Alternate Perceptions Magazine, March 2026
An exclusive interview with Bernard O’Connor, the founding editor of Official UFO Magazine back in 1975. Part Two.
By Brent Raynes
On a more serious note, a 1966 paperback edition of Frank Edward’s Flying Saucers: Serious Business set him on a lifetime skywatch for the one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater. In one of his life’s more fun adventures, he was very lucky, and grateful to be the founding editor of Official UFO Magazine in 1975.
Bernie can be reached at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Brent Raynes: As a teenager, back around the time that the news media was abuzz with all the sightings in Michigan and across the nation, including Maine where I was living then, I remember a school chum asking me, “Why don’t we form a UFO club” and I was like we’re just a bunch of teenagers. What good could we do?
Bernard O’Connor: That’s what most of us were at the time. Teenagers just starting to really get involved with UFO research. I think Frank Edward’s book served as a catalyst for the roots of contemporary Ufology. It seemed to appear at the right time and place. Much like Von Daniken triggered the Ancient Astronaut genera, Edwards triggered the grassroots UFO movement. Bernard O’Connor: That’s what most of us were at the time.
Brent Raynes: Yeah, after reading Edward’s book, Flying Saucers – Serious Business, I threw caution to the wind and in January 1967 I began clipping stories out of the newspaper, buying magazines and books on the subject, becoming what I would later learn was nicknamed a ufologist. Pretty soon it became an obsession with me.
Bernard O’Connor: It did with me too. I started haunting every used bookstore I could find looking for UFO books. It’s funny how later on in the year’s I’d take a break from Ufology, but I’d still be buying books about them. Then randomly, just pick one up and start reading it. WHAM! Ufology hooked me again. Speaking of UFO books, I don’t know if you remember George Easley. He passed away in 2020 at age 93. He used to review books for Official UFO and other publications. He was amazing.
Brent Raynes: I remember ‘ole George Earley. He lived in Connecticut. He was always writing reviews and different articles. I remember one where he was pictured holding a camera and talking about photographing UFOs.
Bernard O’Connor: Yes, he always had a camera, and he was always carrying a camera bag. The picture where he interviewed Phil Klass, for example on page 125 in the Official UFO Magazine book, the article “Why I Don’t Believe in UFOs,” Earley is pictured with Klass and his camera and camera bag.
Brent Raynes: That kind of reminds me of ufologist August C. Roberts of New Jersey.
Bernard O’Connor: Oh yeah. He had some collection.
Brent Raynes: He was very much into photography and had quite a collection of pictures of UFO gatherings and well-known people in the field. He tried to give me some pointers in photography. After seeing and photographing his own UFO sighting in July 1952 in Jersey City, New Jersey, he traveled around the country visiting major sites like Washington state’s Maury Island and other noted locations.
Bernard O’Connor: He worked with Jim Mosley and that whole Gray Barker group, and he supposedly took that picture of Valiant Thor at a Howard Menger gathering.
Brent Raynes: He did. But he helped a lot of others in the field with pictures and information, including Brad Steiger, and I know he helped Dr. Berthold Schwarz a good deal too, like with the Stella Lansing photographs and others.
I’ve talked with long-time paranormal investigator Peter Jordan who along with Dr. Schwarz delved deeply into the Howard Menger matter and with regard to the Valiant Thor photos and a man and a woman who accompanied him at a Menger gathering at High Bridge, while Roberts didn’t think much of it, not long afterwards the infamous Rev. Frank Stranges paid him a surprise visit and asked to see his photo collection. When he saw the photos, Roberts had taken of the three strangers Rev. Stranges asked for copies. Roberts, however, not really impressed with the photos he’d taken, thinking there was nothing of significance to them, freely gave Stranges the photos to keep. However, months later Stranges wrote about the one man in the picture he called Valiant Thor.
Bernard O’Connor: Right. (a chuckle) Stranger at the Pentagon.
Brent Raynes: Yes, that book and that story has continued to this day and been stretched a little too far.
Bernard O’Connor: Yeah. There’s a lot of stretched stories in Ufology. That’s the reoccurring problem. Sort of like the game “Telephone.” With each telling of an event or report, sometimes a little editorial license is applied.
