Gray Barker was the founder of a popular UFO magazine, The Saucerian, and the author of They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. He was born on May 2, 1925, in Riffle,West Virginia.

Within the contemporary metaphysical/New Age subculture, it is widely assumed that the technologically advanced civilizations of legendary antiquity such as Atlantis are thought to have been inspired, founded, created, and/or administered by extraterrestrial visitors. Alternately, some have speculated that at least some ufonauts are human beings who survived the sinking of Atlantis by escaping into space on flying saucers.

Astrology, literally the study (or science, depending on how one translates the Greek word logos) of the stars (astron), has existed for millennia. Although astrology and UFOs are not necessarily connected, their proximity in the metaphysical subculture means that many believers in astrology also believe in the existence of UFOs.

The contemporary controversy over flying saucers began on June 25, 1947, when Kenneth Arnold, a young businessman and private pilot from Boise, Idaho, entered the office of the East Oregonian to talk to a journalist.

Area 51 is the unofficial but widely used name of a piece of U.S. Air Force land about 120 miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada. The designation is believed to have come from an old military map of the Nevada Test Site. The same area is also known as Dreamland and the Skunk Works.

Noted psychologist Carl Jung observed that while some UFOs seemed to have objective, external reality, the circular form of many flying saucers made them concrete symbols of what he called the “self” archetype.

The term “apparition” usually refers to immaterial appearances of people; apparitions are also known as ghosts, animals, objects, and spirits. Despite much skepticism, reports of apparitions have always had a particular importance in folk belief and in the history of religion.

Many current UFO-related religions have an apocalyptic component and a role for the Space Brothers to play in the Endtime. The term “apocalypse” has come to mean complete destruction, as in the title of the popular film, Apocalypse Now. Thus, in ordinary current usage, the term can refer to nonsupernatural mass destruction, such as would occur in the wake of an exchange of nuclear weapons.

While traditional societies have viewed every aspect of the world as being sacred, for reasons that are too complicated to develop in this short space the Judeo-Christian-Islamic family of religions divested the natural world of religious meaning.

Born in 1912, Orfeo Angelucci was an enthusiastic amateur scientist who in 1946 sent several balloons aloft as part of a science experiment. A curious circular flying object hovered and maneuvered gracefully around his balloons. When the flying saucer craze started the next year, Angelucci was intrigued.