Albert Bender & The MIB Mystery
Albert K. Bender, Jr. was born on June 16, 1921, Died March 29, 2016, Los Angeles, CA and served in the United States Air Force during World War II.
In Bridgeport, CT, he was a supervisor at the Acme shear factory.
During the early 1950s, Albert Bender oversaw the International Flying Saucer Bureau (IFSB), a civilian research group based out of Bridgeport, CT, with a worldwide membership of 1,500.
In conjunction with the IFSB, Bender published Space Review, a newsletter dedicated to the latest saucer happenings.
To me, one fact stands out above all others in the Bender story.
His International Flying Saucer Bureau was shut down in 9 months.
Bender had started what promised to be the biggest and best Flying Saucer Club in the business in 1952.
A natural leader, his efforts aroused national and international interest, memberships, mail and saucer reports flowed in from all over the world.
His headquarters in Bridgeport was swamped with correspondence.
Such a widespread effort was bound to crack the secret in time.
The IFSB had to be stopped, and stopped it was, cold, dead in its tracks.
The silence policy of the U.S. Government on Flying Saucers, and of the secret world government, was maintained.
This is not science fiction, this is fact.
My review of the Bender story is built on this undeniable base.
Albert Bender's straight forward description of his personal life at the time of his experiences reveal that he was an easy mark for psychic attack.
Evidently, he and his step father lived alone in a 2 story house in Bridgeport.
Bender's quarters were in the attic.
There, in his sanctuary, Albert could indulge his taste for science fiction, and the grotesque and macabre in occult literature.
The large attic room outside his bedroom was 40' x 45'.
Being something of an artist he turned it into a gallery of the hideous.
Late at night the attic became a creepy place.
The floor boards creaked as you walked upon them, and on dark windy evenings stranger noises came from it.
Visitors were often shaken up and uncomfortable, as I laughed heartily at their nervousness and amused myself by relating ghost stories at times.
My friends eventually decided they enjoyed the spooky atmosphere and that probably was another reason for my fixing up the chamber of horrors, by painting grotesque scenes and faces upon the walls of the room, and after about 8 months I had done so good a job that it almost frightened me when I stood back and looked at all of it one evening.
No wonder my friends found it so fascinating, for so many of the ghostly characters appeared to be looking straight at me, no matter where I might be in the room.
He added to the spooky atmosphere by adding a collection of 20 chiming clocks, which banged away every 15 minutes.
One wall of the room was still empty.
To this he added a full color painting of the solar system and, of all things, a sketch of his conception of the dark side of the Moon, which caused much comment and conjecture.
Developing my horror motif further, I discarded my table ornaments and substituted macabre items such as artificial human skulls, shrunken heads, bats, spiders, snakes, black panthers and the like.
The local paper heard of Bender's Chamber of Horrors and did a story on it showing me in my strange vault of creatures which it termed out of this world.
I began reading books on black magic, occult subjects and other similar works which I found deeply engrossing.
I dabbled in magic, with no success in table tipping, and surprising success with a yes or no technique using the Holy Bible.
There was a history of psychic phenomena in my family.
Bender's later psychic experiences indicate he may have been a reader of the Shaver Mystery, and also the Hefferlin Manuscripts, 2 1940s preludes to the flying saucer phenomenon which broke in the public press in June 1947.
Albert clipped saucer news stories from the beginning, and by 1956 was organizing this material in files.
He indexed the sightings, arranging them both chronologically and by subject matter.
After completing this task, a study of the data led him to only one conclusion:
Most of the material was authentic, a great many of the sightings were valid, that a great many people were really witnessing phenomena which were not of Earthly origin.
There is a photo of Albert Bender on the book jacket.
It reveals a clean cut, serious minded young man, with bow tie and glasses.
Who would push his faith with missionary zeal if he were an orthodox Christian, but not being Orthodox, Bender pushed his enthusiasm into borderland fields and his mission became the cracking of the secret of the saucers.
Informal discussions at his home and on the job as a supervisor finally led to organizing the International Flying Saucer Bureau on January 15, 1952.
It wasn't long before Bender and his club officers realized they would need a regular publication to keep their members informed.
It was while they were deep in preparations for their first issue, during July and August of 1952, that Bender realized they might be under observation by the visitors.
Numerous sightings made the news in Bridgeport and surrounding towns.
At the time I wondered if the saucer occupants sensed that we were going to look into the mystery of their appearance here on our planet and might be looking us over to see what we were up to, or putting on a show for us, possibly to encourage us.
Prior to this, no sightings had been reported in or around Bridgeport to my knowledge.
July 1952 is one of the best evidential periods we have for saucer reality.
The night of July 20th several UFOs moved in and around the airport and over the White House at Washington, D.C.
They were seen visually and radar confirmed their presence for at least 5 hours over the nation's capital.
On July 28th a young Italian engineer got 5 good photos of a 30' disk resting on a glacier in the Bernina alps while one of the crew walked around it.
He also got 2 good pictures of the UFO after it was in the air.
The next day, July 29th, George Stock took several good pictures of a dome shaped disk circling above his home in Passaic, NJ, this was in full daylight.
On July 30th Bender received his contact.
I received a strange phone call while alone in my den.
When I lifted the receiver there was no reply, but I sensed somebody was on the other end of the line, while at the same time my head began to spin and ache.
No voice answered when I spoke, but nevertheless I seemed to receive a message, as if telepathically.
The message decreed I should not delve into the saucer mystery any further.
As I listened to the phone, I then heard a strange throbbing, humming sound, and then instantly, as if a knife had cut it out, the noise was gone, and I got the usual dial tone, without the click of anybody replacing a receiver.
Of course he tried to rationalize it as a trick of some kind.
He tried to trace the call through the operator with no success.
The incident continued to haunt him as he and his fellow officers tried to cope with the phenomenal growth of the IFSB.
The first issue of Space Review got out on schedule and was distributed widely.
To Bender's relief, the initial reaction was generally favorable.
And within a week of this he received his second contact from the visitors, Bender was walking home alone from a late movie.
He was on a dark section of Broad Street when he developed a throbbing headache, and his ears seemed to block up.
He felt as if something was pulled over his head to shut out everything about him.
For some reason Bender looked up at the sky, and when he did, he saw a bluish flash.
At the same time Albert had the sensation that his feet were being lifted off the ground.
His head throbbed, and again, as when he had received the strange telephone call, he had the strong impression that somebody or something was telling him to forget IFSB, to give it up.
As quickly as the feeling came it left, and his head ceased to ache.
He went on home, tip toed through the house to avoid awaking his stepfather, and went on up to his room without turning on the light.
A blue glow coming from under his bedroom door that startled him.
He unlocked the door and pushed it open.
A large object of undefinable outline was aglow in the center of the room.
It looked like a bright, shimmering mirage.
As he switched on the room light the strange effect disappeared and everything seemed to be normal.
He then noted another peculiar thing.
A strange odor filled the room.
It smelled like burning sulphur, and was so strong it irritated Benders eyes.
He opened a window to let in fresh air and began a quick examination of the room because he had noted that several files of IFSB records were disturbed.
Albert was startled to find his radio was on, but without any sound coming from it.
After satisfying himself that nothing was missing from the room, Bender went to bed, but he left the light on all night.
He devotes Chapter III of his story to the international growth of the IFSB.
Edgar Plunkett headed up an active British branch in London.
Edgar Jarrold, Fairfield, New South Wales, Australia became Bender's Australian representative, and in turn, Bender offered to represent 2 New Zealand flying saucer groups in the United States.
F.J.M. Clark's Hamilton, New Zealand group and H.H. Fulton's Civilian Saucer Investigation group of Auckland.
A month after the blue light episode in his room, Bender actually saw one of the etherian visitors in tangible form.
It was at night in a Bridgeport theater. Albert attended alone.
He fancied someone had his eyes upon him, with a prickly sensation on the back of his neck, began to fidget in his seat.
When he felt the presence of a person in the seat next to him, though nobody had been there previously.
He had heard nobody enter and sit down.
He took a quick glance without turning his head, and saw a man sitting there, then the eyes drew his attention.
He turned his head facing him and found himself looking straight into 2 strange eyes, like little flashlight bulbs lighted up on a dark face.
The eyes seemed to burn right into him, He felt a spinning in his head and the movie screen blurred.
He blinked his eyes several times then closed them for a few seconds.
When he opened them the man was gone, yet Bender heard no movement.
By an effort of will Bender had momentarily pulled himself back to physical plane reality, shifted psychic gears, so to speak, but the dark one was still there at his own level of being.
Then glancing at the seat to the left of his, he found him there, still looking at Bender with those eyes.
Could he be mistaken in thinking he had been on the right of him?
