Alternate Perceptions Magazine, February 2026
An exclusive interview with Bernard O’Connor, the founding editor of Official UFO Magazine back in 1975. Part One.
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: Your Official UFO book just arrived a few hours ago. It's certainly jam-packed with all sorts of great articles contributed by many of the early ufological pioneers who we today stand on the shoulders of. Flipping through its many pages I came across many memorable and fascinating stories from those many years ago. For example, Rachel Baker and Her Little Friends by Don Worley. I paid Don a personal visit in 1975 and the following year returned to Indiana and visited with "Rachel Baker" (not her real name) at her country home. Boy she had some truly spooky tales. My mom was with me during that visit and when "Rachel" left the room for a brief moment, she nervously whispered words to the effect: "I hope you're not planning to spend the night here." I assured her we'd be returning to Fairfield, Ohio, where we were staying with Charlie and Geri Wilhelm of the Ohio UFO Investigators League.
Bernard O’Connor: You really met Rachel? That must have been something. Spooky indeed. My wife Cathy, who is my proofreader, commented on the article several times. “Is this for real, this is really weird?”, she would ask. My response was always, "If it was anybody else besides Don Worley, I probably wouldn't have bought it."
I'm glad your first-hand experience with Baker supports the case.
Brent Raynes: I also visited the Flying Saucer News Bookstore in New York City and in my travels met some of your authors like Earl Neff, George Fawcett, Robert Goerman, Lucius Farish, and Wendelle Stevens, and many I don't see here but who were deeply involved and committed to trying to make sense of the UFO enigma as well.
Bernard O’Connor: Thank you for the kind words and for sharing your many adventures in Ufology. I'm getting a lot of feedback much like yours, especially about the Flying Saucer Bookstore. I can't believe the number of people who were in and out of there.
Every so often, I take a book off of the shelf, open it to the first page and there's Jim's mailing label, front and center. Now that takes me back big time.
Brent Raynes: Like yourself, it was Frank Edwards' Flying Saucers - Serious Business back in 1966 that set me on this path. And I see you were a card-carrying member of Keel's New York Fortean Society. I began corresponding with him in October 1969 and even exchanged my mimeographed "magazine" Scientific Sauceritis Review for his Anomaly. I wrote a book entitled John A. Keel: The Man, The Myths, and the Ongoing Mysteries (2019), still available on Amazon. I'll provide here an attachment of the book's contents if you haven't read it.
Bernard O’Connor: I have your book about Keel. Great job! In fact, I have recommended it to many people over the years. I also enjoyed your many interviews on Fate Radio, High Strangeness Factor and more. I really liked the one with Jeffery Mishlove. I think his channel is outstanding. He turned me on to the books of Charles Upton. I see a lot of “Keelian philosophy” running through his work.
Brent Raynes: Glad you liked my Keel book. I appreciate the recommendations to other people. And yes, Jeffrey Mishlove's interviews have certainly been a great contribution to the "paranormal" community. I initially wrote him to pick his brain about Uri Geller and Ted Owens, the PK Man, which I did do two interviews with him for my magazine later, but in the process when he found that I had known psychiatrist, parapsychologist Dr. Berthold Schwarz and Dan Drasin, who is mentioned in Mothman Prophecies several times, (and maybe one or two others) he wanted me to be on his New Thinking Allowed, which is an honor of course, but was unexpected. But heck, networking is something we all need to engage with, especially with folks like Jeffrey. I also enjoyed being on Anthony Peake's Consciousness Hour out of England. He takes a deep dive into all sorts of aspects of the "paranormal" - NDEs, UFOs, Marian apparitions, etc. etc.
By the way, as a teenager I corresponded with a Michael Lindner who used to talk about the Flying Saucer News Bookstore and who later became a member also of the New York Fortean Society. Perhaps you connected with him? We used to correspond and I also visited him in New York one time. Back then he used to have a friend named John Manno who investigated haunted sites and such and investigated Mount Misery on Long Island. Jaye P. Paro who was back then a broadcaster for WBAB radio out of Babylon, New York (and who figured prominently in Keel's later writings like The Mothman Prophecies) wrote an article about Mount Misery in Beyond magazine, in the July 1969 issue. In April 1972, a high school chum and I took a road trip to New York and Pennsylvania and ended up briefly at Mount Misery, and that trip too is when I met Robert Goerman in Pennsylvania. We had been corresponding back then about UFOs and the MIB.
I wrote an article about all of that, which I'll attach a link to you to read. (June 2020 issue) Link: https://www.apmagazine.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1491&Itemid=53 Bernard O’Connor: Thank you for your articles, they will make for welcome reading on this snowbound day. I can't believe all the traveling and first-hand experiences you had back in the Golden Age of Ufology with so many people. When I got involved with WBAB, it was through Dick Ruhl, and he introduced me to Joel Martin and Dick and I appeared on Joel's show many times. Never met Jaye Paro. Dick Ruhl acted as an “outside producer” for Joel and managed to get local UFO investigators and well-known UFO personalities on the show. The great John Keel among them.