Brent Raynes: True enough. But there are some really genuine gemstones of interest too. I’ve done a good many posted interviews with Peter Jordan who gathered a lot of information from people involved in the Menger case (including interviews with Howard and Connie Menger themselves) and there were people who had some pretty weird experiences in that connection, including himself with a beam of light, and with a group called Vestigia he was involved in the investigation of a mystery light at Long Valley, New Jersey, UFOs and cattle mutilations, and many poltergeist cases. An outstanding and level-headed investigator.
Bernard O’Connor: Let’s not forget John Keel – oh my God – he was the one who said time and time again if you have UFOs you’re going to have other paranormal phenomena. Look at excellent researcher Stan Gordon in Chestnut Ridge, Pennsylvania. Many, many Bigfoot reports, floating orbs, orbs with Bigfoot, reports of huge birdlike cryptids and a whole lot of various weird and decidedly paranormal events occurring in that one area.
Brent Raynes: Bernie, I’ve got to ask you something. Since you met John Keel years ago running into him on the streets of New York and at his Fortean Society meetings, what was your personal interactions with him like?
Bernard O’Connor: My wife Cathy and I used to go with him to the, and I forgot the name of the restaurant. It’s probably long since gone. Anyway, it had a Magic theme to it. All the waiters were magicians and they would perform sleight of hand tricks while waiting on you. John, being a professional magician himself, was in heaven. John also enjoyed collecting magician memorabilia. He always had a laugh, and a chuckle. And he always had an engrossing tale to tell. He was an outgoing personality when you got to know him. He just had that type of personality. We always enjoyed the time we spent with him. He was very unique and kind, and when you’d write to him he’d reply, even if someone wrote him something like, “I’m a teenager and I’m interested in this article you wrote,” and that person would get a letter back.
Brent Raynes: Yeah, I know. I’ve still got letters from him that I wrote him back in my teen years. I’ve got one that was three pages in length, single spaced typewritten and filled in top to bottom. I was truly impressed to think that this prominent author and investigative figure would take the time to type me out such a lengthy and detailed message. Truth be known, I didn’t want him to know I was a teenager, as I recalled reading somewhere the troubles he had with visits to UFO clubs dominated with little ‘ole ladies in tennis shoes and wet behind the ears teenaged UFO buffs, so I struggled to sound as adult as I could, but in hindsight today I doubt that I fooled him.
Bernard O’Connor: To be a teenager again. When people find out I investigated UFOs and such in the past, I tell them no I’m not that guy now. I tell them I’m pushing 73 this year and I just can’t go running out into a muddy field at 2 a.m. because a little old lady in tennis shoes called me up looking at Venus.
Brent Raynes: I’ve been on some of those trips. I’m 73 now so we’re in the same boat.
Bernard O’Connor: Well, just keep paddling. We’ll get there!
Brent Raynes: In my monthly online magazine Alternate Perceptions I have a regular column entitled Reality Checking. Sometimes it feels like, ‘’Doggone, what do I put out there this time?” It starts to feel like you’re hopelessly going in circles at times, like your ongoing messaging and storyline is feeling like an old time record player where a scratch on the record causes the content to play over and over again.
Bernard O’Connor: Oh yes, the same old vinyl record playing things over and over again. Ufology is a lot like that song, “everything old is new again.” Cases keep repeating themselves over and over again. The humanoids reported in the fifties never seem to wear out their welcome.
Brent Raynes: The same old song and dance. Reminds me of a comment Keel made to me in a phone conversation once how ufologists were often like a dog chasing its tail in circles. Anyway, again as a teenaged “ufologist” I had a mimeographed newsletter called the Scientific Sauceritis Review and I had some consultants whose names are still recognizable today. For example, Lucius Farish, who as I recall was my mystery airship consultant.
Bernard O’Connor: Oh yes, Lucius. He was the recognized expert in historical airship research. In fact, historical UFO research in general. I thought of him as a modern day Charles Fort, laboring away in dusty archives looking for clues. He wrote many articles for OFFICIAL UFO. He also collaborated with Jerome Clark, Dale M. Titler and many more. He was a really, really nice guy. I met him in person when I went to Fort Smith, Arkansas to the Bill Pitts’ UFO big United States UFO conference back in 1975.