He couldn't be wrong, was he losing his mind?
The terrible shining eyes deliberately tried to meet his and hold them in their stare, but Bender quickly arose and moved to another part of the theater.
Bender was thoroughly shaken and at this part of his story he admits that the movie he had been watching might have helped induce these hallucinations.
It was a science fiction horror movie.
He hadn't shaken his tormentor off, however, for in 10 minutes the same feelings returned.
This time the dark one was seated behind him with the same weird eyes.
Desperate now, Albert got up and sought out the theater manager.
He returned to search the area with a flashlight but of course revealed no one resembling Bender's description.
For courtesy's sake he stayed a few moments longer, then left and strolled down Main Street, it was 10:00 p.m.
While window shopping he again felt the prickling on the back of his neck and turned to find the stranger's eyes boring into his.
His fear was not one of meeting a person he is afraid of, instead, he had the feeling that the figure was definitely not human.
Bender rushed to find a policeman, explained the case to him, and they retraced Bender's steps back to the theater.
Of course there was no sign of the fringe visitor.
The policeman didn't have psychic sensitivity, he offered the limp explanation that some drunk might have been playing tricks on Bender.
Then, probably for the first time since he had lived there, Bender regretted having to go home alone to a dark house and that lonely 3rd floor room without the warmth of human companionship.
Nevertheless he did, and perhaps he was slightly disappointed that there was no ghostly presence there to give him an icy thrill.
At this point in his story Bender reveals a couple of traits which indicate susceptibility to psychic attack.
His description of saucer researcher Dominick Lucchesi, and his personal reaction to the man, is most interesting.
A moment or so after Dominick stepped into his house 2 overwhelming impressions struck him.
He knew immediately he liked this man, because Dominick had great intelligence, wit, and a warm personality.
At the same time he also realized that an element of mystery would always remain attached to him.
His probable overestimation of mystery in Lucchesi's personality and intentions could have come from his brilliant technical and general vocabulary, and the commanding way he used it.
Bender is quite shy in front of strangers, and he may have been over awed by Lucchesi's aggressive conversational technique.
When he spoke on any subject he held one spellbound.
Sounds as though, by his own admission, Bender is a setup for hypnotic suggestion, and an aura of glamour about certain individuals could blind him to their real motives.
He had reason to be grateful to Lucchesi after he closed the IFSB.
Dom protected Bender from Barker's prying questions when the latter tried to discover Bender's secret.
Dom also convinced Bender that he was a master of many Yoga techniques and an authority in many schools of occultism and philosophy.
Growth of the IFSB continued hastily in January and February 1953.
Gray Barker joined up.
Bender's executive skill was developing an organization capable of sound and thorough going research in this borderland field of flying saucers.
Big Brother was watching with growing uneasiness.
The resulting warning to Bender created a scene suitable for a comic horror movie.
He saw the club officers to the door after an evening meeting and stopped in the kitchen for a glass of milk.
Everyone had gone, yet he heard footsteps in the club room above.
Bender put down his milk and moved cautiously upstairs.
As he reached the top Albert noticed that the door to his room was open.
Bender froze, as there again was that bluish light, emanating brightly from within.
Cold chills went through his body.
To bolster his nerve he said to himself somebody was playing a trick on him, and he picked up a broom from the attic and approached the open door.
Looking inside he saw a bright glow in one corner, with somebody or object appearing hazily in the center of the blue light.
Cut the kidding and come out of there, he cried out in a halting voice.
As he spoke, the glow disappeared, but as it faded the image of 2 glowing eyes lingered for a moment.
He turned on the lights and found the room normal except that again it contained the odor of sulphur, again so strong he had to open the windows and air out the place.
After this contact Bender considered telling his odd experiences to family, friends and officers of the IFSB, but decided against it.
Who would believe him?
Besides, he was well physically, and he couldn't believe he was dreaming up whatever was happening to him.
There surely was a logical explanation somewhere and perhaps Albert could find it.
There is no logic to Etheric and Lower Astral plane experiences of the kind Albert Bender was having in connection with saucer research.
It takes spiritual discernment to bring order out of that chaos.
Such wisdom comes only after years of a selfless and courageous search for truth.
Our hero made a brave, and successful, attempt at it early in 1953.
Bender won't say who originated the idea, but he and 2 or 3 of his IFSB officers agreed that members should attempt to send out a telepathic message to visitors from space.
Some club officials thought the whole idea ridiculous and would have nothing to do with it, nevertheless, March 15, 1953 was chosen for Contact Day.
A special bulletin went out, containing a message to be memorized and a time schedule which if followed, would have all cooperating members sending at the same moment, Bender made his pitch in Bridgeport at 6:00 p.m.
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft that have been observing our planet Earth.
We of IFSB wish to make contact with you.
We are your friends, and would like you to make an appearance here on Earth.
Your presence before us will be welcomed with the utmost friendship.
We will do all in our power to promote mutual understanding between your people and the people of Earth.
Please come in peace and help us in our Earthly problems.
Give us some sign that you have received our message.
Be responsible for creating a miracle here on our planet to wake up the ignorant ones to reality.
Let us hear from you. We are your friends.
Dedicated leader that he was, after 11 years of researching UFOs, Bender was eager to solve the mystery.
He dutifully went to his room at 6:00 p.m., laid himself down on his bed after turning out the lights, closed his eyes, and repeated the contact message 3 times.
He doesn't know if any other IFSB members got results on that March 15th, but he did.
I felt a terrible cold chill hit my whole body.
Then his head began to ache as if several headaches had saved up their anguish and heaped it upon him at one time.
A strange odor reached his nostrils, like that of burning sulphur or badly decomposed eggs.
Then he partly lost consciousness as the room around him began to fade away.
Then small blue lights seemed to swim through his brain, and they seemed to blink like the flashing light of an ambulance.
Albert seemed to be floating on a cloud in the middle of space, with a strange feeling of weightlessness controlling his entire anatomy.
A throbbing pain developed in his temples and they felt as if they might burst.
The parts of his forehead directly over his eyes seemed to be puffed up.
Albert felt cold, very cold, as if he were lying naked on a floating piece of ice in the Antarctic Ocean.
He opened his eyes and to his amazement he seemed to be floating above his bed, but looking down upon it where he imagined he could see his own body lying there.
It was as if his soul had left his body and he was hovering above it about 3' in mid air.
Then he could hear a voice, which permeated him but in some way did not seem to be an audible sound.
The voice seemed to come from the room in front of him which remained pitch dark.
We have been watching you and your activities.
Please be advised to discontinue delving into the mysteries of the universe.
We will make an appearance if you disobey.
He replied in words, though his lips did not move:
Why aren't you friendly to us, as we do not mean to do any harm to you?
We have a special assignment, came the reply, and must not be disturbed by your people.
As he tried to remonstrate, he was interrupted by another statement:
We are among you and know your every move, so please be advised we are here on your Earth.
With this the voice faded away, but Albert could sense that something was watching him.
His body seemed to drop in an instant and he once again regained his senses and realized he was on his bed.
The room was filled with yellow mist.
Not far from his bed was a shadow, resembling that of a man, but as he made a move to rise from the bed it disappeared.
The yellow mist was gradually fading and his room was becoming normal.
It was 6:05 p.m.
His radio has been turned on.
He felt sick and rotten and wondered seriously if he was losing his mind.
March 15, 1953 was World Contact Day for the International Flying Saucer Bureau, and its Director, Albert K. Bender, Jr., was successful.
In fact, by his own count, his March 15th contact with the visitors was the 5th.
He was to have 12 in all before the visitors broke off and left him with a permanently damaged etheric body, that is, unless some competent spiritual healer can mend the rent in Bender's personal veil.
In normal people this veil of closely woven etheric atoms protects one from the insidious, invisible forces of the Lower Astral.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and in March 1953 Albert Bender was on the way in high gear.
He knows now, as does many another enthusiastic saucer researcher, and occult dabbler, that good intentions are not enough to protect one from Lucifer spirits and other elemental forces.
When Bender's visitors had departed his consciousness at 6:05 p.m. they left their telltale calling cards.
He was left puzzled by the smell of sulphur which lingered in his room for 2 days afterward.
This smell had accompanied the other experiences, his splitting headaches, his radio turned on, and had been the most physical part of them.
This time he opened his windows and used room sprays to get rid of the odor, but this did not completely dispel it.
When Albert went to bed he could smell it in the bed clothes.
This convinced Bender, in spite of all logic to the contrary, that he was witnessing some very real events and that h would no longer be wise to assume they had been my imagination or dreams.
He decided against trying to convince his fellow IFSB officers of his very real experiences, for fear of ridicule, of adverse publicity, of losing his job.
