Dec 27 2006
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Greg’s Occasional Pic of the Moment #4 - Gray Barker
Gray Barker is one of my Ufological heroes, mainly because he saw the humor in the saucer subject. He also harbored a deeply inquisitive attitude about it, even though he didn’t let on about this to many people.
Somewhere, I have an mp3 of Barker talking to Jackie Gleason on the Long John Nebel show in the late 1960s. While Gleason tries to tear him a new one for joking about a promised ride on a UFO, Barker tries to carefully and politely explain why he made up the story (as a JOKE) and what his intentions were concerning the UFO mystery. Gleason never completely bought it. Perhaps he was tired of the contactees and their ilk, even though Barker was never even close to that crowd. I think that Gleason’s attitude was no-nonsense, macho, scientific, while Barker’s was playful and curious. Barker died in 1983, about a month before I called his home, only to have his mother tell me the horrible news. Although Barker was gay, there is still no evidence I am aware of that he died of AIDS.
Barker referred to UFO fans and researchers as “saucerers.” (Perhaps we should dust off this term and bring it into common usage instead of the “believer” label.) In 1968, he wrote to his friend John Sherwood: “Strictly off the record, unusual interest and fixation upon UFOs represents, in my opinion, a definite symptom of neurosis. I cannot (again off the record) bear for very long most of the people and the fans of saucerdom, mainly because most of them are oral aggressors (i.e., they talk all the time about saucers and make you listen). I do genuinely like a few saucerers (and former saucerers) like yourself, who, along with their interest in saucers, seem to be pretty sane and can have a sense of humor about it.”
In April of 2001, I attended the Fortfest in Baltimore with my writer friend Skylaire Alfvegren. With a day to spare and a rental car, we thought that a trip out to Clarksburg, West Virginia would make for a nice day. I wanted to visit the Gray Barker Room, located in the Clarksburg Public Library. Little did we know that many of the roads out east were not the straight, wide freeways of the southwest. As I remember, it took about 5 hours (even though mapquest quotes about four.) Maybe we had some missing time?
When we arrived at about 4:45 in the afternoon, we frantically searched for the library, and finally located it about five minutes before closing. David Houchin, the lonely librarian, was so excited that anyone would come so far just to see the Barker collection that he closed the doors at 5, but let us peruse the collection for as long as we wanted.
On the table in front of me is a copy of the “Varo Edition” of Morris K. Jessup’s Case For The UFO, a book which was marked up with notes supposedly penned by three “gypsies,” telling the reader where Jessup was onto something and where he was off base. It was later discovered that the mysterious “Carlos Allende” (originator of the Philadelphia Experiment story) was responsible for the gaffe. This rare book now fetches hundreds of dollars when it pops up on ebay and elsewhere, which is why Houchin had it hidden so well that it took him awhile to find it for us. On the table to my right is a picture of Barker.
On the way back, we ran into the most violent thunderstorm I have ever driven through. I couldn’t see more than a few feet, and more than once I thought we were going to get blown off the road and into a steep ravine. I don’t know if this had anything to do with Barker, Men In Black, UFOs or Jackie Gleason, but it seemed a fitting exclamation point to the end of the day.
P.S. Yes, that is Marshall “Heaven’s Gate” Applewhite peering over the top of the book.
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December 27th, 2006 at 7:58 pm
Greg:
Barker is, as you know, a much reviled figure in some ufological quarters. Which is a shame. For all his flaws (and he had them), he did get that at least some of the UFO story is more about us than it is about “them”. And with the Straith letter, he and Moseley helped expose Adamski for who he was.
Not quite my “hero”, but an important figure in ufological history to be sure.
Paul
December 27th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
This brings back some memories–back in 2002, when I was researching my MA thesis, I drove from Indianapolis to (The) Ohio State University’s UFO collection, and then on to the Clarksburg library in my aging Toyota Camry (230,000 miles!). I also took a side trip to Point Pleasant. Librarian David Houchin was a very helpful figure there, even though I think he was a little confused as to what I was trying to find (to be honest, I was looking at everything I could).
I still use some fun articles from Saucerian when I talk about the 50s to my history classes.
December 27th, 2006 at 8:57 pm
Paul,
Barker’s an “important figure,” but not important enough to include on the “50 most important” list? Tsk tsk.
I take pleasure in the hijinks that Barker pulled on the gullible. Probably becuase I just can’t bring myself to do it on the scale that he did.
The article on Barker by John Sherwood was on the CSICOP (oh wait, excuse me–the CSI) site. I guess they love him but conveniently forget that he had a real belief in the reality of the phenomenon. How quick they are to ignore his humorous take on things when they’re in “soul saving” mode.
December 27th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
El Firkono,
I’m glad to hear that you include a bit on the UFO phenomenon in your class. Good show!
I think Barker would have agreed with a commenter on Mac Tonnies’ site, who recently said “Let’s hypothesize a bit and see what we come up with WITHOUT HAVING A DOGMATIC ATTACHMENT TO OUR HYPOTHESIS.”