Anomaly Archives Announcement – May 23, 2025
Coming Up For This Month’s Anomaly-Academy Patron Presentation…
Adam Gorightly Presents…
“The Bob Beck Collection: Space Age Photos From The Past!”
Sunday, May 25th, 2025 at 5pm Central / 3pm Pacific
“What initially inspired myself and collaborator Greg Bishop to co-author A is for Adamski: The Golden Age of the UFO Contactees was the discovery of The Beck Collection, a series of photos taken by a fellow (you guessed it) named Bob Beck.
In 1948, Robert “Bob” Beck (1925-2002), started a photographic-audiovisual firm, Color Control Color Laboratories Company, that designed special lighting techniques for a number of MGM productions like An American in Paris and Show Boat. In the 1960s, Beck was responsible for the groundbreaking special effects featured in Roger Corman’s psychedelic epic The Trip.
Somewhere along the way, Beck befriended George Van Tassel, attending several Giant Rock Interplanetary Spacecraft Conventions where he photographed the UFO contactees in attendance, many of these photos which appear exclusively in A is for Adamski. Van Tassel’s work in “cellular rejuvenation” dovetailed with similar interests shared by Beck related to alternative health cures produced by electromagnetism. To this end, Beck was involved—at least in an advisory capacity—with the construction of Van Tassel’s Integratron.”
– Adam Gorightly on The Bob Beck Collection
AdamGorightly.com / ChasingUFOsBlog.com / HistoriaDiscordia.com
Live Lecture Link for Adam Gorightly on The Bob Beck Collection
MEANWHILE … So much has been going on in the weird wild world of UFOlogy / UAPology it can be hard to track it all. Check out founder SMiles Lewis’ recent coverage of all things anomalous in the two most recent episodes of Anomaly-NOW!
Also, check out all the latest Anomaly News Headlines linked below through our Flipboard Magazine or on the website here: Anomaly Archives News Links 5/23/2025
Email: Contact@AnomalyArchives.org
Anomaly Archives founder, SMiles Lewis
SMiles Lewis / Founder
AnomalyArchives.org
SMilesLewis.com
The Anomaly Archives Weekly Email Newsletter
“Agnostic gnostic, walking conundrum & metaphysical oxymoron (with emphasis in the ‘moron’ part), the mysterious RPJ leaves a double life: By day he serves as Grand Master of the International Sacred Order of Lucha Libre, but at night he pursues his life-long study of everything considered mysterious and/or ‘paranormal’ –a term he personally detests… When he’s not exploring the web looking for his daily fix of Forteana, he can be found blogging, doodling, fooling around and offering his services as news administrator and writer at The Daily Grail. He also regularly participates in other websites and podcasts like Radio Misterioso and Where Did the Road Go? He impatiently awaits for the return of the mothership in Mexico City.”
“Brent has been the Editor of Alternate Perceptions Magazine since he began publishing earlier renditions of it in the 1970s. Brent began researching UFO events in the late 60s and met nearly every major contactee and researcher in the field. He wrote articles for Fate Magazine, Recovery Times, and various other magazines as well as writing a chapter for Dr. Bert Schwarz’s UFO Dynamics, sections for Dr. Greg Little’s Grand Illusions and People of the Web. He has presented at several major UFO conferences and been a co-leader of tours to American mound sites. Brent is author of the books Visitors from Hidden Realms and On The Edge of Reality.”
Chris Rutkowski, BSc, MEd, is a Canadian science writer and educator, with a background in astronomy but with a passion for teaching science concepts to children and adults. Since the mid-1970s, he also has been studying reports of UFOs and writing about his investigations and research. He has published several books, including: Visitations? (1989); Unnatural History (1993); Mysterious Manitoba, co-authored with Dave Creighton and Brian Fidler (1997); Abductions and Aliens (2000); The Canadian UFO Report , co-authored with Geoff Dittman (2006); A World of UFOs (2008), I Saw It Too! (2009) and The Big Book of UFOs (2010). Rutkowski also has contributed chapters to many anthologies such as Phenomenon, Frontiers of Reality and UFO 1947-1997, a 50th anniversary review of the UFO phenomenon. He was a contributing editor of International UFO Reporter and was the editor of the Swamp Gas Journal, an occasional ufozine first published in 1978 when he was part of Decadent Winnipeg Fandom. He is a past-president of the Winnipeg Science Fiction Society and was part of the Winnipeg SF community that gathered Saturdays at the home of the legendary “first fan” Chester Cuthbert. He is currently vice president of the Manitoba Writers’ Guild. Chris Rutkowski blogs at: 
“When I was a child I was always interested in strange and unusual subjects. I was extremely interested in dinosaurs as I’m sure most kids are. When I was 9 years old the story of the Lake Worth Monster hit the front page of the Ft. Worth Star Telegram. My grandparents had a cabin cruiser boat on Eagle Mountain Lake which was separated by a dam from Lake Worth. I had spent many a night on that boat anchored out in the middle of Eagle Mountain Lake. As you can guess, the many scenarios involving the creature ran through my head. The story died down in November of 1969. The next year I obtained a copy of John A. Keel’s book Strange Creatures from Time & Space. It was very influential to me. Of course, like most people interested in Bigfoot, I saw the movie The Legend of Boggy Creek. I saw it in the theater and it made me think about the possibility that Bigfoot was closer to me than I had previously thought. … We formed the Texas Bigfoot Research Center in June of 1999. The rest as they say is history. In January, 2007, the TBRC reorganized as a 501(c)(3), non-profit, scientific research organization. The organization’s name was the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy. In March 2013, the organization has adopted the name North American Wood Ape Conservancy (NAWAC). I resigned from the organization on July 10, 2010 to focus my attention on other endeavors, such as Cryptomundo. As of December 24, 2013, I have resurrected the original TBRC, the Texas Bigfoot Research Center. 