Brent Raynes: Yes, he really was a super nice guy. He was one of my earliest correspondents in ufology and I got to finally meet him myself at the UFO conference in Eureka Springs, Arkansas in April 2007. I even had Loren Coleman as the “ABSM consultant” and while I couldn’t convince Keel to be a consultant, he did exchange his Anomaly newsletter with me in exchange for mine Why did you leave OFFICIAL UFO?
Bernard O’Connor: Actually, I started out doing the magazine as a side gig. I was also working at an ad agency at the time as an art director. As it is in the ad biz, one day you have the account, one day you don’t. And that’s what happened. The agency decided to fire everybody. So, then I did Official UFO really almost full time with some agency freelance work to keep my foot in the business. After about a year, and countless interviews later, I was offered a very good agency job that would have taken all my time, so I had to give up Official UFO. To tell the truth, I sort of needed a break from it too because this sort of thing can overtake your life. You can feel trapped. The frustration builds. Come on, what’s the answer? Oh wait, there’s a new sighting. Will this give us the answer? Are we going to solve it with this new evidence? So, you reach a point where you need a break sometimes. And it has happened to researchers in the past. Even Keel warned about it.
Brent Raynes: Yeah, it’s like a revolving door, or again that record on the record player that’s stuck on the groove. And it’s not groovy. It’s annoying.
Bernard O’Connor: In truth, I have known very few UFO authors who could quit their day jobs. Skeptics like to say, “They are only in it for the money!” But serious Ufologists need to have a career elsewhere for their pay day. Even those dedicated authors who have written several books.
Brent Raynes: It seems like Tim Beckley came the closest. He was publishing and promoting books he was churning out quite regularly. It seemed like monthly almost. He would even get other authors to help out by submitting a chapter or two in them. I had helped him out that way in several of his books. He even reached out to me in 2009 about doing a book of my own taking a number of articles and interviews that I had previously done in my magazine. That book was entitled On the Edge of Reality.
Bernard O’Connor: I don’t have that one. The thing about Tim Beckley is sometimes I wondered how serious he was about the field. Was he in it for the money? He was doing so many other things, talent and PR agent. I know he published a ton of books and folks bought them. But I always got that “Trickster” vibe from him.
Brent Raynes: I know he covered a wide range of things besides the UFOs. Conspiracies, the occult and witchcraft, the alleged Nazi UFO connection, Nikola Tesla, shamanism, Richard Shaver, Hawaii’s Madame Pele, the mysterious fireballs, and the little people, which I must confess having followed the Keelian road less traveled he provided me with some noteworthy leads. Some of what he covered I was certainly interested in. I also did an extensive interview with him that I even included in that book I wrote for him, which he claimed to have had UFO and paranormal experiences himself going back to his childhood. I believe he indeed had a serious interest, but he could come off as a showman too, and that made some people wonder.
Bernard O’Connor: Yeah, I would say it did. He was very involved with that circle of folks like Moseley and Gray Barker too. I felt those two “partners-in-crime” were true tricksters. Though they did contribute an awful lot to early Ufology. I did meet Beckley on several occasions, and it was always interesting and cordial.
Brent Raynes: Speaking of that circle, Allen Greenfield is still around and active in the field. I met him not too long ago in Nashville at the Strange Realities conference where we have both done some presentations. We had a private moment where we got to sit down together and had a pleasant chat about the good old days of ufology, like you and I are doing now.
Bernard O’Connor: I met him also at that 1975 conference. They were advocating what they called Middle Ufology. It was sort of that fringe movement. They felt nuts and bolts was sort of not proving itself. There was also Gene Steinberg there who was a part of that too.
Brent Raynes: Tim Beckley did a very interesting interview with Keel back around I think the mid-1980s. From that interview I learned about some of Keel’s earlier life experiences with unexplained phenomena like when he was age seven and riding at night through the New York countryside with his stepdad and mother they noticed what they initially thought was a barn on fire on a hilltop. But then it rose up into the air, and they saw that it was a glowing sphere. Then suddenly it took off at high speed and disappeared into the night sky.
Bernard O’Connor: That was Keel?! I never knew that about him and his early brush with the unknown.