The visitors had him right where they wanted him.
It is a lonely position I occupy, writes Bender, when you have looked into the fantastic, and there is nobody to believe you have actually done so.
Nevertheless, trying to be true to his dedicated search for truth, and his promise to share it with his members, in the April issue of his Space Review, Bender promised a startling revelation in the July issue.
Following that he described his experiences to 2 IFSB officers.
They not only scoffed at his story but accused him of seeking further publicity for himself and the IFSB.
The more Bender tried to adhere to the truth, the more violent became the split.
One officer even threatened to have him jailed if he published his experiences.
Thus is the silence policy on Flying Saucers maintained, by sincere but misguided fools with preconceived ideas of the Universe.
Thus the visitors proved their power and control to Albert Bender.
Unable to publish his contacts in his bulletin Bender secretly wrote them up anyhow, with the intention of mailing one copy to authorities in Washington.
When he did get up enough courage to mail it he couldn't find it.
The inside of the box where he had locked it contained the now familiar odor of sulphur.
Bender searched the box thoroughly, but the report had vanished.
Many members of the IFSB were disappointed that the July issue of the Space Review did not contain Bender's revelations.
To assure that later issues would contain nothing of the truth, the visitors tightened their hold on Bender by arranging a 6th and more spectacular contact.
In writing of it Bender reveals the weakness by which the Luciferians continued to lead, and mislead him, Pride.
I will never forget it as long as I live, and to me it is the greatest, yet the most fantastic thing, ever to happen to anybody on Earth.
He took a 2 week vacation in July.
When he returned home and went up to his room, it smelled of sulphur again, and the radio was on again.
This time it was so hot he was surprised it hadn't started a fire.
His stepfather swore no one had been in the room while he was gone and that he must have left the radio on himself.
Also, Bender noted that the dial was turned to the same setting again, a spot where no station came in.
The visitors told him later they used the radio as a means of getting into his room.
Before Bender could finish getting ready for bed the hypnosis began.
Blue lights swirled through the room, his eyes throbbed and he fell on his bed.
As the power was applied his body felt icy cold.
Then he became aware of 3 shadowy figures floating about a foot off the floor.
They washed him clean, or so he felt.
All of them were dressed in black clothes.
They looked like clergymen but wore hats similar to Homburg style.
The symbol of international banker diplomacy.
The faces were not clearly discernible for the hats partly hid and shaded them.
Feelings of fear left him, as if some peculiar remedy had made his entire body immune to fright.
He says the eyes of these 3 men in black burned into his very soul as they forced their painful way into his consciousness the pains above my eyes became almost unbearable.
Their telepathic message to him went something like this:
You have dedicated yourself to the solution of the strange problem of unidentified objects in your atmosphere.
Your interest is deep and sincere and you have devoted many hours to it.
We also know that such interest and determination might lead to something that could harm you.
We feel that you are a very good contact for us on your planet of Earth.
You are an average person, and we know that what we tell you and show you will not be believed by anyone you might tell.
He was threatened indirectly by their saying they would not be disturbed from their ultimate goal, that many humans had been frightened and even killed to keep the secret of their presence from being revealed.
They disguise themselves as ordinary mortals when a dense, material body is needed, apparently either materializing one or driving out the original owner, murder, and taking over.
The men In black informed Bender that they have found it necessary to go to great extremes at times to frighten off your Earth people, and it has resulted in their deaths.
We also found it necessary to carry off Earth people to use their bodies to disguise our own.
We wish to keep in touch with you, and tell you many things, because one day you will write about this, and we are certain that nobody will believe you.
This is only one of the many lies which these vicious, immoral, subhuman, loveless, lightless creatures put across to poor Bender.
Consider the next 3 phrases.
These are classics of saucer literature, but you will be much wiser than anyone else on your planet.
You will know what is out there in space, and you will know what the future holds for your mankind.
You will be much wiser than anyone else on your planet.
Lucifer is a great flatterer.
How many times has your editor seen that phrase or something like it in the endless bilge put out by the would be and so called contactees.
Pride, the first and last enemy on the path.
They had his number all right, Albert The Great Bender, number one among mankind.
To cinch the pact, the next thing to do was to make him a member of the fraternity.
He was given a talisman, a little piece of metal similar to our small coins, and a magic password, Kazik.
When he wanted to contact them he was to turn on his radio, hold the coin in his hand, and repeat the magic password.
About that radio Albert writes, as they gave me this information one of them went to my radio, turned it on, and switched the dial.
He asked him mentally why he was doing it, and he replied only that it was a method of getting back to their base.
They disappeared and once again he felt my body resting on the bed.
He was covered with perspiration, though during the experience he felt so cold.
In his hand was the piece of metal, finally he had physical evidence that he was not insane.
This cheered him in spite of the shocking circumstances he had just encountered.
The icy touch of Satan is a commonplace in stories of witchcraft and demonology.
Men & women who confessed to intercourse with the devil generally agreed that contact with the fiends from the nether regions was neither pleasant nor warm, but rather cold as ice.
Bender thought he would be looked on as a person of importance if he could produce the piece of metal to back up his story.
But when he rushed to his safe box to look at it and hold it again in the morning, it was gone.
But a couple of days later it was back there again, glowing slightly, waiting for him to use it in his 7th contact.
As he picked it up the thought of showing it to somebody came back in to his mind.
As he thought of this the metal began to glow with a deep red color and got so hot he had to drop it.
Bender got the message, it wasn't to be used for personal glory or gain.
Still hot for adventure into unknown realms with the 3 men in black, Bender turned on his radio, held his metal talisman and said the word Kazik several times.
Again the icy cold and the throbbing temples warned him of a coming projection and he threw himself on his bed.
This time he sensed that the living part of his body was being transported to some other place.
The next thing he knew he seemed to be in what might have been a stainless steel space ship, seated in a chair of the same material, in what appeared to be a circular lecture hall.
All this could have been a very real, etheric plane experience, but it also reads as though the sulphur smelling Lucifers were taking the science fiction material which Bender had filled his brain, and were rearranging it to suit their convenience and his limited understanding.
The dome shaped room darkened, an invisible wall panel opened and closed, someone walked to the edge of the dais before him, a message was telepathed into Bender's brain, using words I could speak myself, somewhat as if I were talking to myself, this is the very best way I can describe it, whether it was augmented mechanically or electronically, I do not know.
Bender was welcomed to their domain where no Earth creature has ever set foot.
His attention was directed to a large television like screen behind him on which were pictured, presumably, scenes from the visitor's home planet many, many light years from your small system of planets.
We are much older than your system, for we were created long before the Earth or any of the planets revolving around your central body.
He referred to the great central stillness of the Milky Way galaxy, a source of life so powerful that you could not even approach it by light years, for if you did you would immediately be destroyed.
It is the creator of all of us, and more families of planets are constantly being formed and thrown off into orbits.
The visitor told Bender these planetary systems travel at different speeds.
His system had overtaken and passed the Earth several times in the dim and distant past.
He enunciated in July 1953 the cosmic principle now being cautiously advocated in 1962 by a few scientific leaders.
Because many of these are far advanced in their ways of life your planet Earth will constantly be under surveillance by these systems as they overtake you and pass you by.
Your planet is yet an infant as far as progress is concerned, and you have far to go accomplish what many others in your neighboring systems have already achieved.
We have been within reach of your system for a number of years, but will soon pass beyond the point of no return.
So we have found it necessary to accomplish our task speedily.
Then Lucifer, or Mephistopheles, or whatever his name was, gave the real, or supposed, reason for the visits of the visitors.
We have been taking a valuable chemical from your seas.
This substance is vital to our existence.
We process the sea water to remove the substance.
A sticky residue that remains, floats back to your planet in the form of long strings.
This refers to the well known and documented flying saucer phenomenon of the Angel Hair.
This still falls to Earth occasionally though the visitors, according to Bender's story, have been gone since 1960.
Another contradiction was the visitor's claim that we take the material without harming anyone who lives there.
A liar has to have a long memory.
In the previous contact Bender's friends had boasted of the number of human beings who had been killed or kidnapped for getting in their way.
The next revelation to the overawed Bender was an over all view of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., only to inform you that we have some of our people stationed in your so called Pentagon while we are visiting your planet.
We have them stationed in numerous places about your planet, to keep us informed of all that is taking place.
This, your editor will agree, is about as true a statement as any Bender received from the 3 men in black.
The governments of the world are riddled with these trouble makers.
But he won't buy their claim of originating from a temporary neighboring planet in deep space.
He thinks they've always been here and come from no further away than the Moon.
M.K. Jessup came to this conclusion, and this may have been the cause of his untimely death.
He put it this way in.
