MIBs, Albert Bender and Gray Barker - Newsletters from the 1950s (PDFs)

Albert K Bender and Gray Barker are well known to those interested in the history of tales of the “Men In Black”.

Albert Bender (shown in the photograph below) was the founder of the International Flying Saucer Bureau (“IFSB”) The IFSB was one of the first major UFO groups. The article on Wikipedia about Albert Bender says that Bender “mysteriously” shut down the IFSB in 1953. The supposedly “mysterious” circumstances about that closure were heavily promoted by Albert Bender himself and his colleague Gray Barker in the 1950s. Together, they promoted a story about strange Men In Black that supposedly interfered with Bender’s UFO research.



Gray Barker was one of Ufology's many amusing tricksters. Widely acknowledged as a hoaxer that treated ufology as a joke, he created hoaxes with his friend Jim Moseley (editor of the “Saucer Smear” newsletter) and others. Jim Moseley subsequently wrote about those hoaxes and his friendship with Gray Barker in his highly amusing book “Shockingly Close to the Truth! Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist”.





In Gray Barker’s case, a picture is worth a thousand words. I think the photo below captures his attitude towards ufology…

This weekend, I have uploaded scans of Albert Bender’s newsletter, “Space Review”, recently kindly produced by the AFU in Sweden at my request.

These newsletters are now in the public domain because of a failure to register a renewal of the copyright in these pre-1964 American periodicals – see my attempt to summarise relevant copyright rules HERE.

The newsletters listed below are available to download with a single click from the temporary link below during the next week:
we.tl...

Thereafter, or if you only want a single issues, they are also on the AFU’s website at this link.

Space Review - Volume 1 number 1 - 1952 10
Space Review - Volume 2 number 1 - 1953 01
Space Review - Volume 2 number 2 - 1953 04
Space Review - Volume 2 number 3 - 1953 07
Space Review - Volume 2 number 4 - 1953 10
Space Review - Volume 3 number 2 - 1954 04
Space Review - Volume 3 number 3 - 1954 08

Mary Castner of CUFOS in the USA recently made Gray Barker’s “Saucerian” and “Saucerian Bulletin” newsletters available online. (One issue of the former is missing from the CUFOS collection, so I will arrange to get that scanned and supplied to CUFOS shortly).





The issues listed below are on the CUFOS website at this link:
www.cufos.org...

Saucerian
1953_09_00_Saucerian_Vol-1#1(W#1)
1953_11_00_Saucerian_Vol-1#2(W#2)
1953_12_00_Saucerian-Bulletin
1954_02_00_Saucerian_Vol-2#1(W#3)
1954_09_00_Saucerian_Vol-2#2(W#4)
1955_01_00_Saucerian_Vol-3#1(W#5)
1955_03_00_Saucerian_W#06



www.cufos.org...
Saucerian Bulletin:
1956_03_01_Saucerian_Bulletin_Vol-1#1
1956_03_01_Saucerian_Bulletin_Vol-1#2
1956_09_15_Saucerian_Bulletin_Vol-1#3
1956_10_15_Saucerian_Bulletin_Vol-1#4
1956_11_15_Saucerian_Bulletin_Vol-1#5
1957_01_15_Saucerian_Bulletin_Vol-2#1
1957_05_30_Saucerian_Bulletin_Vol-2#2
1957_08_15_Saucerian_Bulletin_Vol-2#3
1957_11_18_Saucerian_Bulletin_Vol-2#4
1958_04_01_Saucerian_Bulletin_Vol-3#1
1958_05_01_Saucerian_Bulletin_Vol-3#2
1958_06_15_Saucerian-Bulletin_Vol-3#3
1958_10_15_Saucerian-Bulletin_Vol-3#4

Several of the rarer photos (not online elsewhere) are from Gene Duplantier's "Ufolk" magazine from 1978.

Gene Duplantier has given permission for the sole issue of that magazine, and many issues of his other magazines, to be made freely available online.

(More on this in another thread in the next few days. I just want to try to fill in some gaps in the relevant publications first).

Fascinating stuff.

Isaac, you are truly an ATS legend

originally posted by: neformore
Isaac, you are truly an ATS legend

That's very kind of you Neformore, but in this case all of the boring work of scanning the relevant publications was done by others. (The AFU in Sweden scanned Bender's newsletters and CUFOS in the USA scanned Barker's newsletters).

By the way, the pace of the sharing of UFO material may pick up rather dramatically if there is interest among members of ATS in collaborating with the push I'm making to make defunct UFO newsletters (and some other UFO material, including some official documents not yet online) freely available online. I've been toying with some ideas for a few years and am getting close to giving in to temptation and launching a couple of projects here.

Thank You IsaacKoi for the wonderful post a reply to: IsaacKoi

a reply to: IsaacKoi

Thank you sir. You are indeed a treasure trove of scholarship.

I recently read Jenny Randles book on MIB. It was pretty balanced IMHO.

She did (almost reluctantly) portray some cases, where the "MIB" said
he was running low on power and then winked out of existence.. even
a black jaguar winked out of existence while people were watching.

So I do have a little interest in the MIB topic.. but good quality cases
that one might actually believe, are alas, all too rare.

I'm not too keen on the veracity of Albert Bender either.. but it's great
information none-the-less.

Kev

a reply to: IsaacKoi

Thanks.

Albert Bender’s newsletter, “Space Review”

CUFOS links are still good.

to IK

ha...cool the pic with the pancake holds water.....matching other reports.

one had a saucer traveller comng in to get some water for his pancakes, then hurriedly leaving....'

looks about the right size and thickness for a snack when travelling the atmosphere, huh!


good work old man giving us the old timey pics....worth gold