Baton Rouge UFO Bulletin

History

The Baton Rouge UFO Bulletin ran from July 1957 through at least April 1958, produced under the sponsorship of the Baton Rouge Recreation and Park Commission. Meetings took place at 7:30 p.m. in Room 5 of the Downtown Recreation Center, 855 Florida Street. The group called itself the U.F.O. Forum (sometimes the U.F.O. Club), and meeting dates shifted during the run from the fourth Friday to the first Tuesday of the month.

The editor, whose name never appears in the issues, wrote the entire bulletin himself in a distinctive voice: literate, opinionated, digressive, and deeply read. Each issue ran six to eight typed pages of continuous editorial essay rather than conventional article format. The writing quotes William Faulkner, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, James Harvey Robinson, and Lippmann alongside commentary on NICAP publications, the Barker-Moseley feud, and the Spitzbergen disc report.

The editorial stance was explicitly anti-contactee and pro-NICAP. The editor praised Donald Keyhoe's organisation as "the only organization of its kind and caliber in the world today" and dismissed George Adamski, George Van Tassel, and their "saucer trips to Venus" as threats to serious research. He mourned the death of Leonard Stringfield's "Orbit" newsletter and criticised Grey Barker's use of anonymous letters in his feud with James Moseley. J. Escobar Faria's "UFO Critical Bulletin" received praise for its objectivity, as did the Civilian Saucer Investigation of New Zealand's quarterly journal.

Beyond UFO material, the editor devoted substantial space to psychology (Carl Rogers' client-centred therapy, Freudian psychoanalysis, Dr. Robert G. Heath's schizophrenia research at Tulane), archaeology (Olmec dating via radiocarbon at La Venta, Mayan chronology, Angkor Wat parallels), Cape Canaveral incompetence (drawn from Jack Anderson's reporting), and anti-gravity propulsion theory (Otis T. Carr, the Biefield-Brown effect, Dr. C. F. Krafft's "supermatter" concept). The Spitzbergen disc report from Norway received extended treatment, with the editor quoting Colonel Gernod Darnbyl's statements about materials "completely unknown to all experts."

Distribution extended beyond Louisiana. The North Jersey U.F.O. Group (Post Office Box 606, Morristown, New Jersey) received copies and may have assisted with mailing. The collection includes six monthly bulletins plus a separate meeting notices card showing the group's schedule changes and speaker announcements.