It is no longer necessary to explain the visitors as coming from Mars, Venus or Alpha Centauri.
They are a part of our own immediate family, a part of the Earth Moon binary system.
They didn't have to come all of those millions of miles from anywhere.
They have been here for thousands of years.
Whether we belong to them by possession, like cattle, or whether we belong to each other by common origin and association is an interesting problem, and one which may soon be settled if we keep our heads.
Max Heindel says we do have a common origin and association with the Lucifer spirits.
It started on the Moon countless millions of years ago.
But there is one major difference.
They look to the interior of their planet for life, light & inspiration, we look to the Sun.
Then Mephistopheles tried to impress Bender with their supreme power, claiming they could blow up all our atomic stockpiles with the touch of a button.
During this discourse Mephistopheles had appeared to Bender in human form as he stood there.
Now the monster decided to reveal himself in his normal shape to Bender.
Then he switched to a horrifying picture that made him shudder.
It depicted a hideous monster, more horrifying that any I have ever seen depicted in the work of science fiction or fantasy artists.
The monster was alive.
As he reacted in repugnance to the scene, he did not see the speaker leave the dais and started again when noticed its absence.
He then seemed to be speaking from the screen itself, and from the mind of the monster itself.
It was as if he had instantly changed himself from the form of a man to a creature which appeared to be similar to that pictured by the West Virginia witnesses who described the Flatwoods Monster.
A flying saucer landed on a hilltop near Sutton, WV on the night of September 14, 1952.
This was close to Barker's hometown of Clarksburg and it was convenient for him to make a thorough investigation of the case.
This included talking to the 7 people who climbed the hill for a closer look at the glowing object that had settled down on it.
When they got up there in the dark one of the visitors was out of the craft and walking around in a fairly solid body.
15' away, towering over their heads, was a vast shape something like a man.
The face, everyone agreed, was round and blood red.
No one noticed a nose or mouth, only eyes, or eye like openings, from which projected greenish orange beams of light.
These light beams pierced through the haze pervading the scene.
In the excitement some of the group thought these beams of light were focused on them but Nunley was specific that they were not.
They went out over our heads.
Around the red face and reaching up to a point was a dark, hood like shape.
The body was seen only from the head down to the waist.
It appeared dark and colorless to Nunley, though some said it was green, and one child drew a picture with an outline of fire.
Mrs. May said it lighted up when the flashlight beam touched it as if there were some source of illumination inside it.
She also saw clothing like folds around the body, and terrible claws.
No one is sure whether the shape rested on the ground or was floating.
Originally the group said the strange, nauseous odor resembled burning metal, or burning sulphur.
Under questioning, none could remember having encountered anything similar.
It was finally described only basically as sickening, irritating to the throat and nasal passages.
It seemed to grip you in the throat and suffocate you.
Sulphur and brimstone, associated with appearances of the devil since time immemorial.
The monster's claws give a clue to his non human origin, a separate stream of evolution, cold blooded, akin to the reptiles and other crawling creatures, and with great hypnotic power.
Another clue given by Bender's instructor was the egg born origin of, these creatures with the mineral stink.
On our planet we have 3 sexes:
Female similar in function to yours, male also similar to yours, and the 3rd is neither male nor female.
These latter individuals are the exalted ones who become our rulers.
They are few and when they are born there is great celebration.
Our females bear eggs which are stored away.
We control our population and these eggs are permitted to be hatched only when the great blackness covers our planet and takes many lives.
This ended the interview and Bender's 7th contact with the visitors.
He was returned painfully to his body and found that 30 minutes had elapsed from the time he first lay down.
In our next installment of the review of Bender's story he visits the Antarctic base and talks with the sexless leader.
The term men for Albert Bender's Visitors from outer space, or maybe inner space, is a misnomer.
When they revealed to Bender that they were not born from a mother's womb, from a warm blooded creature, but were egg born, this should have indicated to Bender that he was dealing with creatures from another stream of evolution, more closely related to snakes and reptiles, who are also egg born.
This lack of human feeling and warmth from the men in black indicates to your editor that Bender's visitors were from the interior of some planet, the Earth or the Moon, and perhaps originating from the latter.
Their alien frigidity became most apparent to Albert at his 7th contact with them, when the 3 appeared in his room in a more solid state than any previous time.
Their human clothing was quite correct except that everything, suits, ties, shirts, shoes, were all black, including the Homburg hats they wore.
We have come to take you to a most important meeting and such is the distance that all of us must accompany you.
You are to see our base of operations here on your planet.
Please take your small metal disk with you.
Bender did as ordered and for the first time these people from another world actually touched him.
They placed their hands on his shoulders, and as they did so Bender felt as if he had been touched by a piece of dry ice.
His whole body instantly went numb as if he had received a giant dose of Novocain.
Bender passed out and regained consciousness in what appeared to be a large cavern though as he said, he would not have been surprised had he found myself on the Moon.
The cavern contained an enormous, cigar shaped space ship and his escorts led him aboard it, into the familiar science fiction surroundings of shiny metal, light beam controls, sliding panels, glowing control boards, complicated machinery.
He was taken into the presence of a lab technician who didn't bother with the MIB disguise, but retained his horrible monster appearance.
He revealed his reptilian ancestry in his opening remarks.
You are at a spot on your planet known as Antarctica.
We have chosen this area because it is uninhabited and there is no one here to disturb us in our task.
We have made this base by tunneling into your ice covered surface and burying ourselves, with only a small opening through which our smaller craft may enter and depart.
The intense cold here does not disturb us, for we are not affected by your range of temperature.
Our bodies acclimate themselves readily to such ranges.
The monster said that living conditions on his home planet were even worse, forcing them to live in underground cities.
Their space stations were elevated up through craters for takeoffs and landings.
This again could be the Moon.
Such mechanical operations could very well be the source of the glowing lights seen so often in so many of the Moon's craters.
Bender was also shown the equipment for, and the processing of sea water, but he was not told specifically why it was taken, nor the use of the end product.
He was shown a dome shaped scout saucer discharging its cargo into the refining equipment.
This was in August 1953, and already available to saucer researchers in United States and Europe were photos of dome shaped scout saucers.
176 years earlier the great French astronomer, Charles Messier, recorded a sighting of such UFOs in his diary:
They were large and swift and they were like ships yet like bells.
This was all a buildup for a meeting with Big Brother from the nether realms, who did his best to fit himself to Bender's anthropomorphic conception of God or Superman.
We say he for this character assumed a masculine appearance though he and the others claimed he was a true bisexual.
Bender was led to the audience room with impressive science fiction decor of metal chairs, raised dais, elaborate control panel and glowing screen.
From a sliding panel on the opposite wall stepped a figure glimmering in a blue haze.
He was dressed in a uniform of golden color.
His, or Its, white hair contrasted with the skin of light brown color.
As he drew closer, my attention focused on his face of handsome features.
It was almost Earth like, contrasted to the ugliness he had observed in the others.
He was of muscular build and about 9' tall.
He gathered this was the exalted one about which he had been informed, and that this bisexual entity was in charge of the base and probably the entire planetary operation.
Bender's escorts greeted it by walking forward one by one and touching it's forehead with metal disks which, they carried in their hands.
Bender realized he was expected to pay homage to Mephistopheles in like manner, and he says he did, though how he could conveniently reach the forehead of the 9' monster is beyond him.
We'll have to let it pass because the whole experience is irrational from our point of view anyhow.
Bender got the necessary red carpet treatment, necessary to his ego.
I bid you a cordial welcome to our base of operations on your planet, and it is with deepest esteem that I permit you to be our honored guest because you have given so much of your time to establishing friendly relationships with visitors from space.
Having proven to us that you were a trustworthy person who had much willpower, you, above anyone else, the Devil is a great flatterer, were chosen to visit with us and learn of our purpose here.
After more BS, Bender was offered the opportunity to ask questions, however, bisexual Mephistopheles said, we must be free to decline to answer any we feel is out of order.
Mephistopheles told Bender they had been here only since 1945 and would require about 15 years in all to as much as possible of a needed substance out of our sea water.
This rings true to some extent because all the saucer sightings of water landings, and water apparently being taken up by hose or bucket, the Brush Creek landing in California, the Steep Rock Lake incident in Canada, though fresh water was involved here.
This isn't unreasonable if the Moon is as dry as it appears to be.
The monster admitted to harming and kidnapping humans.
We have found it necessary to frighten many, but we have also had to resort to graver action in some cases which involved deaths among your fellow Earthmen.
We have carried off many of your own people to our own planet for means of experimentation and also to place some of them on exhibit for our own people to see.
We have specimens of peoples from many planets, but some of them do not live.
These we preserve, such has been the case of your Earth people, they have not survived.
