Corn Flakes

John Rimmer
Magonia 41, November 1991.

Now reduced to a local tourist attraction in England (although taken much more seriously in the USA) corn-circles were once seen as an integral part of the UFO phenomenon. However, by the time this article was written the increasing complexity of the designs meant that proponents of a ‘meteorological’ explanation were backtracking rapidly, leaving the subject almost entirely to the mystical New Age fringe. Eventually corn-circle making became almost a competitive sport!

Universe of Spies. Part 3, Eye-Yi-Yi

Martin Kottmeyer

Magonia 41, November 1991

“The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder…” (1) Darwin was speaking of the problem of explaining how the eye arose through a process of natural selection when he confessed these feelings to Asa Gray, but the power of the eye to elicit this sense of the uncanny is itself a product of evolved instinct. Staring eyes provoke physiological arousal in many species of animal.

Roswell: The Search for the ‘Real’ UFO

John Harney
Magonia 41, November 1991

Most European ufologists have long since given up naive interpretations of UFO reports in favour of psychological explanations. The Americans, however, are not satisfied with this; they want the space aliens and they are determined to persuade us of their reality. For many years they have argued that many abduction cases are real experiences — not real in the sense that the abductees really believe the events happened to them as reported, but interactions with real extraterrestrials (ETs).

Variation Enigmas

Thomas Bullard

Magonia 41, November 1991

Dennis Stillings writes (Magonia 39) that “concerns about variation … seem to me to have only peripheral significance when dealing with abduction accounts.” He adds that variation has no bearing on the central meaning of folklore, while personal, social and cultural modifications are irrelevant to the underlying experience. He objects that I have taken both variation and lack of variation in abduction reports to support a case for genuine aliens.