In the late 1970s, Len Stringfield got ufology to start taking crashed and retrieved saucers and dead little men seriously again. My ufological motto is, ‘CONSIDER everything, BELIEVE nothing.’ So I was willing to consider the possibility that saucers had crashed and that they and the bodies of their crews had been secretly grabbed and stashed away by elements of the U.S. government. However, there is a limit. Len soon had several dozen tales of separate incidents…” (Pg. 261)

Of the MJ-12 documents, he notes, “Stan Friedman has made a big deal of Menzel’s alleged involvement… I saw the matter somewhat differently… Including Manzel and his alleged doubts about the saucers being from Mars was a hoaxer’s very clever inside joke. Anyone who knew Menzel knew he had a fixation about MYTHICAL Martians. He wrote science-fiction stories about them… If I knew nothing else about MJ-12, including Menzel eventually would have convinced me it was a hoax. What better way to ‘validate’ the documents and the cover-up than to include ufology’s most notorious (deceased) foe… Including Menzel was a clever ploy and a subtle joke. And the joke’s on Stan Friedman.” (Pg. 265)

He says of Betty Hill, “Betty… is a delightful if somewhat kooky lady… I never thought the landmark abduction experience she and her husband reported having in 1961 was real. I’m sure they saw something in the night sky that terrified them, but I’m must as certain the answer to what they believe happened to them after that is more likely to be found in psychology than ufology… I have no doubt Betty Hill is being entirely honest, that she believes everything she says, but I think her saucers and spacemen hail from her inner space rather than our outer space.” (Pg. 270-271)

Of Ed Walters, he states, “He also began holding regular parties at his home for [his one] Danny’s teenaged friends. That’s when things started to get weird. During at least one of these parties, Ed made double-exposure photos, one of which showed the face of a ‘ghost demon’ peering over a girl’s shoulder… it seems to me it reflected not only Ed’s fun-loving side but also a dark side involving at last an interest in the occult. After the success of the ghost-demon photos, Ed decided to go a step further and fake some UFO photos, with the help of Danny [and three friends]… His submission of at least some of these photos to the Gulf Breeze Sentinel… probably would have been the end of it, but then MUFON got involved and made a big deal out of everything. In short order, Ed was being pursued by book publishers… television and movie producers waving contracts, and so on. Suddenly he realized there was real money to be made from UFO fakery… It was the gullibility of Walt Andrus and MUFON that raised an essentially harmless local hoax to the level of a nationally publicized piece of outrageous---and profitable---nonsense.” (Pg. 294)

This book will be of great interest to those wanting an “insider’s” view of some prominent ufologists (including skeptics as well as ufologists).

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating look at the Ufo(o)logy field from the 50s till the 90s. Like the author state in his book the Ufo(o)logists are more interesting than the percieved UFO's themselves.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shockingly Close to the Truth: Confessions of a Grave-
Robbing Ufologist

by James W. Moseley and Karl T. Pflock

Prometheus, 371 pages, hardback, 2002



Once upon a time — a glorious time — publishers
used to release autobiographies by people who weren't just movie
celebs or ex-politicians or pop stars, but simply people who had
led interesting lives and who could write about them
interestingly. The autobiography — or at least a certain
subgenre of it — was thus almost like a variant form of the
novel, and readers tended to approach it in much the same way.
You might never have heard of Fred Gluggitt, but he'd climbed
Everest blindfold, slept with an Olympic belly-dancing team and
subsisted for a year in the Australian Outback eating nothing but
woodworms, and he could write in a way that had you bursting out
in laughter every few pages. That was what you looked for
in an autobiography: entertainment, a measure of education
(perhaps), a window into someone else's world, and, at the most
profound level, a certain level of identification with and
communication with all of one's fellow human beings, not
just with the individual who happened to be telling her or his
tale.

Books like that are hardly ever published any more. Instead
the tables in the remainder bookshops are piled high with the
heavingly fat, probably ghosted, certainly carefully spin-
doctored autobiographies of famous people whom you would run a
mile rather than have in your living room, or even be stuck in a
bar with.

Well, here's an exception — an old-fashioned
autobiography that captures the spirit right down to the
deliciously hokey cover illustration.

Jim Moseley (one assumes Karl Pflock is a sort of fully
credited ghostwriter) has been a ufologist for decades.
Correction: not so much a ufologist as what he calls a
"ufoologist", observing and commenting on the field of ufology to
a much greater extent than researching UFOs themselves. He
certainly has done some UFO investigation — coming to the
conclusion that, while every UFO case he has personally examined
is almost certainly unmysterious, nevertheless UFOs taken en
masse probably do represent a mystery — but essentially
he has been, as dubbed a while back, ufology's Court Jester. He
has published the long-running muckraker-sheet-cum-investigative-
journal Saucer News (now called Saucer Smear)
— a sort of ufological Private Eye — and he has
met and/or interviewed virtually all of the principal
protagonists in a certain segment of ufology: what one could call
the mainstream of US ufology in the second half of the 20th
century.

Oh, yes, and as a sideline he's occasionally gone on treasure
hunts to Peru, conducting a legally questionable trade in ancient
artefacts.