When Meade Layne got into this sensitive area with the Probert Controls in the early 1950s he could get little information.
The Yada di Shi'ite admitted to receiving orders from higher up to keep his mouth shut.
It was admitted that kidnappings had been going on for ages.
But the Yada reminded the sitters at that particular seance:
Humans have no justification for accusing others of doing evil.
Look at the slavery, the crimes we perpetrate on members of our own race.
Years ago, at Pearl Harbor, I discussed this problem of UFO rammed airplanes, of disappearing crews of ships and airplanes with a Navy Captain who believed in flying saucers because he had seen one on radar.
Why should anyone want to kidnap or kill human beings? he objected.
Did you ever go hunting or fishing, Captain? I asked.
Lots of times, he replied.
Why did you do it?
Because I enjoyed it, he was irritated at such an obvious question.
Hasn't it occurred to you that there may be other beings in the universe who look upon us as we look on animals and fish?
And hunt and kill us just for the Hell of it?
He looked blank for a moment and then walked away without a reply.
Bender asked for an explanation of the universe as the visitors understood it and was given a beautiful, 3D view on the glowing screen in the audience room.
It corresponded closely to that developed by our astronomers and physicists.
Mephistopheles assured Bender that Earth was the only planet in the solar system with human life like ours, which is probably fortunate for the solar system.
The 9', Superman, egg born leader of the Antarctic flying saucer base told Albert Bender that the Earth is the sole planet with human life in your solar system.
This sounds like another appeal to Bender's inflated ego and it perpetuates the myth which blinds 99 & 44/100ths% of mankind to the truth, the myth that this is the only inhabited planet in the universe.
This is the myth which supports all present Earthly institutions created by man, economic, social, political & religious, and when the veil is ripped away, look out.
Bender's International Flying Saucer Bureau was well on the way to tearing a vent in the veil of ignorance which blinds men to the truth, in the summer of 1953, and he had to be stopped.
There is a secret government in the world, it profits from men's ignorance, and their vices.
Somebody, somewhere down the line decided that the best way to stop Albert Bender was to take him on through the veil, to initiate him into the Club, so to speak.
Something like this happened to Richard Shaver about 10 or 15 years earlier.
So, the Mephistopheles of the saucer base treated Albert to an artful blend of fact and fiction which would take a Jesuit sophist to separate, the one from the other.
Could a person from Earth survive on any of the other planets in our solar system, asked Bender of the amorphous giant before him.
No, not without special equipment.
Do you think we will ever reach our Moon, Mars or Venus?
Yes, you will reach your Moon, but it holds great disappointments for members of your races.
These statements of the Devil are in general agreement with information given us by the Probert Controls and other occult sources.
They might have been in Bender's mind from reading BSRA literature previously.
In any event, it is an admission that the Moon is inhabited by disagreeable creatures who will not extend a friendly hand of welcome to our astronauts when they descend from their Lunar Module.
If the silence policy of the U.S. Government on flying saucers is still in effect when our first lunar landing is made, and Moon inhabitants are contacted, the information will be classified Top Secret.
Then Mephistopheles revealed a surprising and embarrassing familiarity with the myths of Orthodox religions, and with the techniques by which the organized priesthoods maintain their control of the masses, in reply to Bender's question, do you believe in God?
That is a creation of your people on Earth.
You have strange races and colors in your people, and many languages are spoken, but it seems that all your peoples have had the desire to worship something during their evolution.
They, growing like small children, wanted to have an anthropomorphized, idea to cling to.
Their belief was so great that in some cases miracles seem to have been created.
These were written down for others to read, but these stories were told over and over until they are now considered to be true.
What about Jesus Christ here on Earth?
A great believer in God, with miraculous attributes so great exaggeration.
He could not save himself from death, and even his own race did not believe in him, yet they worshiped the same God.
Do you not have a god on your own planet, and do you worship anything?
We do not worship anything, but we all know that the great central body created all of us, and cast us off into space to form a life or to remain a barren piece of matter floating about.
What a cold, cheerless, loveless, lightless existence is revealed here by this sub human monster, this reptilian creature from the depths of the Moon or some other planet.
Totally ignorant of father or mother or any origin except an incubator on his home planet, this poor creature recognized no form of life higher than himself, or itself.
Completely selfish, completely centered on the drive for power and knowledge, knowledge is power.
Bender's mentor next revealed the principles by which millions of human beings are enslaved.
What about Jesus Christ ascending into heaven, since they could not find his body, asked Bender.
We have studied all these things of your planet and have often thought how primitive your people appear to be.
They are easily convinced of anything.
They can be led by anyone who can turn their loves or hatreds in directions so desired by leaders.
Yours are a vulnerable people, as long as somebody leads them they feel safe.
On our planet every person is independent and his own leader.
Some may be superior in intellect, but they are merely respected and do not become leaders.
Can you imagine living in such a society, where every member is a law unto himself and to Hell with the other person?
Maybe this is where that left handed magician, Aleister Crowley, got his inspiration.
Remember the maxim by which Crowley lived, do what thou wilt, is the whole of the law.
Mephistopheles went on, not to extol the virtues of the Savior of our race, but to praise the clever priesthood who followed after the Master.
In the case of your religious leader, Jesus Christ, the wisest man of all was not the religious leader himself, but the person who devised the idea to hide away or destroy his body so that for centuries afterward people would benefit from the celebration of the birth and death of this prophet.
It is best to leave many things unsaid in the area of your religions, for it is a topic which causes great upheaval on your planet.
There is a lot of profit in the celebration of the birth and death of Jesus, but Mephistopheles was careful not to reveal which people received the benefit.
Then Bender came up with another $64 question.
More than any other, the Devil's answer to this revealed the utter hopelessness, the complete moral degradation of the beings who had pulled Bender into their orbit.
Is there life after death? Bender asked.
On our planet there is no life once the body is destroyed, but we are fortunate in having a life span 5 times longer than your own.
Some live even longer, but they are the gifted ones.
We have no disease on our planet, but the thing which causes many to die is the great blackness that covers our planet when we pass a certain cluster of celestial bodies on our trip around the great central body.
This has been our reason for living underground and sealing all surface openings against the penetration of a strong gas which troubles us at such times.
How do you account for the apparitions and ghosts that people claim to see?
It will surprise you to learn that beneath the surface of your planet, far down in cavernous cities, live creatures that are able to make themselves invisible when they come to the surface.
They roam the surface of your planet quite frequently and like to cause fright to cover their stealing of certain things which they take back with them.
Here is expressed the same materialistic explanation of psychic phenomena offered by Richard Shaver, probably derived from the same source.
A simpler explanation might be that the Exalted Ruler of the Antarctic Base picked that one out of Bender's memory, from Al's previous reading of the Shaver material.
Then Al switched to the #1 killer of our society, cancer, and asked for the cause of that.
Perhaps it's not surprising that the Ancient One, Mephistopheles, agreed with some medical researchers, byproducts from the use of oil and gas.
The increased use of gasoline propelled vehicles is a main factor in the prevalence of cancer.
Bender asked to see scenes of life on the Exalted One's home planet.
These views were apparently projected on to screens around the interview chamber, but the leader concentrated so powerfully on Bender's brain in impressing the pictures that Bender's head hurt.
He was shown the massive elevator shafts which lifted towers and landing platforms from deep in the craters, up above the surface to send and receive aerial traffic.
Other scenes showed the daily life and traffic of one of the underground cities.
Then he was shown the interior of a building resembling a vault or a tomb.
An inside view showed walls containing drawers or trays.
In opened trays appeared objects which looked like ostrich eggs.
These, he was told, were the future generations of the planet, hatching by controlled system whenever the blackness approached and caused many deaths.
What can we expect from these egg born who know nothing of father or mother, or human love and warmth, or life beyond the grave?
Nothing but a cold, pitiless, selfish race, using of us for their own ends.
With their hypnotic power, these Lucifer spirits play on our passions, our vices, in the successful effort, sometimes, to pull us down so they can stand in our place.
They would be like us.
They envy us because we are higher on the ladder of evolution.
In answering Bender's next question, Mephistopheles confirmed again his cavern origins.
The bisexual monster also revealed his membership in the sinister space race referred to in the Allende Letters to M.K. Jessup, their liking for fungus growths and for sea food.
What is the food on your planet? asked Bender.
Do you have plants and animals?
We live mainly on a fungus kind of growth similar to your mushrooms.
We grow many varieties, of different food values.
We also consume many types of shell covered water creatures.
Large plants which grow near our bodies of water bear delicious fruit.
From this we make many of our food products.
Isn't it significant that one of the commonest and most degrading vices here on Earth is drunkenness.
The creation of alcoholic beverages is impossible without fermentation, the reaction of the juice of the grape with a certain type of fungus.