Brent Raynes: Yes, that was Keel. He also recounted when he was around age ten that people around where he was living claimed they had seen a gorilla crossing the road. People were scared and farmers were going out with rifles. Then the activity ceased. Keel also described poltergeist activity. Rapping sounds on the walls. He said he tried rapping back to see if he could communicate with it. At age 18, he had one of those mystical illumination experiences he said, claiming he suddenly “understood everything” and was “one with the cosmos.” But the next day he could remember very little.
I think that those early experiences Keel described and then the UFO investigations he pursued years later beginning in 1966 made him realize that there was a potential crossover between UFOs, the poltergeists, cryptids, and the whole psychic smorgasbord. While mainstream ufology typically treated such accounts with much skepticism and being a UFO repeater was like the kiss of death, Keel was one of the first to recognize that certain people (and sometimes their families) exhibited an odd proneness to such experiences.
Bernard O’Connor: Right. Incredible things happen to credible people. They’d often point to police officers and military personnel to make a strong case for the reality of UFO phenomena, but that doesn’t mean that the average person can’t correctly observe unusual events or various life changing paranormal occurrences, rather than assuming, “Oh, nah, that must be a hallucination. Maybe a spotlight?”
Brent Raynes: It’s hard for some people. Certain things trigger cognitive dissonance even with confirmed UFO believers. But Keel came up with this little mantra in The Mothman Prophecies: “Belief is the enemy.”
Bernard O’Connor: It reminds me of UFO witnesses who will say, “You know, I didn’t believe in any of this until it happened to me.”
Brent Raynes: Yup, I’ve heard people say that.
In an interview with Tim Beckley, Keel remarked how in the beginning a lot of folks in the UFO field were quite resistant to the psychic aspects he was finding in his field work, but over time fellow investigators were confirming for themselves what he had discovered. Beckley then commented, “So you’ve triumphed in the end. How does it feel?” Keel fired back, “It’s a hollow victory. We have just opened Pandora’s box. Instead of solving the mystery, we’ve created many new ones.” https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/my-god-rfk-jr-faces-warning-from-trump-administration-after-graphic-on-air-admission-leaves-viewers-gagging-and-the-details-are-stomach-turning/ar-AA1Wjw7z?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=HCTS&cvid=6990989aeb8a4546a50c4ad226f0cfd8&ei=13
Bernard O’Connor: That’s like this Jack Weiner, who unfortunately died recently. He was one of the four people who experienced what we have come to call an “alien abduction” up in the Allagash region in Maine, described in a book by noted UFO author Ray Fowler. He and his twin brother were both abducted. They lived right here in the Lehigh Valley here in Pennsylvania. They had many ghost encounters as well as all kinds of paranormal experiences when they were kids. They used to have a ghost they called Henry. Ray Fowler devotes a whole chapter in his book to Henry. So, as children they already had a tie in to the paranormal which is a data set that turns up often when dealing with abductees.
Case in point, in 1976, Dick Ruhl, the lead investigator for APRO in New York state invited me to go upstate with him to investigate two reported UFO cases in the same general area. One involved a landing, the other photographs. The landing case was pretty straight forward, if a landing case can be considered straight forward. The second one took an interesting turn. We went from UFOs to Satanism and paranormal encounters. Dick and I experienced some pretty weird things while on site. It’s a lot to go into here. If you want, I can write It up for you.
Brent Raynes: Yes, please do. That would be most appreciated!
Bernard O’Connor: Sure, I’ll do that for your readers.
Brent Raynes: These things can be hard to wrap our minds around whether we’re talking the more standard UFO encounters to high strange claims like how you expressed in the investigation with your friend Dick where it takes off into a “whole different dimension.”
Some years ago, I interviewed for my magazine Dr. Leonard J. Ravitz, an esteemed Yale trained psychiatrist, about his very fascinating work in studying energy fields and their effects on humans and other life forms, including trees. He authored an extraordinary book entitled Electrodynamic Man: Electromagnetic Field Measurements in Biology, Medicine, Hypnosis and Psychiatry.
After finishing up our discussion on the science work he had done, I asked him to share about his UFO encounters that he had previously shared with my friend New Jersey psychiatrist Dr. Berthold Schwarz. Hesitantly he agreed, after explaining that he wanted my readers to understand that these were two separate issues, and he wasn’t saying that they were connected.
