The Saucerian: UFOs, Men in Black and the Unbelievable Life of Gray Barker

Somewhere in the Skies

Ryan Sprague

Unexplained, Paranormal, Ufos, Government, Ufo, Social Sciences, History, Bigfoot, Aliens, Extraterrestrial, Documentary, Unsolved, Alien, Mystery, Uap, Science, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2025

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On episode 409, we are joined by librarian, author, and cultural historian, Gabriel McKee, to discuss his new book about the life of the ever-enigmatic Gray Barker. Barker founded and operated Saucerian Books, an independent publisher of books about flying saucers and other ideas at the fringes of popular discourse. In The Saucerian, Gabriel Mckee tells the fascinating story of Barker’s West Virginia–based press, the unique corpus of materials it published, and how office-copying and self-publishing techniques influenced the spread of paranormal beliefs and conspiratorial worldviews over the last century. Following the development of UFO subculture, Mckee explores the life and career of a larger-than-life hoaxer and originator of pseudoscientific ideas.

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Transcript

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0:32.1	Today on the show, we welcome Gabriel McKee. Gabriel is an author, librarian, curator, and researcher specializing in science fiction, religion,
0:43.9	theology, bibliography, and book history, and histories of the culture surrounding the paranormal.
0:51.2	We'll be discussing his brand new book, The Sossarian, UFOs, Men in Black,
0:57.6	and the unbelievable life of Gray Barker.
1:04.7	You are now somewhere in the skies with your host, Ryan Spray.
1:36.6	Yeah. with your host, Ryan Spray. When I saw that you were the guests on there, I'm like, oh my God, Gene is going to have a field day.
1:41.3	Because, like, his connections with Mosley and all that, it's crazy. I'm interested in like the actual like physical printing of these things.
1:45.2	He's like, yeah, I ran Barker's Press for, you know, for a year. So like he, he like, you know,
1:51.4	we kind of geeked out about printing techniques for a couple minutes. I was like, nobody is going to
1:54.7	care about this except you and I. But hey, I cared. It's so cool. And I should mention everyone, welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. I am here today with Gabriel McKee. We're going to be talking all about his brand new book, The Sossarian, UFOs, Men in Black, and the Unbelievable Life of Gray Barker. Gabe, welcome for the very first time to somewhere in the Skies. Thank you. Good to be here.
2:18.2	Yeah, yeah.
2:18.9	And, you know, when I saw that your book was coming out and it was on the life of Grey Barker,
2:24.2	my heart just got all warm because it's such a nostalgic era of uphology.
2:29.7	And for anyone who's been into this topic for a while, like, you're always on the hunt for that one book.
2:36.8	They knew too much about flying saucers.
	...

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