I knew Mike Linder. He used to co-edit Flying Saucer News along with Jim Rigberg. Mike also filled in for Jim at the store when he had to do chores or something. Nice guy and he really knew his UFO stuff. We lost touch for some reason along the way. I did see him at a few Fortean Society meetings on Saturdays. He was always friendly.
In compiling my book, I got back in touch with Robert Goermann. I reprinted his article, The UFO Modus Operandi, please see page 270. He's still going strong with his Nonhuman Research Agency, (724) 335-0197, see page 299.
Brent Raynes: I met Don Worley back in September 1975 ar his home in Cornersville, Indiana. I was 23, driving a green 4-door car with a green interior. I guess that looked like an army car, plus I was fresh out of active duty with the Navy. He came out and wrote down my license number when I pulled into his driveway. He initially wondered if I was from the government. I got that a number of times back then. But by the time we sat down in his house and talked, he laughed and said he realized I wasn't a government agent. One time I heard about a UFO seen by some police officers in northeastern Alabama and caught them all at shift change. I had a paper for them to fill out. I remember one of the older gentlemen came up to me afterwards with his paper and asked something like, "You boys sure work fast. Who are you with?" I explained I was freelance, doing this out of my own interest and out of my own pocket. There was a lady up in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, just outside of Akron, who held skywatches and meditation sessions, and a lot of "experiencers" with interesting stories would show up there on Saturdays, and so I made it a point to drop by off and on, with my cassette recorder, and see what kind of stories I'd hear. Madeline Teagle, who was the person over all of this, was also a "contactee," and a few times she'd ride with me to go visit one of her contacts and review their accounts. I should add how one day she told me some attendees at her home wondered if I was a government agent. Anyway, Jacque Booth of Avon Lake, Ohio was one of the experiencers we visited. A remarkable case. It involved a healing. I believe you had an article on her story in your magazine back then. I was in touch with Dr. Berthold Schwarz, the New Jersey psychiatrist back then who was very heavily involved in parapsychology and who John Keel convinced to enter the UFO field as well, which he did. He wrote the two volume UFO Dynamics, which I have a chapter in on a Maine case that originally appeared in England's Flying Saucer Review.
Bernard O’Conner: I'm reprinting the Avon Lake UFO healing case that you referred to in my next book. It was written by Allen Benz. A really strange case.
I have both editions of Preston Dennett’s books that deal with UFO healings. The pendulum swings in Ufology are very dramatic, which only confounds the mystery. One minute they are burning witnesses with hot jets, like the Eagle Lake incident in Canada, the next minute, our visitors are restoring sight and curing ulcers, as they did at Avon Lake.
But like you, Keel blew my doors off with his many articles in Saga and Argosy, etc. And his books? Fuhgeddaboudit! My absolute favorite cover of all time is the paperback cover of Strange Creatures from Time and Space, painted by Frazetta. When Frazetta was still alive, we visited his museum in the Poconos. He had a bad habit of repainting over his earlier artwork and adding new elements. He had the original art of the cover on display, but he painted out the Explorer and added one of his famous Barbarian women. It broke my heart.
Today, I don't think there is one UFO book that's published that doesn't mention Keel, or Vallee for that matter. YouTube has a ton of Keel's talks, and I never tire of them. My wife, Cathy and I used to have dinner with John quite often. There was a restaurant near eighth avenue in the twenties that had a Magician's theme. All the waiters were Magicians and performed sleight of hand tricks when they served you. John was in heaven. I used to run into him frequently in the streets of New York, and he was always going to or coming from an auction of Magician memorabilia. An interesting fact about the restaurant was it was right around the corner where Nikola Tesla attached a machine to a building's steel girder and almost caused an earthquake. I don't know if the building is still there, but it used to have a plaque on it stating that fact.
The good old days!
Brent Raynes: You'll recall in my book Keel's literary agent Sandra Martin used to go to a restaurant nearby with Keel from her office where there would be magicians at a restaurant there. She really was impressed with his writing. I wonder if this is the same place? I really liked her story of how she and Keel went together to a special gathering of a supposed psychic at Ingo Swann's home and Keel picked up immediately that the so-called psychic was using a magic trick and insisted they both immediately leave, as he didn't want to end up in any pictures as the press was there, which could have hurt both their reputations he explained to her once outside. It turned out that the supposed “psychic” had been brought in by New York parapsychologist Alex Imich. Keel’s friend Doug Skinner told me how he was with Keel one time when he tried to make Imich aware how he needed to be cautious. Doug told me, “John tried to tell him that some psychic phenomena were simply magic tricks. John was a lifelong magic buff and thought investigators should know some of the basics of sleight-of-hand.”
Part two of our interview will be continued in the next issue.
Check out the book review section in this issue as I did a review of Bernard’s recently released volume The Official History of Official UFO Magazine. Lots of great material there. Certainly a real treat for new comers to the subject with many wonderful articles that appeared in this magazine back during the mid-1970s.