This in turn derives its power from the Cavern world beneath us.
Here you have a definite lead on the secret government of the world and how it maintains its hold on millions of people.
Trace out or uncover the ultimate owners of the liquor industry and you'll find human beings who have sold their souls to these same men in black who haunted Albert Bender in 1953.
Then there's this seafood bit.
This was one statistical item which bothered the Hell out of Charles Fort & M.K. Jessup.
History is replete with news stories of great falls of primitive marine life from clouds, and from clear skies.
Jessup devotes a couple of pages to it in his case For the UFO.
Consider the astonishment of the surface dwellers in Alabama on May 29, 1892.
At Coalburg a tremendous shower of enormous eels took place.
The eels were of a variety unknown in Alabama, though somebody said he knew of such eels in the Pacific Ocean.
There were piles of eels in the streets and farmers came with carts and took them away to use for fertilizer.
That same year, 1892, the inhabitants of Paderborn, Germany received an unwelcome celestial delivery of mussels, from a yellow cloud.
Jessup comes to the logical conclusion that the hydroponic tanks of a great space ship were receiving their periodical cleaning.
About 15 years earlier, Memphis, TN got a load from on high, in 1877 after a violent storm during which rain fell in torrents, thousands of snakes were found in the space of 2 blocks.
They were crawling on sidewalks, in yards and in streets, masses of them.
Might as well include Jessup's 2 paragraph summation from page 72:
Accepting as I do the veracity of the many reports of live things having fallen from the skies,
I submit that they are the inhabitants of celestial hydroponic tanks and that their falls come from one of 2 things:
1. When the tanks are dumped and cleared for refilling, for whatever reason that might be.
2. That the falls may be the residue from the collection from Earth while the monitors are replenishing their supplies.
Again we are faced with the admission of intelligence and direction.
An intelligence in space controlling either the collection, disinformation, or nurture of sea life, either for study or for food or both, is the only answer which satisfies all the elements of all the reports.
Gypsy commentator Carlos Allende underlined the celestial hydroponic tanks sentence above and made this marginal note:
Come of both, and of wrecks and repair jobs on most ships.
He & his 2 buddies seem to be quite familiar with these cavern space dwellers and refer to their great space ships as Arks.
They also identify 2 races, referring to them as the L-Ms and S-Ms.
The S-Ms are the bad guys, the L-Ms the good guys.
A few pages later, Jessup's chapter on Falls of Water, Allende makes the marginal note some chemical gardening practiced in Arks and D ships.
Not too much at last report.
This was in connection with a deluge which fell on Hong Kong May 29 & 30, 1889.
The city received 34" of rain in 2 days.
Further down the page Allende notes the cleaning and regeneration of the Great Ark and all its great rooms.
All arks too, need cleaning same as any other ship.
To get back to Albert Bender and his Antarctic interview with Big Brother Mephistopheles, he then asked if it would be possible for me to write about my experiences so that others on Earth can learn of your existence?
Permission was denied, absolutely, as long as you possess the small piece of metal you will be under our power.
He then asked why his head hurt so severely when in the presence of the monsters.
We are able to penetrate your skull and gain complete control of your body.
Finally, Bender asked for objective proof of their existence, and the leader promised a real flying saucer phenomenon would occur near his home, and it did.
On Friday, September 19, 1952, a week after the sighting of the Flatwoods Monster, a 27 year old movie theater booker left his office in Clarksburg, WV, for Flatwoods with a journalistic assignment in hand.
It was a short trip for him, one he had made many times before, for in heading out for Braxton County, Gray Barker was going home.
Barker arrived in Flatwoods that evening but not too late to begin asking questions and interviewing witnesses to the sighting.
He would have to make his investigations quick, though.
Having previously sent a query by telegram to Fate magazine, Barker had received a rapid reply:
3,000 words, 3 or 4 pics, and a rigorous, fact based investigation for his story, deadline is Monday.
As an admitted frustrated writer, Gray Barker couldn't have asked for a better turn of events.
A big, national news story had come right out of his native county, located just down the road from his office.
He knew the country and the people.
He had the weekend in which to work.
And he had a perfect market in Fate, a magazine founded in 1948 by Raymond A. Palmer & Curtis B. Fuller for the expressed purpose of publishing stories of this kind.
As it turns out, Gray Barker wasn't the only investigator in Flatwoods that weekend.
Ivan T. Sanderson, well known as an author, explorer, zoologist, and television personality, was also on the trail of the Flatwoods Monster.
At the time, he was less renowned as an investigator of strange events, but like Gray Barker, Ivan T. Sanderson would make a name for himself as one of the giants of Forteana of the 1950s and beyond.
Barker & Sanderson ran into each other in Flatwoods and even carried out part of their investigations together in that last weekend of the summer of 1952.
Gray Barker met his deadline.
His article, entitled The Monster and the Saucer, was published in Fate in January 1953.
Sanderson got a story out of it, too.
The earliest version I have found is Scientist Questions Observers of West Virginia Saucer, located on the front page of the Baltimore Sun for Tuesday, September 23, 1952.
So Gray Barker had his start.
He also had an opening with another investigator out of Bridgeport, CT.
And then the real strangeness began.
On Friday evening, September 12, 1952, a visitor from another world came to West Virginia.
Soon after dubbed the Flatwoods Monster, the Phantom of Flatwoods, the Green Monster, and the Braxton County Monster, the visitor put a scare into residents of Flatwoods.
Within days, journalists and other investigators were roaming over town and country in search of witnesses, evidence, and clues.
Gray Barker, a Braxton County native then living in Clarksburg, was among them.
He arrived in Flatwoods after work on Friday, September 19, only a week after the sighting of the monster.
He had in hand an assignment from Fate magazine:
3,000 word and a few pictures with a Monday deadline.
That weekend, Barker interviewed some of the witnesses of the event.
He also ran into Ivan T. Sanderson, another investigator of strange and unexplained phenomena.
Both men collaborated in their investigations in that last weekend of the summer of 1952, the closing of what in journalistic circles is sometimes called the silly season.
Both got their stories.
It was likely the first time they had met.
Gray Barker's story of the encounter with the Flatwoods Monster, entitled The Monster and the Saucer, was published in Fate in January 1953.
By then, Barker was already in touch with still another investigator, Albert K. Bender, Jr., of Bridgeport.
Barker first wrote to Bender on November 20, 1952, after having read a letter by Bender that was published in the December 1952 issue of Other Worlds Science Stories.
Bender's missive to Other Worlds announced the formation of the International Flying Saucer Bureau and invited interested parties to join.
In writing, Bender also offered an honorary membership to the editor of Other Worlds.
Although the wording of his response is ambiguous, the editor seems to have accepted the honor.
His name, by the way, was Raymond A. Palmer, also known by his initials, Rap.
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on August 1, 1910, Palmer was a writer, editor, and publisher of fact, fiction, and things from the twilight zone between them.
Palmer was badly injured as a child.
In search of solace and escape, he read science fiction and fantasy, then created with Walter Dennis the first science fiction fanzine, The Comet, published in May 1930, when he was only 19.
With the June 1930 issue of Wonder Stories, Palmer became a professional author of science fiction.
He also managed to slip his first name into the title of his first published story, The Time Ray of Jandra.
Palmer was not quite 30 when he landed a plum assignment as editor of Amazing Stories.
The June issue of 1938 was his first.
11 months later, in May 1939, he took on additional duties as editor of the new Fantastic Adventures, also published by Ziff-Davis of Chicago.
He remained as editor through the December 1949 issues of both magazines and was succeeded in the following month's issues by Howard Browne.
Palmer wasn't out of of work, though, for he had already started as editor of Other World Science Stories in its inaugural issue of November 1949.
More commonly known as Other Worlds, the new publication was digest sized in keeping with a growing trend in the pulp fiction market.
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction also began as a digest sized publication in the fall of 1949.
Astounding Science Fiction had started the trend in November 1943.
Weird Tales didn't follow suit until September 1953.
Other Worlds was published by Clark Publishing Company of Evanston, Illinois.
Although the magazine was new in late 1949, its publisher was not, for Clark Publishing Company had been formed about 2 years before, in late 1947, by Raymond A. Palmer & Curtis Fuller.
Their purpose was to publish a new kind of magazine, a magazine to look into the strange and unexplained facts on the fringes of science.
They called it Fate.
The founding of Clark Publishing Company in late 1947 and the publication of the first issue of Fate in the spring of 1948 weren't just by happenstance.
They were a result of the events of the first summer of flying saucers, which had its beginning on June 24, 1947, when Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot flying out of Chehalis, Washington, saw over Mount Rainier a flight of 9 UFOs that flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.
