Jerome Clark
Magonia 12, 1983
The nadir of my career as a Fortean was reached in 1973 when I was researching and writing an article which subsequently appeared in
Fate, and was later incorporated into the text of
The Unidentified, a book co-authored by Loren Coleman, who is blameless in the horror story to follow. Years before then, back when I was 11 or 12 years old, I was rummaging through the library of the small Minnesota town where I grew up. I came upon a book entitled
The Coming of the Fairies by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
On June 25, 1947, a falsifiable hypothesis about the transparently bogus character of the "flying disc" reports suddenly flooding the American press would have advanced the following confident predictions: The excitement is a fad which will fade before it can do further harm to society. The most sensational and suggestive reports will collapse under scrutiny. 
The nadir of my career as a Fortean was reached in 1973 when I was researching and writing an article which subsequently appeared in Fate, and was later incorporated into the text of The Unidentified, a book co-authored by Loren Coleman, who is blameless in the horror story to follow. Years before then, back when I was 11 or 12 years old, I was rummaging through the library of the small Minnesota town where I grew up. I came upon a book entitled The Coming of the Fairies by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.