Hi, it's Martin. I'm giving Charles Lear's audio blogs another try here on YouTube.

Please let me know in the comments if you enjoy them, and you'd like to hear more of these blogs on this channel.

Today's audio blog, Jacques Valet and John Keel challenge the E-T-H.

This is a course, is by History Buff and author Charles Lear.

By the time Project Blue Book was terminated, most UFO researchers, especially those in the United States,

believe that UFOs were nuts and bolts craft piloted by flesh and blood creatures from other planets.

This became known as the extraterrestrial hypotheses, or E.T.H. But as the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, two researchers began challenging that idea. Jacques Valet published one groundbreaking book, while John Keel published two.

Together, there were caused many people in the UFO community to begin considering other possibilities.

Vallet's first book, Anatomy of the Phenomenon, was published in 1965.

His second book, Challenge to Science,

was co-written by his wife, Janine, published in 1966.

Both books argued that the UFO mystery was worth

a lot of serious scientific study.

They presented the elements of the problem

in an organized manner and an effort to make

the study a possibility. And what would become characteristic of Valet's work, he included accounts

going all the way back to antiquity, and he included a great many of them. The books were very

lengthy, academic, and somewhat dry. They held little appeal for

the average UFO enthusiast who was looking for sensational stories of sightings and encounters.

Then on October 1, 1969, according to Kirkus Review, Ballet published Passport to Magonia.

It was quite a departure from his first two books.

Ballet's central thesis was that there might be a connection between UFOs and stories found in religious texts, ancient legends, fairy lore, and folklore.

...