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Kalamazoo Flying Saucer Study Club Bulletin

Local study group newsletter from Michigan

United States
Country
1956 to 1958
Published
15
Issues Indexed
19
Articles Catalogued

History

The Kalamazoo Flying Saucer Study Club met on Friday evenings at 8:00 PM at the Crosstown Branch of the First National Bank in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The club operated from an address at 2233 Cambridge Drive, Kalamazoo. By October 1957, the board of directors had reorganised with Bill Maier as Chairman, John Brinson as Programme Chairman, Rae Simbulan as Secretary-Treasurer, Romiro Besada as Librarian, Bob Lowell as Tape Librarian, and Pat Kuplicki as Hostess. They produced at least 20 numbered bulletins across their run.

The bulletins were mimeographed sheets, typically two pages, covering meeting announcements, book reviews, sighting reports, NICAP dispatches, and editorial commentary. Issue No. 12 (October 1957) reveals a club grappling with the same tension that split American ufology in the late 1950s: objectivists versus subjectivists. The programme for that meeting was explicitly titled "The Physical and the Metaphysical in Flying Saucer Research," and the editor noted that "objective researchers often fail to realise that everyone is entitled to an opinion" while "the subjectives" were "pushing the public and press media away from them by a lack of discrimination."

Against Bombing the Moon
Issue No. 12 opened with a reprint of an AP wire story from October 2, 1957: Dr. S. Fred Singer of the University of Maryland had proposed using the moon as a testing site for hydrogen bombs via interplanetary ballistic missiles. The editor's response was immediate: "What right have we to invade the universe with our weapons of hate? What do we know of other life than of our planet Earth? Are we certain that life does not exist on the moon, even if only as a base for space craft?" The passage captures how local saucer clubs functioned as an early anti-nuclear, pro-space peace constituency.

Book reviews advertised the contactee literature circulating through these clubs: John McCoy's "They Shall Be Gathered Together" (featuring George Hunt Williamson and "Messages from the Masters"), Dana Howard's "Over the Threshold" (published from Palm Springs, California), and Arthur Constance's "The Inexplicable Sky" from Citadel Press. McCoy's ten-page "History of Flying Saucers" pamphlet was available at meetings or by mail for ten cents. The club maintained both a book library and a tape library of lectures and recordings.

The 15 issues in the archive span numbers 1 through 20 (with gaps), placing the club's active period across 1956 to 1958: the years of the Robertson Panel aftermath, NICAP's founding, and the massive 1957 sighting wave that included Levelland, Texas and dozens of Midwestern reports.

From the Archive
Cross-reference with Civilian Saucer Intelligence of New York for another local study group operating during the same period with a more technical orientation. See also the Sightings Database for Michigan sighting reports from 1956 to 1958 and the UFO Investigator for the national NICAP reports the club discussed at meetings.

Browse the Collection

Two ways to explore: by issue (covers, decade-grouped) or by article (search across the run).

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