One such fringe community was the Borderland Sciences Research Foundation of Meade Layne, and then Riley Crabb.
Borderland was a very early mover on the subject of UFOs - beginning in 1946, even. As a psychic circle with an active channeller (Mark Probert) at the time, they jumped straight to what Jacques Vallee and John Keel would later label the "interdimensional hypothesis".
Layne and Crabb (who came from Hawaii, another possible connecting point with Townsend) were fairly indiscriminate in the subjects they chose to promote in their magazine, but Townsend Brown was definitely one of those subjects, at least as early as the 1950s. It might be interesting to ask why.
Fortunately for historians of Townsend-Adjacent Weirdness, IAPSOP (the International Association for Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals) have a collection of Borderland publications, here:
http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/jou ... _research/
We can filter this for references to Townsend Brown, which gives us a much shorter list, probably not exhaustive:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22town ... iapsop.com
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22t+t+ ... iapsop.com
Taking one at random, here's William Moore writing in the Borderland Journal, March-April 1989, which gives us a glimpse into where Moore's head was with regards to Townsend Brown at that time. How close do we think he was to the truth and to the Townsend Brown family - and what happened to Moore's "publications and research folios"?
I suspect that it was one or more of Moore's "research folios" which I read in the late 1980s, and which I dearly wish have been saved somewhere in someone's garage.
http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/jou ... r_1989.pdf
And Riley Crabb's response:BIEFELD-BROWN EFFECT
"Just read T.B. Pawel's piece on the "Greatest Hoax Ever Sold" in the Jan-Feb 89 Journal , and was surprised to note the number of serious misrepresentations of fact which appear therein. While I do not presume to be in a position to challenge Mr. Pawel (or is it Pawlicki) on his propulsion technology theories, I am something of an expert on UFOs and I also know a good deal about the life and work of the late Thomas Townsend Brown. If
Mr. Pawel's propulsion theories are as full of errors as are his Claims about Brown and UFOs, I can well understand why he has Problems with getting thrown out of peoples' Offices. For the record, please note the following:
"(1) According to Pawel, Dr . Paul Alfred Biefeld was a Stanford professor of physics in 1924, and it was he who first noticed the phenomenon of a
charged (dielectric) plate having a tendency to exhibit motion in the direction of its positive pole. Pawel then goes on to state that Dr. Biefeld Assigned his unaccredited lab assistant (Brown) to study the effect.
"All of this is entirely incorrect. In 1924, Dr. Biefeld was at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. It was Brown, then a student, who showed
Biefeld the effect and asked him for an explanation of it. The term Biefeld-Brown effect was coined by Brown, not Biefeld. Brown had been studying the effect since he had discovered it during some personal experiments he had conducted while still a high school student several years earlier.
"(2) Pawel states that "by 1927. T.T. Brown published a paper on his findings, including his design of an aircraft to implement the Biefeld-Brown effect at optimal efficiency."
"Wrong again! Brown published his first paper on the effect in 1929 (Science & Invention magazine, August, '29), and nowhere therein is there to be
found any design or plan for adaptation to an aircraft.
"(3) Pawel would have us believe that the "first modern sighting of flying saucers" was made by "Flight Captain Edwards" over Mt. Rainier (Washington) in 1947.
"The Mt. Rainier event he is referring to involved Mr Kenneth Arnold, who sighted nine flying saucers while piloting a private plane over Mt. Rainier
on June 24, 1947.
"(4) Pawel implies that Brown never tried to prove or disprove the electromagnetic nature of his effect by experimenting within a Faraday cage, and complains that it would not have occurred "to a talented but otherwise untrained assistant in a physics lab that an electrostatic field could produce Chemical ions" which, Pawel implies, were really the cause of the effect involved. Pawel suggests that if Brown had thought to try his experiments in vacuuo, quite different results would have been produced.
"All of this shows a profound ignorance of Brown and his work. The fact is that Brown did conduct experiments in a Faraday cage and showed conclusively that the Biefeld-Brown effect was not electromagnetic in nature. He also conducted elaborate tests in France (1955-56) under the auspices fo La Societe Nationale de Construction Aeronautique Sud Ouest, wherein experiments were carried out in high vacuum! The results of these experiments proved the Biefeld-Brown effect was more rather than less pronounced in the absence of air.
"(5) Pawel attributes the absence of technical criticism of Brown's experiments in the scientific 'literature to "a horizontal bias" or a "blind spot" in the Publishing industry.
"The fact is that a technical analysis of Brown's experiments was under taken in 1952 by the Office of Naval Research in Pasadena, California. The resulting report was classified as were both former and subsequent examinations of his work by the government. This fully explains the lack of
published data on Brown and his work in the open literature.
"(6) Pawel's conclusion that UFOs are, in fact, secret government devices is belied by a veritable mountain of data, much of which comes from the
government itself. If Pawel expects to sustain his conclusion, he' s going to have to come up with something more than wild, unsupported speculation. From what I've seen of the quality of his research so far, I'm, not sure I'd trust him to give me the correct time of day.
"The above should serve to set the record straight.
"Readers who are interested in further information on Brown and his work should feel free to contact us. We have a number of publications and research folios on this subject."
William L. Moore
4219 W. Olive, #247
Burbank CA 91505
NateWell Bill, I certainly appreciate your corrections and we're always glad to set the record straight when we print an error of fact. I still agree with
Pawel's idea that the governments of the world are covering up some UFO evidence, though I don't feel that the involved people in government have the capacity to fully understand what they are covering up. If anything the government has been compromised by whoever or whatever is generating the phenemona. My views on this concur with concepts brought forward by Trevor Constable (and others) on how the UFO phenomenon is fueled
by forces above and below this dimension. The under forces definitely have control of the governing bodies of countries like the USA and the Soviet
Union, and these forces are allowing the rapid deterioration of the planetary life field. Basic spiritual-scientific insight will show this, but it cannot be seen by just checking the facts of UFO sightings. UFO's are just one piece of the puzzle. BSRF has promoted the UFO explanation since 1946,
before UFOs became populär, and we still stand by it today.
BSRF members who want more information on T.T. Brown, including reprints of his personal notebooks, as well as a myriad of other pertinent UFO
related subjects, should write to the above address for a catalog listing. I noticed on the latest listing received that the early years of George van Tassel's PROCEEDINGS from the College of Universal Wisdom are now available in reprint editions. Bill Moore is one of the most active sources of good UFO information today and also publishes a newsletter, FOCUS.