Within a few days, in some places within a few hours, of Arnold's story getting out over the newswire,
flying saucer fever seized Americans of all stripes, and people began seeing these unexplained aerial objects everywhere.
Kenneth Arnold was an average joe and not a crackpot of any kind.
Observers found credence in his story.
Around the middle of July, he received a letter from an outfit called The Venture Press, presumably based in the Chicago area.
The sender asked him to investigate a supposed sighting of flying saucers over Maury Island, located about 3 miles North of Tacoma, WA.
And not just a sighting but a crashdown, a partial crashdown to be sure, one of debris that had supposedly fallen from a damaged craft, but one that nonetheless might yield physical evidence of the existence of flying saucers.
What's more, the sighting and crashdown of debris were supposed to have taken place on June 21, 1947, 3 days before Arnold's sighting over Mount Rainier and about 2 weeks before Mac Brazel is supposed to have found evidence of a crashdown near Roswell, NM.
In other words, the incident, now known as the Maury Island Incident, Proven Hoax, if found to be based in fact would establish precedence for its two witnesses.
Keep that thought, precedence, in the back of your mind for a while.
It will come up again before too long.
The man who wrote to Kenneth Arnold from The Venture Press was Raymond A. Palmer, at the time the editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, published by Ziff-Davis of Chicago.
If there ever was a Venture Press, it didn't last under that name.
More than likely, the name was a front for a new venture planned by Palmer and his business partner, Curtis G. Fuller, editor of Flying magazine.
According to Palmer's biographer, Fred Nadis, for nearly 2 years, beginning in 1947, Palmer had been leaving the Ziff-Davis offices, on North Wabash Avenue as of the mid 1940s, in Chicago's loop for long lunch breaks, during which he would head 3 blocks West to a drab office on Clark Street.
There, using the pseudonym Robert N. Webster, he edited and prepared Fate magazine designed for an audience with a taste for the paranormal and unexplained.
So, fake name and fake company.
In any case, whether Fate was in the works before the first flying saucer sighting or not, Palmer and Curtis/Palmer especially,
I think must have seen a potential gold mine in the subject.
And when Kenneth Arnold agreed to investigate the Maury Island Incident, Palmer uncovered another rich vein, for the incident introduced into the flying saucer story sensations of fear, paranoia, and conspiracy that have never really been shaken off in the years since.
The incident also brought on one of the first investigations of flying saucers by the U.S. government and resulted, tragically, in the first deaths associated with the phenomenon.
Fred Nadis goes into more detail on the origins of Fate.
Decades later, Curt Fuller said he started Fate after the first wave of flying saucer sightings in 1947.
As editor of Ziff-Davis's Flying magazine, he had numerous contacts in the aviation & military worlds.
He began to ask questions and concluded military officials were lying to him.
In this same period, Palmer was developing an all flying saucer issue of Amazing Stories, of which he was editor until December 1949.
According to Palmer, Ziff-Davis, publisher of Amazing Stories, rejected the proposed issue after receiving a visit from a government official.
Sharing notes, Fuller and Palmer decided to start a magazine that would question standard assumptions.
Here again is the theme of fear, paranoia, and conspiracy, especially conspiracy supposedly carried out by the U.S. government and against believers in flying saucers.
The cover of the first issue of Fate capitalized on the flying saucer craze as it approached the beginning of its second year.
The cover story is The Truth About Flying Saucers, by Kenneth Arnold, while the cover illustration, captioned the flying disks, shows Arnold's bright red Call Air A-2 in flight above Mount Rainer and overshadowed by 3 large, otherworldly craft.
The magazine was a hit among those caught up in the phenomenon.
John Keel reported that at the first flying saucer convention, held in New York City in the fall of 1948, most of the attendees, there were only about 30, clutched copies of Fate as they shouted and argued their positions.
In case you're wondering, Fate is still in existence and is closing in on its 75th anniversary year.
Year after year beginning in 1947, flying saucers fascinated the American public, and year after year, flying saucer fans kept up on the latest news in Ray Palmer's several titles, including Fate, Mystic Magazine, The Hidden World, Search, Ray Palmer's News Letter, and Forum.
By John Keel's estimation, Palmer was the man who invented flying saucers.
What has largely been forgotten, however, is that he was also the prime promoter of a mystery that served more or less as the forerunner to flying saucers.
This was the so called Shaver Mystery, which excited, perplexed, and angered readers of science fiction from its beginnings in the mid 1940s until it was overtaken by spacecraft from another world.
The first monster of the flying saucer era came to Flatwoods, WV, on the evening of Friday, September 12, 1952.
Witnesses to the event were a beautician named Kathleen May, a 17 year old national guardsman, Eugene Lemon, and 5 boys aged 10 to 14.
Oddly enough, one of the boys was named Shaver.
What they saw above Flatwoods gave them the fright of their lives.
Upon encountering the monster, they turned and ran, down the hill and into town, scared, shaken, and hysterical.
One or 2 of the boys were so badly disturbed that they vomited as night went on and as word of what they had seen spread into Flatwoods, across Braxton County, and onto a darkened continent.
On Monday morning, 27 year old Gray Barker was having breakfast in a restaurant practically just up the road from Flatwoods when he read of the encounter with the Braxton Monster.
The newspaper spread out in front of him variously described it as a smelly boogie man, a half man/half dragon, and a fire breathing monster.
Kathleen May was quoted as saying that it looked worse than Frankenstein, it couldn't have been human.
Although Barker was working in Clarksburg, WV, as a booking agent for movie theaters, he originally hailed from Braxton County.
His birthplace is supposed to have been Riffle, located about 8 miles northwest of Flatwoods as the saucer flies.
He was counted in the censuses of 1930 and 1940 in the Otter District, just outside of Gassaway to the South.
Riffle wasn't much more than a riffle, though, and so, when Barker later wrote about the Flatwoods Monster, he called the place where it had come to Earth his home town.
At a time when people still sent telegrams, Barker contacted Fate magazine by wire, asking if it was interested in the story.
Raymond Palmer was still publisher or co-publisher at the time.
Whether it was he or someone else who wired back, Gray Barker had his reply:
Story probably hoax But investigate rigorously.
Don't speculate simply state facts.
3 or 4 pics up to 3000 words Monday deadline.
That Friday after work, Barker drove the 55 or 60 miles from Clarksburg to Flatwoods to begin his investigation.
While in town, he met another investigator, the zoologist and explorer Ivan T. Sanderson, who, as he himself admitted later, also thought the story was a hoax.
Both men came away from Braxton County that weekend convinced that the witnesses had really seen and experienced something extraordinary and that their sighting of the Flatwoods Monster was no hoax.
Sanderson got his story in print first.
The Pittsburgh Press, for example, ran it on Wednesday, September 24, under the title Saucer Reports Valid, Expert says.
Gray Barker, on the other hand, had to wait until the January 1953 issue of Fate before his account, entitled The Monster and the Saucer, saw the light of day.
In the meantime, he had introduced himself by mail to Albert K. Bender of Bridgeport, CT, and the pair had begun corresponding and even talking by telephone.
After that, things moved pretty quickly towards a strange and mysterious climax and denouement.
On January 15, 1952, midway between one silly season and another, Albert K. Bender, Jr., also of Bridgeport, CT, and 2 of his friends, decided to establish a formal organization which would delve more deeply into the UFO problem.
Bender had been interested in flying saucers and other Fortean phenomena for most of his adult life.
In 1952, he got himself in gear.
In April he founded and announced in a press release the creation of the International Flying Saucer Bureau, IFSB.
His new group met for the first time on May 15, discussing, among other things, the membership applications that had poured in during the previous month.
The main topic of discussion at the June meeting was the editorial policy of a forthcoming newsletter to be entitled Space Review.
Event tumbled after event in 1952.
On August 29, the editor of Fate magazine, Robert N. Webster, wrote to Bender accepting a position as the first member of the International Council of the IFSB.
On September 9, Denis P. Plunkett of Bristol, England, replied to the IFSB, becoming the first to volunteer as a foreign representative of the organization.
Around the middle of September, Bender delivered the first issue of Space Review to the printer.
Dated October 1952, it went out to members in the United States and Canada on schedule.
In November 1952, Bender heard from his most famous and prestigious correspondent, who declined to give an opinion on flying saucers.
This was another Albert, last name Einstein.
A second letter that November, from Gray Barker of Clarksburg, WV, would prove far more fruitful.
Barker wrote that he had seen Bender's missive in Other Worlds Science Stories, December 1952, announcing the creation of the IFSB.
Bender replied enthusiastically to my letter of November 20, 1952, wrote Barker, and was particularly interested in hearing more about the West Virginia monster I told him of investigating.
