Rick Hilberg’s “UFO Magazine” (1960s-1970s, USA) – Searchable PDFs

Rick Hilberg is a veteran ufologist (or, as he put it to me in a recent comment, an “old ufological dinosaur…”). He published “UFO Magazine” in the 1960s-1970s and is still active in ufology today.




Rick has kindly given me permission to make his “UFO Magazine” freely available online.


Back in 1963/1964, Rick Hilberg co-founded the Congress of Scientific Ufologists (which later became called the National UFO Conference – NUFOC).

According to Rick Hilberg’s comments in his “UFO Magazine” in 1963 (Volume 1 Number 5, page 2), the first relevant conference was intended to be a "summit conference of the UFOlogical world”. It was intended to provide a forum for rational discussion. Some of the problems that this conference was intended to address (which, incidentally, continue to affect UFO research over 50 years later...) were stated to relate to the “conflict between many of the groups and researchers” regarding:

“1. Witholding of vital information on sightings or findings
2. Open "feuding" between groups, some of this childish in nature.

Such comments will resonate with those familiar with various suggestions in more recent years that, for example, MUFON is the “black hole” of UFO research or have encountered the numerous petty squabbles between some of the researchers of, say, the Rendlesham incident.

The NUFOC conferences continued for many years, with a “reunion” conference during 2016.






Rick Hilberg can be heard in the podcast embedded below, where he, Allen Greenfield and Tim Swartz reminisce about the history of UFOlogy back to the 1960s with Timothy Green Beckley and Carla Anderson on the "Unraveling the Mysteries" radio show:



Rick Hilberg’s “UFO Magazine” published UFO reports, copies of newspaper articles and commentaries in the 1960s and 1970s. Many sightings which are now viewed as “classics” within ufology were covered in that magazine contemporaneously – often summarising media coverage that was taking place at the time.



Once again our Swedish friends at the “Archives For the Unexplained” ("AFU") in Sweden did the boring job of scanning many issues of Rick Hilberg’s “UFO Magazine” from the 1960-1970s. American researcher Barry Greenwood very helpfully supplemented those scans by providing quite a few further issues. (Credit in relation to each individual scan is given below). The combined collection of scans can be downloaded from THIS TEMPORARY LINK for the next week. After that, or if you only want one issue, you can obtain any of the issues from the AFU’s website at THIS LINK.

I'll post a bit more background and a few more sample covers/pages below.

The collection at the above links currently includes:

UFO Magazine - vol 1 number 1 - Saucer Album (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 1 number 2 - Saucer Album (Scanned by Barry Greenwood)
UFO Magazine - vol 1 number 4 - New Look (Scanned by Barry Greenwood)
UFO Magazine - vol 1 number 4 - New Look : CURRENTLY MISSING
UFO Magazine - vol 1 number 5 - New Look (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 2 number 1 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 2 number 2 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 2 number 3 : CURRENTLY MISSING
UFO Magazine - vol 2 number 4 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 3 number 1 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 3 number 2 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 3 number 3 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 3 number 4 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 4 number 1 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 4 number 2 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 4 number 3 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 4 number 4 : CURRENTLY MISSING
UFO Magazine - vol 4 number 5 : CURRENTLY MISSING
UFO Magazine - vol 4 number 6 (Scanned by Barry Greenwood)
UFO Magazine - vol 4 number 7 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 4 number 8 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 4 number 9 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 4 number 10 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 4 number 11 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 5 number 1 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 5 number 2 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 5 number 3 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine - vol 5 number 4 (Scanned by Barry Greenwood)
UFO Magazine - vol 6 number 1 (Scanned by Barry Greenwood)
UFO Magazine - vol 6 number 2 (Scanned by Barry Greenwood)

UFO Magazine Annual 1965 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine Annual 1967 (Scanned by AFU)

UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 2 (Scanned by Barry Greenwood)
UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 3 (Scanned by Barry Greenwood)
UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 4 (Scanned by Barry Greenwood)
UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 6 (Scanned by Barry Greenwood)
UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 7 (Scanned by Barry Greenwood)
UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 8 (Scanned by Barry Greenwood)
UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 9 (Scanned by Barry Greenwood)
UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 10 (Scanned by Barry Greenwood)
UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 11 1976 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 12 1976 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 13 1976-77 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 14 1977 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 15 1977 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 16 1978 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 17 1978 (Scanned by AFU)
UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 18 (Scanned by Barry Greenwood)
UFO Magazine News Bulletin - issue 19 (Scanned by Barry Greenwood)

Since “Saucer Album” and “UFO Magazine : New Look” appear to have been
two separate UFO Magazine publications which got combined at or around the start of Volume 2. So, it may is likely that Volume 1 of New Look is missing Issues 1 and 2 as well as Issue 3.

I recently asked Rick if he had any reflections looking back on his “UFO Magazine” and he promptly provided the following comments:

Commenting on those years no so long in the past are difficult since so much has happened since those days, but I do remember that editing that little zine was always a joy.

It was indeed hard work in those days before computer processing, putting paper into an old typewriter and "banging away" for hours at a time with nothing but a dictionary and white out to assist you.