Nonetheless, his sightings were quite intriguing, he was a repeater, and in one instance his mom and dad had a strange potentially UFO related experience around the time he was having a UFO encounter of his own, except his was in Pennsylvania and theirs was in Ohio. However, when all was said and done, Dr. Ravitz didn’t shy from looking into what many would consider “paranormal” type situations. He helped Peter Jordan study a poltergeist case using hypnotherapy on a male subject who seemed to be the psychic catalyst behind the activity.
You never know where you’re going to end up with this stuff.
Bernard O’Connor: No, you don’t. I think with the whistle blowers saying we have government reverse engineered craft that’s quite popular but then like I said you go out on a case investigation, and they have other phenomena. There’s that clash of narratives.
Brent Raynes: Yeah, you sometimes can’t help but wonder about the disclosure movement being an effort to redirect us at times on certain things.
Bernard O’Connor: An effort to redirect a lot of people. Yes. UFOlogy has now become a spectator’s sport whereas you and I were boots on the ground in our beginning days. Let’s start a club, you know? Let’s get a mimeograph machine.
Brent Raynes: I read a statement attributed to Jacques Vallee recently where he felt that ufologists need to get back doing field work again. Acquiring testimony from regular everyday people.
Bernard O’Connor: Yes! You have to go face-to-face with people. You have to talk to them and listen to them and look at other outside factors that might be influencing reporting. Dr. Hynek said something like, “I don’t investigate UFOs. I investigate people who reports UFOs.” Knowing how to approach and interview people makes a difference between an investigator who qualified data or not. Like Vallee states, “Good data will create connections and if we’re smart enough to see them then we’ll understand them. And that’s what I feel is lacking today. Qualified data.
We don’t seem to see the raw data anymore like we used to. Take, for example, Year of the Humanoids by Walter Webb from Hynek’s group, published in 1973. That is a true type of qualitative and quantitative data. It’s available for free download, courtesy of the Center for UFO Studies. Here’s the link: https://cufos.org/PDFs/books/1973-Year of the Humanoids.pdf
Brent Raynes: England’s Flying Saucer Review for years published major contributions from researchers worldwide.
Bernard O’Connor: FSR? The best, the absolute best!
Brent Raynes: I remember The Humanoids, published in 1969, with an introduction by Charles Bowen, then editor of the Review with chapters by major authors like Aime Michel, Gordon Creighton, Coral Lorenzen, Dr. W. Buhler, and others, with over 300 cases of reported landings and occupant encounters.
Bernard O’Connor: There was The Humanoids and I think three other specials. One was Percipients.
Brent Raynes: And I remember Dr. Schwarz sending me FSR’s Beyond Condon in 1969 that John Keel contributed heavily to.
Bernard O’Connor: Yes, that’s one of them. Did you ever see FSR’s Case Histories? They only did about eighteen of them.
Brent Raynes: No, I don’t think I did.
Bernard O’Connor: They were reports that they couldn’t get in their regular issues. Sort of like a companion publication to FSR.
Brent Raynes: The close encounters and occupant sightings and interactions are the most intriguing cases. Sadly, though I don’t feel that many have an adequate understanding of precisely what these widely reported interactions truly represent. They inspire far too many to reach conclusions that seem more like psychological reflections of our belief systems and expectations.
I feel Keel was correct when he pointed out that ufology would have been better served as a branch of parapsychology. Like Keel wrote, “Belief is the enemy.” Those intriguing surface appearances, which come in too many different though somewhat similar shapes and forms, too easily conform to some of our most subjective beliefs and Jung’s archetypes of the collective unconscious and often provide answers and explanations that prove incorrect.
Are we dealing with a non-human trickster mindset, or as some have postulated are we unconsciously co-creating a lot of this phenomena, as parapsychologists have speculated that poltergeist activity is tied in with the human unconscious?
Bernard O’Connor: I know. Almost all occupant reports of today, we have described numerous entity types. Now today we have the archetype of the Grey. Is this being the true face of the collective phenomenon? Or are we being programmed via media and external manipulations to believe it? Are aliens really in our minds and do they manage to escape our psyche occasionally via some sort of projection to dance upon a stage of our own making?
Brent, I think all of this is indeed above my pay grade as well. But I keep looking for answers.
