The UFO Casebook edited by Peter Brookersmith (book review)

Now, here’s a blast from the past. Back in 1980-83, the multi-part ‘The Unexplained’ magazine which became a 26 volume set was released. Unlike the earlier ‘Man, Myth & Magic’, which I had to give up on after volume one because I had a tiny budget, I did get this one collected. After its release, over a period of years, some books were released gathering some of their information for those potential readers who just wanted particular subjects and for them to make a bit more money. This was probably the only multi-issue encyclopedia to have this treatment. When I picked up ‘The UFO Casebook’ last year, I didn’t release it was one of these based on ‘The Unexplained. I should also point out that there are a different number of books with a similar title and theme out there although quite why publishers Black Cat chose to use the Devil’s Mountain imagery from ‘Close Encounters Of The Third Kind’ beats me when they had some photographs inside.

Anyway, over the course of 84 pages, we have material from ‘The Unexplained’. Where there are no photographs, a lot of the illustrations were in crayon. Quite why they chose that medium I was never sure about. Perhaps because it gave a vagueness that matched the descriptions by the witnesses. The reports were mostly from those given to the ‘Flying Saucer Review’ magazine and comment from the likes of Professor A.J. Ellinson, Dr. J. Hynck, Brian Inglis and Colin Wilson, all ‘experts’ in their field and from reports from across the world and some event from the military from the 1950s-1980s. Although they wished they had reports from people with scientific background, there are several instances of people with low or even no education and hadn’t even reported an occurrence to their relatives who did so. That hardly fits the profile of people jumping on the UFO bandwagon. Even today, we don’t really see much of that anymore although whether there is much fakery remains to be seen. Although there are references to some fakes, they aren’t covered here. No doubt not to give anyone the wrong ideas or try to better them. Even so, there are a couple I think that have been discredited since.

We also know a lot more today than back then. Even back in the 1980s, I was tending to look at similar vessels being photographed as verification of something going on than so much divergence. Although there are a couple here, none where they appeared elsewhere. There are certainly some odd-shaped vessels, some even landing on legs and the occasional humanoid pilots and passengers. Some were also saucer-like but that doesn’t mean much. One thing they did not look like was advanced stealth terrestrial high altitude aircraft like the SR-71 Blackbird. They mostly exhibited the ability to float and speed off rapidly, something the Blackbird couldn’t do.

There are probably better books available today but as a source material written nearly 50 years ago, it would probably be categorised as a source book to see what was written at the time. Other than noting the reliability of the individual reports, nothing was done to look at them as a collective other than the mention of the UFO flaps that happened from time to time. No doubt this was to let the reader draw their own conclusions. There were enough UFO books out at the time doing that, mostly because I suspect their writers weren’t sure what to say or denials from the various air forces as to just what was going on. We still don’t know much more today. The USS Nimitz report with film footage from 2002 is still seen as the most definitive data and that took a long time to be declassified. There has been no mad panics from people and, I suspect, those who have seen them, have as much puzzlement as anyone else. There’s certainly an argument to have the military to reveal what they know than keeping it secret.

GF Willmetts

February 2026

(pub: Black Cat/Orbis, 1990. 84 page large hardback. Price: varies. ISBN: 0-7481-0302-3)