Search Magazine

History

Ray Palmer launched Mystic magazine in 1953 from his home base in Amherst, Wisconsin, two years before he and Curtis Fuller would launch Fate. He renamed it Search in 1956 and continued publishing it bimonthly until the mid-1970s. Where Palmer's other publications stayed close to their declared subjects (Fate on Fortean phenomena, Flying Saucers on UFOs), Search was the catch-all: contactee accounts, Atlantean speculation, Edgar Cayce material, the Shaver Mystery, alleged psychic research, fringe medicine, and the long tail of what Palmer's readers cared about that didn't fit the other titles.

Palmer wrote much of each issue himself, edited what he didn't write, and answered reader correspondence in long combative columns. The masthead changed little across two decades. Subscribers received Search the way subscribers to Saucer Smear later received Smear: as a personal document arriving in the post, written by an identifiable individual who had opinions about everything in it.

Search published the Richard Shaver material that Palmer had first run in Amazing Stories in the 1940s, the Shaver Mystery being Palmer's most controversial and most lucrative editorial bet. It also ran continuing-story coverage of contactees George Adamski, Howard Menger and Truman Bethurum, of researchers including Morris K. Jessup, and of the orgone-energy work of Wilhelm Reich's circle. The editorial mix made Search the only American magazine in its period that placed the Shaver "deros," Adamski's Venusians and Reichian biophysics within the same covers.