A radical hybrid of spy, sci-fi, Western, and even horror genres, Craig Baldwin‘s Mock Up On Mu cobbles together a feature-length “collage-narrative” based on (mostly) true stories of California’s post-War sub-cultures of rocket pioneers, alternative religions, and Beat lifestyles.
The Anomaly Archives Weekly Email Newsletter
. . . Susan Lepselter, an anthropology professor at Indiana University Bloomington, pointed out that the times we live in have a lot to do with the fears that inform our thinking about UFOs — from the nuclear era to global warming.
Bob Girard (1942-2011) was a legendary collector and seller of rare books, specializing in UFO literature and related fringe subject matter. In today’s age of internet ubiquity, instant gratification, and declining print media outlets, Robert Girard’s name is not widely known among UFO believers nor paranormal enthusiasts. His name is, however, remembered among many long-time UFO researchers, paranormal writers, and the DIY self-publishers of the 1980s and ’90s alt-media “Zine Scene.” He is remembered as the brutally frank bibliophile who published his incisive insights in concise micro-reviews, monthly, distributed world-wide across six continents. Despite his contribution of a handful of small books (The Revolt of the Free and Futureman to name only two) and over 30 years of service to the book-hungry global network of para-cultural knowledge seekers, he has yet to be acknowledged by the history books. Though in fact, he and his Arcturus Books service are mentioned in several UFO books including within the source citations of academic (and scholar of new religious movement studies) author James R. Lewis’ The Gods Have Landed.
Before becoming “the Marcel Proust of the UFO phenomenon” (John Chambers, 2004) Robert was an enlisted man in the United States Air Force, serving from 1964 to 1968 at Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey and Wichita Falls, Texas, until he received an honorable discharge at the rank of sergeant. In 1978 he and his family moved to Ecuador where they lived for two years before returning home to Scotia, New York, where Robert had spent his high school and college years. It was there that he began pursuing his dream of starting his own rare book business with a niche focus on the most esoteric and Occult books within the UFO and paranormal milieus.
“…We don’t have to describe the thrills to be found in reading UFO literature; we feel sure that you already know many of them. We have noticed this, however, in our own 25 years plus interest in UFOs and their literature: that as one’s interest in UFOs deepens, one is led into other fascinating areas of study through the study of Ufolit. To adopt a truly panoramic understanding of flying saucers, one must study such allied areas as Astroarchaeology, Astronomy, History, Mythology, Parapsychology and Religion. Through Ufolit, one’s personal vision can expand in many ways, and the entire course of one’s life may be changed—for the better.” (ArcStarBooks.com, “Never Cease from Exploration…,” June 2013)
There are a number of rare editions of classic flying saucer contactee books, several autographed by their authors. Bob had a special interest in the Contactees and at one time came into possession of George Hunt Williamson’s personal files, most of which were later sold to researcher Michael Swords for archival preservation. Bob’s interest in the Contactees went so far that he published “a reproduction of fifties contactee Truman Bethurum’s own scrapbook” (Ignacio Darnaude). We’ve just scratched the surface of his donated collection and I’m very excited to catalog these invaluable pieces of Fortean / Ufological history.
Bob Girard reviewed, bought, and sold the many different esoteric self-published zines that were, in a sense, the precursors to the explosion of alternative media websites populating the internet in the late 1990s. These DIY zines were emerging from the handmade photocopier Samizdat screeds of the 1980s and becoming increasingly well-produced with the advent of easily accessible desktop publishing software. Zines like your own Steamshovel Press (which Bob said, “feed that dark feeling in the pit of your gut”), Wes Nations’ Crash Collusion, and so many others, helped propel these topics from the printed page into the internet age.
Retired Naval Officer, former NSA employee, and 25-year MUFON board member Tom Deuley acted as both mediator and facilitator of this donation to the Anomaly Archives including his personally paying for the shipping costs of moving the 80 boxes from Port St. Lucie, Florida to Austin, Texas. The source of funding for the collection was arranged through the UFO Research Coalition which is made up of CUFOS (Center for UFO Studies), FUFOR (Fund for UFO Research), and MUFON (Mutual UFO Network). FUFOR arranged the funding for the URC and Tom hopes to have MUFON continue requesting funds for the upkeep of the collection.
Central Texas Fortean journalist and publisher Dennis Stacy (past writer for OMNI Magazine and editor of the MUFON UFO Journal and publisher of Anomalist Books)
