The Silver Bridge And The Men In Black!

Gray Barker is one of the more interesting figures in the whole of the UFO community. He was among the earliest investigators, working on the seminal case of "The Flatwoods Monster" from West Virginia. Being a native of the state he brings a deft understanding of the people who were witnesses then and he does likewise for the various people involved in the infamous Mothman case from Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Barker was the editor of The Saucerian, an early home-grown UFO magazine for afficionados and others. He would also become a publisher of various books about the paranormal and UFOs. 

It should be noted that Barker's book The Silver Bridge was published in 1970, five years before John Keel's more famous The Mothman Prophecies. (Keel does appear in this book.) This is a curious tome, part reportage and part creation. We meet some of the witnesses and get a detailed understanding of the circumstances of their encounters. But Barker is trying to do something more than just report the facts. He's trying to create an atmosphere in which the reader can more readily accept the existence of something like a Mothman. I'm put in mind of what Hunter S. Thompson tried to do with his work, to create a continuum in which the reader is put into the experience. 

Gray Barker is also famous for "creating" the M.I.B. or Men in Black, mysterious agents who show up after UFO sightings and toy and tinker with witnesses and evidence. Whether these are men from the bowels of the government or aliens fresh from the cold of space is left to interpretation. Many years later, just before his death in 1984 Barker wrote a book about the Men in Black - The Secret Terror Among Us, which was little distributed at the time. 

This book along with his early They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers (which I looked at last month) and the later The Silver Bridge is considered a fitting finale for his trilogy on the paranormal. Frankly this book is nowhere near as compelling as The Silver Bridge, which is my favorite of the Barker books. I've already read it twice and could well see myself reading it again before long. Barker is a talented writer and his skills are very much on display in the book which not only talks about the Mothman but connects that event to the tragic collapse of the Silver Bridge which too forty-eight lives. 

(The Flatwoods Monster)

Barker has a bit of reputation as a hoaxer, but he also has a reputation as very entertaining writer. And that's what I'm looking for. I don't necessarily believe that UFOs are spaceships, but I believe that people see things that they don't understand, and which can change the lives of those who see them. Barker I think felt the same way. 

Rip Off