Flying Saucer News-Service Research Bulletin

History

Flying Saucer News-Service Research Bulletin was produced by Thomas M. Comella, with Sally Noble as Secretary, from an Ohio base during the 1955 summer-autumn window. The archive holds Volume One Number Eight (21 July 1955) and the combined Volume One Numbers Nine and Ten (August to September 1955). The bulletin's eight-issue volume-one numbering indicates publication began earlier in 1955, but the preceding issues are not in the archive.

Comella's editorial method was case-driven and Ohio-centred. The July 1955 issue led with a feature titled "Fantastic Cigar Space Ships Dwarf Earth's Technical Knowledge," running multiple historical and contemporary witness accounts of cigar-shaped or zeppelin-shaped objects to argue that the saucer phenomenon was broader than the disc form had suggested. The two anchor cases in that issue are both Ohio sightings: the 1894 Charlotte Ferguson observation from a farm outside Warren, Ohio, of a "huge zeppelin shaped object" that hovered over the property and departed silently, and the 1946 George Pitcovich observation from Newton Falls of a "string of sharply defined lights" off a long fuselage that hovered before climbing out of sight at high speed.

Comella's reporting style was unusual for the period in that he routinely visited witnesses, interviewed them directly, and added editor's notes verifying that he had been to the scene or spoken with the person concerned. The Ferguson case carried a note that "the writer has a personal friend in Warren who has talked to Charlotte recently. She is now 72 years old but she remembers that night in 1894 very vividly and she considers the episode one of the outstanding features of her long life." The Pitcovich case carried a note that Comella himself had visited Newton Falls and talked with Pitcovich, and as an amateur astronomer of forty years' experience, Comella could vouch that the witness was familiar with conventional celestial phenomena.

The August to September 1955 combined issue continued the cigar-ships theme with further regional case material and editorial discussion of the propulsion question raised by the cases. The two issues together total around twenty pages and contain roughly a dozen individually case-numbered witness reports. The bulletin appears to have closed shortly after, with no later issues in the archive.