Congress of Scientific Ufologists
Proceedings of the 1967 New York Convention + Journal Issues
History
The Congress of Scientific Ufologists convened at the Commodore Hotel in midtown Manhattan over three days in June 1967, billed as New York's first flying-saucer convention. James Moseley, editor of the irreverent Saucer News and one of the more durable presences in mid-century American ufology, organised and chaired the event. The archive holds the bound conference programme (109 pages) and two issues of the Journal of the Congress of Scientific Ufologists (Numbers 1 and 3), which together preserve the proceedings, speaker transcripts, and the organisational paperwork of the only sustained attempt anyone made to give the field a public, multi-day, mixed-faction meeting in New York City.
What the proceedings record is an event held at the historical inflection point of postwar ufology. The Hill abduction case had been public for two years. The Condon Committee was eighteen months into its work and the report that would close Project Blue Book was eighteen months out. John Keel's Point Pleasant Mothman investigation was four months away. Roy Thinnes was halfway through his first season starring in ABC's The Invaders, which had premiered the previous January. James Randi was three years away from beginning the public sceptical career that would define him. The Commodore Hotel ballroom held all of these people, in the same room, sharing a programme, in June 1967.
Dr. Frank Stranges: contactee minister, then promoting his book Stranger at the Pentagon about a Venusian called Valiant Thor. Roy Thinnes: the actor whose lead role in ABC's The Invaders made him for one year the public face of alien contact in American living rooms. Stewart Robb: prophecy researcher, addressing what he framed as the paramount field of interest for the audience. John A. Keel: months before he travelled to West Virginia and produced what became The Mothman Prophecies, and three years before Operation Trojan Horse formalised his ultra-terrestrial framework. Gray Barker: author of They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers (1956), the publication that introduced the Men in Black tradition into American ufology. James Randi: performing magician and committed sceptic, whose presence at a saucer convention in 1967 documents how early the sceptic-believer dialogue was in fact taking place inside the same rooms. Long John Nebel: WOR New York's overnight broadcaster, whose programme had hosted nearly every contactee, abductee and field researcher of the previous decade. Howard Menger: contactee, author of From Outer Space to You (1959), addressing what he described as the first audience that size he had spoken to in approximately ten years.
The Journal of the Congress of Scientific Ufologists
Two issues of the Journal of the Congress of Scientific Ufologists survive in the archive, numbered 1 and 3. The journal documents the wider activity around the Congress itself: international correspondence, follow-up papers from speakers, organisational announcements, and the kind of running editorial commentary that Moseley specialised in. The numbering gap (no Number 2 in the archive holdings) is the same kind of small-press production-numbering inconsistency Mike Swords flagged in his correspondence about the CSI-NY publication sequence. The archive notes the gap and treats the surviving issues as the substantive record.
Long John Nebel's overnight broadcasts during this era are preserved as forty-four audio recordings in the archive's inbox, including episodes with Dan Fry, George Van Tassel, Otis T. Carr, Howard Menger and Arthur C. Clarke. Howard Menger and Frank Stranges sit inside the broader Contact & Abduction hub's coverage of the contactee era. John Keel's later work on the West Virginia material connects to the archive's coverage of the Case Files in 1966 and 1967. For other Moseley-era publications, see the Saucer News collection.
Browse the Collection
Two ways to explore: by issue (covers, decade-grouped) or by article (search across the run).
6 articles catalogued, grouped by issue
