UFO Book From 1871
In 1979, St. Martin’s Press published a book entitled An Account Of A Meeting With Denizens Of Another World by a Victorian cabinetmaker and undertaker named William Robert Loosley. Edited and with commentary by SF writer David Langford, it was a transcription of a manuscript found hidden in an old desk, apparently written to document a UFO sighting and a late 19th century encounter with some sort of inscrutable animated machines which dropped from the sky.
In this secret manuscript, Loosley wrote that he witnessed a “moving star” near his home, then went for a walk in the woods the following afternoon and found a strange object where the “star” had alighted the previous night:
It is no easy matter to describe what I saw; a thing at whose sight a fresh access of awe and wonder held me rooted to the spot. The first likeness which sprang to my mind was from an engraving of Plato’s perfect solids (as apprentice I was once set to carve all five in boxwood): the Icosahedron or twenty-faced body. The skulker in the leaves, then, resembled an Icosahedron all of glittering metal; about eighteen inches in height, with perhaps more facets than your true Platonic body (I am not certain), and these less perfect in their regularity. But the edges were not sharp; they were rounded and smoothed by some craftsman who could achieve in metal what’s difficult enough in wood. The symmetry was marred further by many small nubs and protuberances of the same shiny metal; scarcely a facet was free of such a blemish…with the sound of a small and well-oiled lock, it opened what I could think of was an eye. To be exact, one rounded protuberance which now pointed towards me proved itself to be moveable; the metal skin thereof flew back into the body of this object, disclosing a glass or crystal lens a little less than an inch across.
Loosley describes a slow-paced chase which ensued, the little apparatus following him though the woods, which soon ended as he turned and followed it back as it picked up a dead rat and stole his walking stick, placing it into a larger object which closed its door. After a sort of light show, large, “faceted thing” arrived and bestowed another light show and a sort of psychodrama on the puzzled carpenter. Shortly after nightfall, the objects disappeared into the heavens.
Whitley Strieber referred to this account in his excellent 1989 novel Majestic. It remained one of those obscure stories that some UFO enthusiasts remember from “somewhere,” and refer to when looking for evidence to impress the curious.
Strieber (and undoubtedly others) were not amused when Langford confessed that he had made the whole thing up. He wrote to Langford’s publisher when working on the book, but the letter was never forwarded and Streiber decided to incorporate it anyway as part of his “factional” story.
Langford had access to all of the relevant biographical information on Loosley’s family, as he was married to the supposed author’s great-great granddaughter. To his credit as a fictional writer, the text is remarkably accurate in the British Victorian idiom (at least to my untutored eye) and he apparently took pains to research the relevant UFO, contactee and abduction literature and adapt it to a supposed 19th century mindset. There are a few subtle slip-ups, but nothing that would really alert the casual reader. One glaring hint that the whole thing was a put-on is that no reproductions of Loosley’s actual manuscript are included.
It also seems strange that Langford would state in the preface:
The great problem of UFOs has always been the tendency of people to call them unidentified flying objects and, in almost the same breath, to identify them-normally as visitors from somewhere Out There. To leap from a belief that certain phenomena are unidentified to the assertion of extraterrestrial origin is not exactly in accordance with scientific logic, unless some chain of evidence can be established (and no, we cannot simply throw out the the entire edifice of scientific logic with such readiness.) But neither is it scientific to dismiss the problem.
I am not sure if Langford is an interested skeptic or a skeptical “believer,” but he does drop hints here and there in the text that the UFO subject is worthy of study by serious people. Was he joking about this too?
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Aug 08 2008 
August 8th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
This is very similar to Peter Levenda’s “Necronomicon” books under the name “Simon.” For example Levenda has a new book out on astral alchemy and then Simon’s latest Necronomicon book is focused on the same subject. Meanwhile the Necronomicon is actually a creation of Lovecraft…which is the fiction or faction? If the waking state is actually a dream then what is real? The answer lies in how Lovecraft made up words which were actually unpronouncable in the visual state — unlocking the secret of the Oz Effect or Plato’s Timeaus.
August 12th, 2008 at 11:29 am
From “Between the Sheets” Book review:
“An Account of a Meeting with Denizens of Another World, 1871 reports to be just that, an account of meeting between William Robert Loosley and ‘perhaps’ visitors from another world. It consists of a central essay, supposedly written by Loosley, but found in the papers of a long dead Langford relative. This is surrounded by a short introduction and lengthier following explanation, both courtesy of Mr (or should that be Dr) Langford.
The account itself is entertaining enough and encourages the reader to guess at the strange sights reported by the essayist. Some are obvious, such as the Camera device and Holographic projectors, whilst some are fairly cryptic requiring the reader to speculate, with the advantage of 20th Century knowledge, much in the manner that Loosley himself speculates from a 19th Century standpoint.
All the sights are then explained, from a slightly sceptical viewpoint in the later sections. In these later sections the book shines. Langford writes with just the right mixture of incredulity and disbelief, and manages to carry off the spoof perfectly.
Unquestionably the book is indeed a spoof, which the author now admits, but which has nevertheless fooled many would be believers. Most famously these include Whitley Strieber, of abduction and anal probing fame, who quotes the central narrative, without permission in his 1989 book Majestic. Mr Strieber is one of those charmless ‘Chariot of the Gods’ style cranks who, apparently, refuses to believe that this is a work of fiction.”
If you’re still interested, there are copies of Langford’s book available from Amazon starting at a penny apiece.
S
August 21st, 2008 at 1:28 am
I ran into this book when I was working in the Stack of a very big public library. Wish I’d grabbed it when it was sold off, as it’s a lovely piece of work. Loved Langford’s confession in Fort Times (I’m told it’s #86, but haven’t pulled it to check yet), too.