Meade Layne, Riley Crabb, and Borderland Sciences: Townsend's Fanclub (1940s-1980s)

Long-time Townsend Brown inquirer Jan Lundquist – aka 'Rose' in The Before Times – has her own substantial archive to share with readers and visitors to this site. This forum is dedicated to the wealth of material she has compiled: her research, her findings, and her speculations.
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natecull
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Meade Layne, Riley Crabb, and Borderland Sciences: Townsend's Fanclub (1940s-1980s)

Post by natecull »

Townsend Brown was an unusual man who seemed to have a knack for collecting friends and admirers from unusual places in both highly placed military/government, and "fringe physics" - or straight up "occult" - communities.

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
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
And Riley Crabb's response:
Well 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.
Nate
Last edited by natecull on Wed Feb 08, 2023 4:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Meade Layne, Riley Crabb, and Borderland Sciences: Townsend's Fanclub (1940s-1980s)

Post by natecull »

Here's Crabb in 1974 pitching the now-standard New Age Ufology brew of Townsend Brown, Kitselman, Morris Jessup, the Philadelphia Experiment, Gray Barker, and their own in-house medium Mark Probert (Yada di Shi'ite was his spirit guide). This is four years before Moore and Berlitz write their book. Townsend was 69.

How did all of these subjects come together in the Townsend Brown legend, one might ask? More to the point, how and why exactly did Gray Barker (which by the way is an excellent name for someone who took the circus promoter approach to aliens) end up with a bunch of Townsend documents in his personal files?

http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/jou ... r_1974.pdf
M K JESSUP, THE ALLENDE LETTERS and GRAVITY - BSRF No. 14 - * ,

Includes letters to Meade Layne in the early days of BSRA, article cpmment on problems of space flight, analysis of emotional factors before his apparent death by suicide in 1959, the Introduction to the Varo Edition of Jessup's “The Case For The UFO”, copies of Carlos Allende’s letters to Jessup about the disappearing Navy destroyer escort in the fall of 1943 and the disastrous effects of the powerful anti-gravity field on the crew, Kitselman’s biographical notes on Townsend Brown the electronics physicist who has developed a true atmospheric drive for UFOs, and "Towards Flight Without Weight” from Interavia Magazine, with comment by Gray Barker, Inez Robb, Dino Kraspedon and the Yada di Shi’ite, also what we believe is a message from Jessup about his trip to Venus Etheria after his death. 52 pages, illustrated, 8%xl1, printed. ............ $2.00
Nate
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Re: Meade Layne, Riley Crabb, and Borderland Sciences: Townsend's Fanclub (1940s-1980s)

Post by natecull »

A fan of electrogravitics was already intrigued by the legend of Townsend Brown in May/June 1968. The shadow of the 1950s "Winterhaven" articles looming large. Townsend was 63.
THRUST FROM ELECTROGRAVICS — WHATEVER THAT IS

""It seems that UFO propulsion systems that utilize the terrestrial magnetic field are theoretically sound. But the question of practicality is something that comes from technological developmeht of the proposed system. As yet, the Rotating Capacitor Space Drive I have proposed has not been reduced from the conceptual stage to the hardware stage. The principles of its operation are merely the result of the applications of conventional
physical principles.

"What is not the result of conventional principles, is the possibility that the system I have proposed may demonstrate some of Townsend B r o w n ’s electrogravic effects (Interavia , Volume XI, No. 5, 1956). Electrogravic thrust, under this system, occurs only during the charging process and in the direction of the positive plate. In the Rotating Capacitor, using the Wimshurst machine, charging would be a continuous process because of dielectric breakdown at some ’threshold voltage*. The possibility of getting additional thrust from electrogravitics is exciting, to say the least, and must be investigated thoroughly.

"My library research shows that as early as 1917, a Professor Nipher had found that the weight of substances could be reduced (become negative) by the application of electrostatic charges. (Science, Sept. 21, 1917, page 173) Dr. Charles Brush, in a series of reports in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society around 1922 found, in some well-thought-out-experiments, that weight was not only proportional to mass, but was affected by the atomic structure of the substances. For example, he found that for a given unit of mass and shape, bismuth falls faster than zinc or aluminum, in complete contradiction to Newton’s Law of Gravity which they are still teaching in colleges today! Why have these experiments been ignored? What does the scientific commun ity have to say about the experiments of Townsend Brown, Brush and Nipher? So far, the literature hasn't given me an answer. Incidentally, Otis Carr’s work involved counter-rotating charged discs that supposedly produced thrust when they reached a certain speed in relation to the earth's rotational speed and became activated by free energy space (?). Maybe he did have something.1’

James E. Cox, Space Drive Research Society
2015 H St., Apt 12, Sacramento, Cal. 95814
James E Cox would go on to edit "Antigravity News and Space Drive Technology" in the late 1990s. (http://www.padrak.com/agn/)

And here he is (audio) talking to Tim Ventura last year (2022). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3JrzH6F_GU

I wonder how old he was in 1968 when he wrote this letter?

