Journal of the Fortean Research Center

History

Ray W. Boeche founded the Fortean Research Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, in the early 1980s, and the journal became its primary publication. Boeche was an unusual figure in the UFO research landscape: an ordained minister in the Episcopal Church who brought both theological training and investigative rigour to the study of anomalous phenomena. His background gave the journal a distinctive editorial perspective that took the phenomenon seriously without fitting it neatly into the extraterrestrial hypothesis that dominated mainstream UFO research.

The journal covered a broad Fortean scope: UFO sightings across the Great Plains and Midwest, cattle mutilation investigations, cryptozoological reports, and anomalous natural phenomena. Nebraska and the surrounding states were active territory for all of these during the 1980s and 1990s. The cattle mutilation phenomenon in particular generated extensive field investigation reports in the journal's pages, documenting cases that law enforcement agencies struggled to explain and that national media largely ignored after the initial wave of interest in the 1970s.

The journal maintained a network of correspondents and investigators across Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and the Dakotas. Regional sighting reports that would never have reached MUFON's national journal or CUFOS's International UFO Reporter were documented here, often with field investigation data gathered within days of the event. The Plains states are sparsely populated but disproportionately active in sighting reports, and the Fortean Research Center captured cases from communities too small and too remote for other organisations to service.