His reminiscences of all this are constantly entertaining,
and on occasion very funny. What's especially interesting about
them is that Moseley can, as it were, reach the parts that
professional UFO debunkers like Phil Klass cannot. This comment
applies both to his encounters with other ufologists and to his
studies of particular UFO cases.

To take the latter first: Moseley is open-minded about the
existence, physically or psychologically, of UFOs, and it is with
this attitude that he has approached any examination of a case.
This is in contrast with either the debunker or the devotee, each
of whom will go into the case expecting to have preconceptions
confirmed: the debunker will find plenty to ridicule, the devotee
plenty to believe. Moseley, on the other hand, has a good chance
of finding what is actually there. That he, as someone
who's a part of the scene, has found enough to convince him that
many famous cases are tosh is much more convincing than if, say,
the late Carl Sagan had found the same: Sagan (who was interested
in the subject in a minor way) or any other serious scientist
would have investigated only as far as the first few obvious
contradictions, whereas Moseley actually went on to probe such
cases in some considerable depth.

In other words, by dint of the extent of his research he's an
expert in a way that few outright debunkers can ever hope to be.
And this applies also to his observations of ufology. I can't
actually name any names here, because some of these figures are
astonishingly writ-happy, but various of the barmiest of the
ufology superstars have opened up to Moseley — despite his
known editorship of Saucer Smear (which must go to show
how barmy they actually are) — in a way they'd never think
to talk to someone who wasn't One Of Us. And Moseley, gleefully,
lets them show themselves as they are.

His demolitions are all the more effective for this. Here,
for example — there's a plethora of choice — is his
conclusion concerning Roswell, with a conclusion also about CUFOS
(one of the major organizations devoted to supposedly scientific
UFO study):

Whatever the original motivation, CUFOS has long since
dropped any pretense of objectivity about the case and is the one
UFO group that unwaveringly stands behind it without
qualification.

That single sentence tells us a lot about ufology and also a
lot about the representation of ufology in the media: anyone here
who hadn't gained the impression that most UFO buffs thought
Roswell was likely to be pretty kosher, please raise your hands.

As the social history of ufology the publishers claim it to
be in their cover blurb, even an informal one, this book is far
from adequate. As noted above, it covers only a small segment of
the field; plenty of really quite important ufological figures
and their ideas, sane or crackpot, get no mention at all. The
index lists only people, so there is no entry for, for example,
Roswell, even though there's quite a lot about the Roswell
fallacy in the book; bad indexes seem to be a Prometheus
speciality. I noticed that Hugo Gernsback is called "Gernsbach",
so for all I know there may be countless other individuals —
or places, or organizations, etc. — whose names are
incorrectly spelled. One could go on chipping away at the text on
such grounds for quite a long time.

But that's not really what it's about. What this constantly
entertaining book is about is a very haphazard (delightfully
haphazard) ramble through the life of someone who's been in the
ufology game primarily for the fun of it. He has teased;
he has hoaxed (often in tandem with his friend the late Gray
Barker, although Barker almost made a profession of it); he has
exposed (the whole of the 1957 issue of Saucer News
exposing Adamski is reproduced in the appendix); he has annoyed
(too many to name, but they're the sort of people you feel good
that someone's annoyed); he has been ufology's gadfly. At the end
of the day, he was delighted when "a certain Harry Lime" wrote
from Vienna, Austria (not Greeneland?), to tell him he should be
proud of, not dismayed by, the sobriquet he'd recently been given
in MUFON UFO Journal: "The Reigning Court Jester of
Ufology."

Revealing and entertaining by turns, Shockingly Close to
the Truth is a book you'll love or — assuming you're
especially po-faced — hate. This reviewer devoured it, and
with a grin on his face the whole time.



This review, first published by Infinity Plus, is
excerpted from my ebook Warm Words and Otherwise: A Blizzard
of Book Reviews, to be published on September 19 by Infinity
Plus Ebooks.

[Robert Stout · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shockingly Close to the Truth by James W. Moseley is a must read for both believers and skeptics alike. Mosely is the court jester of ufology or ufoology as he sometimes state. Mosely was a close friend to Gray Barker a luminary in the field of ufology. Barker never took ufology seriously and he was often lampooned by other figures such as Donald Keyhoe of NICAP who tried to convience the air force to come clean on ufos. Moseley is a complex figure who has an open mind about ufos and wanting to get to the bottom of the mystery. For example Moseley knew that Adamski's contact story with aliens from Venus did not past the smell test but he liked him as someone who was a true believer. Moseley exposed frauds and flim flams within ufology. For example the Gulf Breeze siting by Ed Walters or "Mr. Ed" as Moseley called him uncovered an exact duplicate flying saucer in Walters addict and that the sighting was a hoax. Moseley believes that a ballon crashed outside of Roswell. But according to Kevin Randle there was no balloon flight since the weather was bad. Despite this the book is full of humor and its highly recommended.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book isn't as much about whether flying saucers are real or not as it is about the history of the subculture that grew around the saucer craze. The author tell his story as a flying saucer journalist, investigator and oftentimes hoaxer/prankster. Very entertaining indeed!