Book Reviews Perceptions Magazine, April 2018
Evidence of UFO Sightings and Abductions
by Nomar Slevik
Llewellyn Publications
2143 Wooddale Drive
Woodbury, MN 55125-2989
2018, 336 pages, 5.25” x 8”, US $17.99
ISBN: 978-0-7387-5715-5
Reviewed by Brent Raynes
The author, Nomar Slevik, a resident of Bangor, Maine, both a ufologist and a paranormal researcher, and a member of P.R.I.ME (Paranormal Research in Maine) draws a large portion of his compelling information and evidence from his homestate – a state that I was born and grew up in, and that once upon a time, until the age of 25, was my stomping grounds for researching and investigating a good deal of UFO and paranormal phenomena. So, needless to say, many of these strange and thought-provoking accounts in Slevik's book resonate strongly at an especially higher and more personal level for me than most stories of this genre that I read about from other locations. A number of the places and people are familiar to me, while many of the cases are completely new to me and certainly make my pulse skip a beat or two – really great material, and Nomar is a very talented writer who describes these stories so effectively that you feel as though you can almost see in your mind's eye what his witnesses reported.
Nomar covers a wide spectrum of sensational high-strangeness cases across the Maine landscape, including a possible “Mothman” in Camden, while a woman claimed hundreds of UFO sightings as well as the Grays, alien abductions, crop circles and the Men in Black in Union. In the small town of Eliot, at a local gravel pit, witnesses described seeing a mysterious large black dog, encountered a strange odor, and one of the witnesses disappeared for a spell and afterwards exhibited very odd aggressive behavior (I've recently researched and wrote about this large black dog phenomenon myself from other locations). There's the story of Eric and Shelly Martin of Palmyra, who claim that one night in 2007 what looked to be balls of light moving in and out of the trees nearby drew Erics attention, and then soon both Eric and Shelly both were frightened to see five extremely large wolf-like creatures that stood bipedally, some as tall as seven feet! The rest of the night the creatures prowled outside, even trying to break into the house. Fortunately, by daybreak the beasts left.
Perhaps one of the most sensational cases is to be found in Chapter 25, “The Psychic Who Saved The World,” wherein a woman, who was both a medium and UFO contactee, who lived in Skowhegan, supposedly prevented a nuclear war with the help of extraterrestrials!
Although a believer who has had experiences of his own, Nomar presents his evidence objectively and truthfully as he can, and will let the reader ultimately decide for themselves what to believe. If evidence emerges that suggests a case may have a prosaic explanation, as in the famous Dr. Herbert Hopkins “men in black” case from Old Orchard Beach, he will present it.
Control:
MKUltra, Chemtrails, and the Conspiracy to Suppress the Masses
by Nick Redfern
Visible Ink Press
43311 Joy Road #414
Canton, MI 48187-2075
April 2018, 432 pages, 7.125” x 9.25” Trade Paperback, US $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-57859-638-6
Reviewed by Brent Raynes
Nick Redfern strikes again! What a prolific and thorough investigative writer. In his latest well-illustrated, picture packed encyclopedic edition, Control: MKUltra, Chemtrails, and the Conspiracy to Suppress the Masses, Redfern delves deeply into all of the major conspiracy scenarios and then some, and delivers detailed and comprehensive information that best allows you the reader to arrive at informed understandings and insights into these intriguing, complex, and controversial matters.
Redfern covers the gamut from CIA spy drones, the MKUltra drug program, government LSD experiments, HAARP, the Montauk Project, Project Monarch, False Flag phenomena, acoustic attacks, and even ufology's notorious Men in Black phenomenon, and how some major UFO events like the Pascagoula abduction and the Flatwoods Monster may have been government-sponsored mind-control experiments...plus much, much more.
Redfern presents us a vast range of thought-provoking material and gives us much to thoughtfully ponder and to speculate upon.
Weird Winged Wonders:
The Twilight World Of Cryptid Creatures
by Timothy Green Beckley, with contributions by Sean Casteel, Tim Swartz, Scott Corrales, Paul Eno, Brad Steiger, hercules Invictus, Allen Greenfield, J.D. Whitcomb, Lon Strickler, Albert Rosales, Paul Dale Roberts, Nomar Slevik and Steve Ward
Global Communications/Conspiracy Journal
Box 753
New Brunswick, NJ 08903
2018, 164 pages, 8 1/2” x 11” Paperback, US $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60611-248-9
Reviewed by Brent Raynes
Reports of large winged cryptids, as the late John Keel soon discovered after his initial investigations into the now legendary West Virginia “Mothman,” are a global, historic, and rather frequently reported anomaly, and that's what this book, with its many different authors, delves into.
Challenging, thought-provoking, the stuff of nightmares, mythology, and science fiction, yet untold thousands it would seem claim to have actually had frightening encounters with large winged beasts that the science of zoology, or more specifically the branch that studies birds, called ornithology, claims don't exist. Yet there are seemingly reliable eyewitnesses to extraordinary sightings like the legendary Thunderbird of the Native Americans, who many witnesses today claim to have seen and claim had a wingspan greater than 30 feet! Even the presumably extinct Pterosaurs in places like Cuba and the jungles of New Guinea, or the Quetzalcoatylus reported in Malaysia, China, and South America. Then there is the legendary, very frightening Jersey Devil, reports going back nearly three centuries, a creature described as having bat-like wings, a face resembling a horse, cloven hooves and a forked tail, that allegedly can let out a “blood-curdling scream.” At this point, of course, the West Virginia “Mothman” has already been well-covered by quite a number of other authors, although it naturally gets reviewed here again, and in recent years Mothman like sightings, for example from the Chicago area, and even Camden, Maine, also get included here. Even some reports I came upon here in Tennessee and out in New Mexico are included in this book. Dragons even are described!
The various authors contribute their best evidence, as well as their perspectives and theories. It's a genuine compendium of winged weirdness.