The monster of course was the Flatwoods Monster.
Although Bender had included a brief item on the sighting of the Flatwoods Monster in the first issue of Space Review, his facts were scarce and his date for the sighting was wrong.
Bender wanted to know more and was eager to get Barker on board.
1952 gave way to 1953.
The first month of the new year was full of activity for Barker & Bender.
Fate published Barker's story The Monster and the Saucer.
The second issue of Bender's Space Review had more on the Flatwoods Monster, in the form of an article by a Reverend S.L. Daw of Washington, D.C.
In his article, Daw relayed speculation from the Washington Daily News that what the witnesses had described in seeing the Flatwoods Monster was a misconception of some kind related to a rocket ship depicted on the cover of Collier's magazine for October 18, 1952.
Neither Barker nor Bender was done with the Flatwoods Monster.
In that second whole issue of Space Review, Gray Barker was listed in the IFSB directory as the representative for the state of West Virginia.
That same month, January, Bender called Barker and offered him the position as chief of the new Department of Investigation within the IFSB.
It was the first time the 2 had talked by phone.
Barker was already working on his own flying saucer newsletter, The Saucerian, which would not appear until later in the year.
Nevertheless, he accepted Bender's offer and received from Bender a packet of business cards which he might hand out in the course of his investigations.
One fell into the hands of an FBI agent who questioned Barker towards the end of the summer of 1953 as things started to get really weird with Bender and the IFSB.
So I have here an event for every month from April 1952, when Bender founded the International Flying Saucer Bureau, to January 1953, when Barker was appointed as chief investigator of the organization, every month, that is, except July 1952.
And what happened that month in the Barker/Bender saga?
Well, on July 30, Bender received in his home a telephone call from an unknown person warning him, telepathically no less, against delving any further into the flying saucer mystery.
On the evening of July 30, 1952, Albert K. Bender received a strange phone call during which his head began to ache and spin.
No voice answered when he spoke, but nevertheless Albert seemed to receive a message, as if telepathically.
The message decreed that he should not delve into the saucer mystery any further.
Bender noticed in July and August that year, the same summer in which flying saucers descended upon Washington, D.C., that numerous sightings then made the news in Bridgeport and surrounding towns.
Bender wondered in private, later in the first issue of Space Review, whether the saucer occupants sensed that we, in the IFSB, were going to look into the mystery of their appearance here on our planet, and might be looking us over to see what we were up to, or putting on a show for us, possibly to encourage us.
In any case, this seems to have been the beginning of the fear, terror, and paranoia that would soon consume Bender and bring the IFSB to an end.
If Bender was being contacted telepathically, he might have thought that a connection could be made in the opposite direction, so he announced that March 15, 1953, would be Contact Day, for officers, representatives, and members of the IFSB.
On that day, the whole group would attempt to send, all at the same time via mental telepathy, a message that began as follows:
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft, calling occupants of interplanetary craft that have been observing our planet Earth.
We of IFSB wish to make contact with you.
We are your friends, and would like you to make an appearance here on Earth.
Bender did his part in the effort.
At the appointed time, he lay down in his bed and mentally repeated the message again and again.
It was after the 3rd attempt that I felt a terrible cold chill hit my whole body, he recounted.
Then his head began to ache as if several headaches had saved up their anguish and heaped it upon him at one time.
What followed was a kind of out of body experience complete with the smell of rotten eggs, the appearance of swimming and flashing blue lights, a sense of weightlessness and floating, a throbbing pain in the temples, then, in culmination.
Bender's vision that he was floating above his bed and looking down upon his own body, a voice spoke saying we have been watching you and your activities, please be advised to discontinue delving into the mysteries of the universe.
We will make an appearance if you disobey.
The vision then ended.
Despite the warning, Bender carried on, releasing issues of Space Review in April and July 1953.
The April issue included a column by Gray Barker called Gray Barker Reports, as well as mention of climate change, the world was getting colder, not hotter, the Earth's poles, a government conspiracy of silence about flying saucers, and a secret base on the far side of the Moon.
The July issue had a little more by Gray Barker.
It also included an announcement on the creation of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, APRO, in June 1952, headed by Coral Lorenzen.
I had thought APRO might have been the first flying saucer organization.
It's clear here that it wasn't the first, but it may have been the oldest surviving organization of its type after the demise of the IFSB and for as long as it was in existence.
Not long afterwards, in the summer of 1953, Albert Bender had his first visitation from the 3 men in black.
They came on a hot July night into Bender's bedroom, announcing by telepathic communication that they were in disguise, implying that they were occupying the bodies of human beings abducted for that purpose.
The aliens told Bender that they had an important mission on Earth, that they would be here for some time, and that they must not be disturbed in their work.
They added that they had a base and craft hidden in an undisclosed location on Earth.
They gave Bender a small metal disk, explaining that in order to contact them he should hold it in the palm of his hand and repeat a code word, Kazik.
Oh, and he had to turn on his radio while doing this, then the 3 men in black left.
2 nights later, Bender called for them in the manner in which he had been instructed.
Instead of coming to him, they delivered him to themselves, again through a kind of out of body experience in which Bender seemingly traveled on board a flying saucer.
There he was treated to a lesson in history and astronomy, including mention of a planet once located near Earth that had been destroyed by marauders from another system of planets beyond our own.
The creature who spoke to him told Bender that he and his associates were taking a valuable chemical from Earth's oceans.
So they can fly from one star system to another but they can't synthesize chemicals?
Strange technology.
If they were to be interrupted or interfered with in this work, they would destroy the Earth.
Not to worry, there isn't anything we could have done to them, protected as they were by their superior technology, except for that part where they can't synthesize chemicals.
Bender wrote that he then switched to a horrifying picture that made me shudder.
It depicted a hideous monster, more horrifying than any he had seen depicted in the work of science fiction or fantasy artists.
He then seemed to be speaking from the screen itself, and from the mind of the monster itself.
It was if he had instantly changed himself from the form of a man to a creature which appeared to be similar to that pictured by the West Virginia witnesses who described the Flatwoods monster.
By meeting the 3 men in black and traveling on board their flying saucer, Bender learned the secret behind the phenomenon that had intrigued and vexed him for so long.
Further investigations into the flying saucer phenomenon were pointless and might even be harmful, for the aliens had promised to destroy Earth if they were interfered with in their work.
As the dog days of the summer of 1953 came on, Bender understood that he had to shut down the IFSB and quit publishing Space Review.
How would he explain his actions to the other members of the organization, though?
He would simply tell them it would not be possible to publish anything, he decided, because such was not the proper method nor was it the proper time for such an action.
All information was being withheld by orders from what he would simply term a higher source.
Before that necessity came about, however, Bender was once again visited by the 3 men.
This time he was in for the trip of his life, for they took him to their secret base in where else?
Antarctica.
All our cities are constructed underground, one of the aliens told him at the beginning of his trip, we have crater like openings on the surface, through which we are able to elevate spacecraft stations for takeoffs and landings.
When these stations are not in use they descend into the craters, and the landing fields serve as cover for the openings, with only communications towers visible.
Yes, like the Dero, Bender's aliens lived in underground cities, and, like the Nazis, they had a secret base in Antarctica.
Bender's aliens were a lot friendlier, and so they took him on a tour of their home.
Bender's account of the aliens and their society reads like a Utopia, a Lost Worlds adventure or scientific romance of the pulp fiction era, or the supposed non fiction written in the 1950s by men such as George Adamski, Howard Menger, & Truman Bethurum.
In touring the aliens underground city, Bender sees lots of things and asks lots of questions.
And make no mistake about it, Albert K. Bender went from a seemingly sober and science minded investigator, his associate editor, Max Krengel, had written in the first issue of Space Review.
The mystery of the flying saucers will be eventually solved by calm, clear thinking individuals, to that lowest form of the flying saucer era, the contactee who goes winging his way around the solar system as the esteemed guest of aliens from outer space.
The 1950s were crawling with contactees and there were more to come in the decades ahead.
Eventually they evolved into abductees, but then the flying saucer story always ends with contact.
If he was a Christian before his visitations with the 3 men, his wayward thoughts can be detected in the things he absorbs from them.
The aliens don't worship anything and for them there is no life after death.
What about Jesus Christ? Bender asks, Earth people are easily convinced of anything, is the reply.
A very clever person hid or destroyed the body of Christ, say the aliens, so that for centuries afterward people would benefit from the celebration of the birth and death of this prophet.
The point is that, like Richard Shaver, Bender suffered from mental illness.
Perhaps as a result of his suffering, he became, again like Shaver, an atheist or a materialist.
And, perhaps in an effort to make up for his lost faith, Bender, once again like Shaver, came into possession of his own brand of wisdom.