While we didn't have the vast body of "stuff" that is now on the Internet to chose our stories and features from, we did have much UFO information being published in newspapers of the day, and to my opinion at least, much more reliable than the anything goes stuff that folks post today.

Also looking back, there was a bit more cooperation between UFO " researchers" than is found today. Seems like everyone today is out to promote themselves one way or another and make a few bucks out of their "findings" and observations.

Anyway, that's a few comments by this old ufological dinosaur...

Here are a few more post some cover pages and samples of the content.

Some of you may have noticed that I've recently been seeking to accelerate the rate at which such periodicals are made freely available online. I've been working mainly with the AFU in Sweden but have been bothering various other people as well (particularly, in recent weeks, CUFOS, EuroUFO and Barry Greenwood).

I’m hoping that another few UFO groups/researchers with extensive archives can be persuaded to join a relevant scanning project to make the few remaining issues of this publication, plus many other periodicals, freely available online with the permission of the copyright holder or where the copyright has expired. Many hands make light work…

It is my fond (if somewhat optimistic) hope that making such resources freely available online in a searchable format may help improve the quality of online discussions of "UFOs".

a reply to: IsaacKoi

Great work Isaac , thanks for serving up another meaty slice of social history.

originally posted by: gortex
Great work Isaac , thanks for serving up another meaty slice of social history.

Cheers Gortex. I'll post another collection or two in the next few days, then I'll probably get back to posting a few more analytical pieces. (I've nearly finished two more detailed items : one about UFOs and Congress, one about the "FBI" document that was the subject of another thread on ATS yet again recently but in relation to which there is quite a bit more background material...).

Gene Steinberg has just helpfully mentioned to me that Rick Hilberg can also be heard on this Paracast podcast from 2012:

www.theparacast.com...

awesome work as always!

BUMP!

This all helps build a bigger free library of internet resources for us.

Further to the recent uploading of issues of Rick Hilberg's "UFO Magazine", Rick has now kindly also given permission for me to upload searchable scanned versions of some of his UFO books/booklets. (He has also indicated that it is fine for me to upload a couple of the publications he co-authored with Robert Easley and J Manak).

The publications below can all be downloaded during the next week in a single click from THIS TEMPORARY LINK. After this week, or if you just want one publication, these items will be at the individual links below:

I'll post the covers below:

(1) Hilberg, Rick R - Around And About The Saucer World (1998)






(2) Hilberg, Rick R - Northern Ohio Ufo Casebook (1997)






(3) Hilberg, Rick R - Rick Hilberg's Ufomation (2002)







(4) Manak, J And Hilberg, Rick R - Ufo Chronology Map Index Guide Book







(5) Easley, Robert and Hilberg, Rick - MIB a Report on the Mysterious Men in Black (1968)

Rod Dyke has very helpfully provided 3 of the missing scans:
UFO Magazine - vol 4 number 4.pdf
UFO Magazine - vol 4 number 5.pdf
UFO Magazine - vol 4 number 12.pdf

I've rotated them, rendered them searchable and uploaded them to the AFU website to join the other issues:
www.afu.se...(Hilberg)/

I've also uploaded these 3 issues to the temporary link below so anyone can download them with a single click:
we.tl...

Good job as always Isaac and thanks for all the hardwork on this and others.

Now what is needed is a nice program like Calibre but that would allow you to search multiple PDF's to find any and all instances of the search terms. Maybe I'll have to contact calibre and see if they or maybe the people at PDFXchange would be willing to work on it.


I know windows search and most PDF readers are supposed to do this, but my own results are VERY hit and miss, I guess I should have stated it as "Need to improve multi PDF searches."

originally posted by: Wolfie0827
Now what is needed is a nice program like Calibre but that would allow you to search multiple PDF's to find any and all instances of the search terms. Maybe I'll have to contact calibre and see if they or maybe the people at PDFXchange would be willing to work on it.

I do a lot of searches of multiple PDFs (in fact, multiple sub-directories of multiple PDFs). I looked into several pieces of relevant software a few years ago and wrote about the results of some experimentation I did:
ufoupdateslist.com...

See also:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

The free PDF-XChange Viewer covered in that thread as my preferred option for most searches of multiple PDFs has been replaced by a new improved (and still free) piece of software, now called PDF-Xchange Editor - which still have a search option that allows you to specify a directory to be searched, which can contain lots of PDFs or sub-directories full of PDFs:
www.tracker-software.com...

a reply to: IsaacKoi

Thanks again Isaac, I use PDF XChange myself, but as I said in my previous post, from my experience it's stilla bit hit and miss, even when I know I've OCR'ed the files and know the phrase/term is in one of the searched PDF's it still comes up empty for results about 50% of the time. While tracker software's products are a little better than others I've treid, they still need work too.

I use a combination of software for creating PDFs NAPS which you have mentioned in the past, Cute PDF Writter, and LibreOffice are the main ones depending on the source of the material I'm converting to PDF.

I've seen Trackers new editor, and noticed it was free too the last time I updated the reader, just haven't gotten around to trying it out yet. How is it on Covers and TOC's?

Makes me kind of wistful and nostalgic for the old UFO days, when people really felt like there was an "answer" just around the corner. Fifty years plus around the corner.