Author Description

The colorful writings of Gray Barker, author and founder of the long-running fringe publishing house, Saucerian Press, influenced the plot-lines of culturally significant shows like Star Trek, Futurama, The X-Files, Twin Peaks, The Outer Limits, The Jetsons, Lost in Space, and The Twilight Zone. John A. Keel called him "extremely intelligent, with a dangerous sense of humor," and the "greatest UFO stylist of the 1950s and '60s." Shuttling between Manhattan and his secluded cabin deep in the hills of his home state of West Virginia, the prolific Barker single-handedly kept public interest focused on UFOs during it leanest years, introducing many themes still discussed by today’s paranormal and conspiracy researchers: the Maury Island Incident, the Roswell UFO crash, Men in Black, the Hopkinsville Goblins, Nazi UFOs, the Philadelphia Experiment, the Flatwoods Monster, Mothman, MJ-12 and the Aviary, little green men, Hangar 18 (at Wright-Patterson AFB), the Vegetable Man, Indrid Cold, and secret underground UFO bases. Most significantly, Barker was the first to report that President Eisenhower met with aliens on the tarmac at Edwards AFB in California. He later introduced one of these aliens, named Valiant Thor, to the public, by having Thor appear at a 1958 UFO convention he had organized at the farm of the famous contactee, Howard Menger, in High Bridge, New Jersey. Later re-popularized by Rev. Frank Stranges, Valiant Thor has become an international icon, appearing in several books and movies. Barker's "The Strange Case of the Squonk" is the latest edition to his "Strange Case" series, and it is indeed one of the stranger ones. Barker tracks the course of paranormal events in Alaska’s "Bay of Death" near Port Protection, site of the popular National Geographic television series, "Port Protection." Several miners were seemingly drugged, hypnotized, and attacked by grotesque zombie creatures, part Bigfoot and part goblin, who wanted