Nate
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Re: Meade Layne, Riley Crabb, and Borderland Sciences: Townsend's Fanclub (1940s-1980s)

Post by natecull »

Here's Crabb pitching his dossier linking the Philadelphia Experiment to Townsend Brown - not by name in this summary, but evidently by the "Flight without weight" article - in October 1965. So the Legend entwining the two seems like it goes back at least that far.

http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/jou ... t_1965.pdf
BSRA 13. M . K. JESSUP AND THE ALLENDE LETTERS. 43 pages of Clips, Quotes and Comment on the problem of Flight Without Weight and the fascinating probability that some American scientist cracked the secret of gravity for the U.S. Navy in October 1943! .
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Re: Meade Layne, Riley Crabb, and Borderland Sciences: Townsend's Fanclub (1940s-1980s)

Post by natecull »

May-June 1987, Borderland reports (and advertises) William Moore publishing the Townsend Brown notebooks.

http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/jou ... n_1987.pdf
William L. Moore Publications, 4219 W. Olive St., Suite 247, Burbank, CA 91505.
Excellent research source. They are publishing the notebooks of Thomas Townsend Brown which are a treasure trove for those interested in electro-gravity and related fields. Also many books on UFOs and antigravity and government documents on same.
It's worth noting that the Director of Borderland Sciences after Riley Crabb retired in 1985 was Thomas Joseph Brown, who is (as far as I know) absolutely no relation at all to Thomas Townsend Brown. Or to Joseph Brown, the fringe scientist with an ether theory ("brutinos") who worked with the Douglas Aircraft Company UFO studio in 1968-ish, where Stanton Friedman was first introduced to the UFO subject.

Nate
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Re: Meade Layne, Riley Crabb, and Borderland Sciences: Townsend's Fanclub (1940s-1980s)

Post by Jan Lundquist »

Yes, Townsend had many promoters in the woo world. Beau may have been the originator of that fan club Except for him and Moore, I don't know that Townsend was acquainted with any of them, though he would have known the younger RV researchers at Standford as the psi stuff was being investigated in the same building with the hard physics researchers.

Moore was born in 1943, which made him much younger than Townsend. I had once thought of them as contemporaries with shared background's and experiences, but they would actually have had little in common. His Townsend Brown file was posted for sale on ebay 10 years ago or so but I don't think the seller had any takers.

This whole story is, indeed, a the Rorsach inkbot test, as Paul calls it. Your interest is in pinpointing psi/science overlaps, Paul is chasing the physics behind the Gravitor/tar, lifter folks pursue the high of antigravity, UFO fans want to know if he re-engineered alien space craft. I am interested in the aspects that I call the facts on the ground, historical references that triangulate the story we have been given, so I did not think I would find anything precious or rare in Moores' portfolio.
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Moore's portfolio

Post by Jan Lundquist »

Yes, Townsend had many promoters in the woo world. Beau may have been the originator of that fan club Except for him and Moore, I don't know that Townsend was acquainted with any of them, though he would have known the younger RV researchers at Standford as the psi stuff was being investigated in the same building with the hard physics researchers.

Moore was born in 1943, which made him much younger than Townsend. I had once thought of them as contemporaries with shared background's and experiences, but they would actually have had little in common. His Townsend Brown file was posted for sale on ebay 10 years ago or so but I don't think the seller had any takers.

This whole story is, indeed, a the Rorsach inkbot test, as Paul calls it. Your interest is in pinpointing psi/science overlaps, Paul is chasing the physics behind the Gravitor/tar, lifter folks pursue the high of antigravity, UFO fans want to know if he re-engineered alien space craft. I am interested in the aspects that I call the facts on the ground, historical references that triangulate the story we have been given, so I did not think I would find anything precious or rare in Moores' portfolio.
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Re: Meade Layne, Riley Crabb, and Borderland Sciences: Townsend's Fanclub (1940s-1980s)

Post by Paul Schatzkin »

Hey guys...

I'm just gonna chime in here for a minute though I don't at the moment have a whole lot to say.

I really have had my head down trying to get this book in print, which process FINALLY! went past the next node this morning. I don't know how long it will be until actual physical / digital books will be available, but all the obstacles I've been banging my head on have been cleared (well, until the next one. Ever the optimist, you know?)

Yesterday I had a moment to see if there was anything new in this space and was rather surprised (delightedly so) to see how much material Rose and Nate have shared with.

I stopped on this particular item just because I liked the idea of 'Townsend's Fan Club'.

And then I see there is a letter here from William Moore. Hmm.

I met Moore back in the 'aughts. I wonder if he's still living... OK, that question was easily enough answered:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Moore_(ufologist)

Why, he's not even as old as the President of the United States!

Once we get all the horses out of the gate, the materials that you guys are putting up here will make for interesting blog posts which, with the right keyword and SEO massaging, I hope will draw some attention.

Particularly when we start talking about William Moore, there are a lot of loose ends to tie up. Like what Moore has said about Brown's... umm... sexuality – a topic I have deliberately excised from the new version. And then of course there's the whole TPX affair, which I've also excised.

My intent in these excisions is to focus the book on as much as we know for certain and as little as possible on what we speculate - though after I've typed that I wonder "who is he kidding?" What I mean is that there are a lot of loose ends, and once the book is in circulation, we'll use these spaces to see if they can be tied together.

So thanks for continuing to post.

I'm off to Amazon KDP now.

--PS
Paul Schatzkin, author of 'The Man Who Mastered Gravity' https://amz.run/6afz
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It's "a multigenerational project." What's your hurry?
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"We will just sail away from the Earth, as easily as this boat pushed away from the dock" - TTB
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Re: Meade Layne, Riley Crabb, and Borderland Sciences: Townsend's Fanclub (1940s-1980s)

Post by Jan Lundquist »

Such good news about the book, Paul. You must feel so much lighter today.

We may never know all the answers, but I think it is past time to put to bed the idea that Townsend Brown's life was one of serialized failure. If it I am wrong about that then I have to say that it is amazingly coincidental, the way his repeated failures corresponded to the places and times where the most interesting things were happening.
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