UFOrum

History

UFOrum began publication in early 1956 as the newsletter of the Grand Rapids Flying Saucer Club, a non-profit educational organisation in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The club had formed around a series of public lectures by George Adamski, R.E. Straith, Buck Nelson, and Desmond Leslie that drew nearly 750 names of interested people. With profits from those lectures and member donations, the club purchased a mimeograph machine and launched UFOrum at 25 cents per copy.

Four co-editors shared the production work: Darrel Cole, Art Gibson, Bob Hillary, and Don Plank. The club also maintained a network of state reporters who funnelled sightings from across Michigan: C.L. Myers covered the west coast from Grand Haven, E.W. Maier reported from Kalamazoo in the south, and by Volume 1 No 12 (June 1957), Darrel Cole handled the north from Deer Lake. The publication ran monthly "when possible" through Volume 2 No 3 (February 1958), with combined issues appearing when the schedule slipped.

The Grand Rapids club was part of a wider organisational structure. It held membership in the Michigan Flying Saucer Federation and by late 1957 was cooperating with NICAP, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena in Washington. This dual affiliation placed UFOrum in an interesting position: it carried contactee material that NICAP would never have published, while simultaneously maintaining a working relationship with the most "respectable" investigative body in American ufology.

Each issue opened with a "Suggested Periodical Readings" list that mapped the 1956 newsletter ecosystem: CRIFO Orbit (Cincinnati), Saucers/Flying Saucers International (Los Angeles), Borderland Science Research Associates (San Diego), Telonic Research Bulletin (Prescott, Arizona), Little Listening Post (Washington DC), Flying Saucer Review (London), Civilian Saucer Investigation (Auckland, New Zealand), and The Visitor (Belleville, Michigan). By 1957, the list had grown to include NICAP's UFO Investigator, the Australian Saucer Record (Kilburn, South Australia), Proceedings of the College of Universal Wisdom (Yucca Valley, California), the APRO Bulletin, and the Flying Disks Research Center in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Content mixed local Michigan sighting reports with national case compilations and political commentary. The August 1956 "Special Saucer Sighting Round-Up" gathered local, national, and international sightings into a single issue, countering Air Force claims that sighting activity had dropped. The September 1956 issue reprinted material on House of Representatives Bill 6376, known in some quarters as "Siberia U.S.A.," with Ric Williamson of Telonic Research Bulletin attacking the bill and Priscilla Buckley defending it in National Review. The November 1957 issue documented the Levelland, Texas sighting wave in real time: a 200-foot egg-shaped object that stalled at least five cars, witnessed by Sheriff Weir Clem, Patrolman A.J. Fowler, and more than a dozen civilians.

The first issue also carried a personal sighting report from a contributor who observed a cigar-shaped, extremely bright silvery object hovering at approximately 25,000 feet above Apple Valley near Victorville, California on 16 December 1954. The object remained stationary from roughly 6:00 PM until noon the following day. The witness, who claimed experience with flying and radar navigation, emphasised the tangible, physical nature of what he observed.