Flying Saucers From Hell: Alien Abductions and Satanic Cult Abductions

Bill Ellis
Magonia 40, August 1991

 

There are unquestionably, as John Rimmer states, ‘disturbing parallels’ between UFO abduction research and Satan-hunting. And folklorists are good at finding parallels among widely separated stories and traditions. We can suggest ways in which these coherences represent common human responses to stresses or represent revivals of motifs from the past. We should also be aware of why we are looking for such continuities. By discussing such stories as folklore, are we explaining, or explaining away?

Old Hat, New Hat

Michael Goss
Magonia 40, August 1991

Blame your editor. His BackPage invitation to Magonia readers to predict the next Great Unexplained Phenomenon set me a-thinking… Set me a-thinking that each successive Great Unexplained Phenomenon which rises from the obscurity of being known to the freakish few to becoming the possession of the millions.

Universe of Spies, Part 2. Eye In The Sky

Martin Kottmeyer
Magonia 40, August 1999

Do people want to believe aliens are spying on us? Surely it’s a trick question. Nobody would want to believe anything like that. The reconnaissance theory was an exasperated effort to make sense of a phenomenon that refused to be made sense of in any other terms. Want had nothing to do with it. What a galling sentiment!