Randle Reports

Kevin Randle. The Roswell Encyclopedia. Quill, 2000.

Kevin Randle and Russ Estes. Spaceships of the Visitors: An Illustrated Guide to Alien Spacecraft. Fireside Books, 2000.
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Kevin Randle is something of a puzzle. At times he gives clear evidence of having that rare commodity in ufology, a critical faculty, yet continues to champion the Roswell myth, based largely on 30-50 year old 'eyewitness testimony'. He does this despite the fact that 'prime witnesses' keep going down the plughole, the latest being Glenn Dennis. There is always someone else to jump on the bandwagon, with some personal tale, or tale told by a friend, or a friend of a friend.

Cynics might suggest that many of the 'witnesses' of Roswell are old people who are glad of the company and respectful attention of the researchers, and tell them what they want to hear. The less cynical might argue that people living around a top secret military faculty have had a number of odd experiences over the years, which in retrospect have got attached to the 1947 story. The conspiracy minded might suggest that, as with Rendlesham, there are those who are only too happy to keep the flying saucer stories running to divert attention from the real (terrestrial) secrets of Roswell.

Randle shows the same mixture in Spaceships of the Visitors which to a large extent is centred around some very dodgy UFO photographs. Most of these look like small models tossed into the air. In some cases, as in the Trent's, 'photographic analysis' is said to show that they were large objects. We Magonians would be rather more impressed by this if we did not recall all the strange unearthly things that 'experts' said about David Simpson's famous Warminster hoax, or that the current chief protagonist of the authenticity of the Trent photograph has also 'authenticated' the absurd hoaxes of Ed Walters. The usual arguments get trotted out about these type of photographs, often along the lines that 'these simple country people couldn't have made such an elaborate hoax'. Patronising nonsense. – Peter Rogerson. Magonia 74, April 2001.


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