Alternate Horizons Newsletter

History

Allen H. Greenfield published the Alternate Horizons Newsletter from Atlanta, Georgia as the official journal of the Foundation for Philosophic Advancement. The first issue appeared around 1967, and the publication ran through five volumes of roughly six issues each (twenty-two whole numbers) before concluding around 1972. Greenfield was already known in American ufology from his work on UFO Magazine in Cleveland with Rick Hilberg in the early 1960s, and from his contributions to Jim Moseley's Saucer News, where he had served as a staff writer and regional editor.

The newsletter's editorial stance was announced in its opening line: "I don't know what I'm talking about." Greenfield meant it as intellectual honesty, not false modesty. Alternate Horizons explored what he called the "AR" (Alternate Reality) theory, a framework that positioned UFO phenomena not as straightforward extraterrestrial visitation but as something weirder and less categorisable. The first issue acknowledged the difficulty of coordinating "thoughts which we are trying to coordinate into an easy-to-understand concept" and invited readers to participate in an open-ended investigation.

Contributors included John A. Keel, whose own writing on Men in Black, ultraterrestrials, and the Mothman events was pushing American ufology in similar directions during the same period. Luis J. Rodriguez contributed field reports. Gene Steinberg, who had worked with Greenfield at Saucer News, appeared in later issues. Volume 3 carried an article on "Men in Black: Historical Precedents" that traced the phenomenon back through medieval folklore, drawing on Sabine Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages" to connect modern MIB reports to earlier traditions of encounters with non-human entities.

Volume 5 featured a long interview segment with Greenfield and Steinberg discussing their years working with Jim Moseley at Saucer News. Steinberg recalled first meeting Moseley in 1961 and described the internal workings of one of American ufology's most colourful publications. The conversation touched on the economics of small-press UFO publishing, the rivalries between groups, and the difficulty of maintaining editorial standards in a field that attracted sincere researchers and cranks in roughly equal measure. Greenfield, by then based in Charleston, South Carolina, reflected on the trajectory from his Cleveland fanzine days to the more philosophically ambitious project that Alternate Horizons represented.

The newsletter was produced on a typewriter and duplicated for subscribers. Production quality was minimal: the content was everything. Greenfield wrote most of each issue himself, with occasional guest articles. The Foundation for Philosophic Advancement appears to have been essentially Greenfield's personal organisation, a vehicle for publishing and correspondence rather than a membership group with meetings and officers.