Piece Of Art

Ray Bradbury — author of The Martian Chronicles , Fahrenheit 451 , Something Wicked This Way Comes , and other science fiction and literary classics — died Tuesday evening, June 5, 2012, in Los Angeles, at the age of 91, according to his daughter. He was born in Waukegan, Illinois, on August 22, 1920, the son of a utility lineman. He was the third son and he was given his middle name, Douglas, after the famous actor Douglas Fairbanks. As a child he soaked up the ambiance of small-town life — wraparound porches, fireflies and the soft, golden light of late afternoon — that would later become a hallmark of much of his fiction, noted the Chicago Tribune  upon his death. “When I was born in 1920,” he told the New York Times Magazine in 2000, “the auto was only 20 years old. Radio didn't exist. TV didn't exist. I was born at just the right time to write about all of these things.” The Transit of Venus lasted from the evening of June 5th (in North America) to the morning of June 6th...

Stephen Lord, the writer behind Hangar 18 (1980) and two  The Bermuda Triangle  efforts (1978, 1979), known as a prolific TV writer whose mainstream credits ranged from Bonanza  to Fantasy Island , died at the age of 85, May 5th, in Sherman Oaks, California.  Surrounded by his family when he passed away, Lord suffered from Alzheimer's. Born Stephen Loyacano on December 14, 1926, in New Orleans, Lord began his professional life as a popular big band leader and radioman. Before he died, he had amassed more than 200 credits during a movie and television writing career that spanned 35 years. Lord also was active in Hollywood unions for years, working with the WGA and DGA. As a writer he was involved with many projects. If one looks deeply at the works he penned, it is obvious he was interested in a variety of science fiction, cryptozoological, parapsychological, and ufological topics. Conspiracies and coverups were often part of the storie...

A long and true friend has died. Lou Farish of Arkansas, whom I corresponded with for years, said to me in the 1960s, "You write very good letters. You should write articles." So I did. I directly link that one kind statement from Lou as the spark to my formal writing to share my thoughts, resulting in getting published, via articles, books, blogs, and more. When letters were the welcome gifts of friendship and exchange that came in my mailbox on a daily basis, I would look forward to the long communiques from Lou, filled with his thoughts, links, news clippings, and insights. Some people may call Lou Farish a ufologist. But when I recall Lou, I think of fish rains, frog falls, and all types of Forteana.  He would share the best tidbits with me in the 1960s-1970s. I shall always remember Lou as a Fortean, an archivist, a correspondent, and a good friend. Lou was interested in historical cases, and made a speciality of researching the 1890s airship cases. He took over the UFO ...

      In February, Linda Scarberry, one of the earliest eyewitnesses (November 15, 1966) to Mothman, was admitted to a Point Pleasant-area hospital, in critical condition. Unfortunately, it was been learned, from John Frick, that after a brief battle with cancer, Linda Scarberry died on Sunday morning, March 6th, 2011.   Our condolences to the McDaniel and Scarberry families. Linda's maiden name, let us not forget, is the significant cryptoname McDaniel. John A. Keel pointed out that the name "McDaniel" was an important twilight language moniker.    First eyewitnesses: Roger and Linda Scarberry (right) and Steve and Mary Mallette (left).   Mothman phenomena began in mid-November 1966, when the two couples pictured above, including Linda Scarberry, drove through and parked at an old World War II munitions dump site that the locals called TNT. They saw and said they were chased by a large winged creature. They reported the incident to the pol...

Ion Hobana (January 25, 1931 - February 22, 2011), well-known ufologist and Romania's best-known science fiction writer, whose writings were internationally translated, has died. He was 80. One of his more famous books on ufology is UFO's From Behind The Iron Curtain . He was the President of the Romanian Organization for UFO Studies. Sorin Hobana said his father died late Tuesday, February 22, 2011, in a Bucharest hospital, according to the Associated Press. Hobana's stories were published in international anthologies, including  The Penguin World Omnibus of Science Fiction and Twenty Houses of the Zodiac . November 2010 saw his last book, a history of French science fiction before 1900, published. Ion Hobana. Photo credit: Ovni-Ufologie Two volumes on UFOs, co-authored by Julian Weverbergh were published in the Netherlands. The books were translated into English, French and Spanish. His books on ufology include: OZN - o sfidare pentru raţiunea umană (Editura Encicloped...

Brittany Murphy has died. The 32-year-old actress went into full cardiac arrest early Sunday morning, December 20, 2009, following a 911 call from her husband, Simon Monjack, Variety reports. Around 8 a.m. local time, her mother found her unconscious in the shower in her home in the hills of West Hollywood. The star was pronounced dead upon arrival at 10:04 am on Sunday, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles County Department of Coroner confirms to E! News , "We do have a preliminary death report of a Brittany Murphy" coming from Cedars-Sinai. Popular Movie Celebrity Murphy starred in such films as 8 Mile , Uptown Girls , Sin City , Clueless and Don't Say a Word . She also starred in the ironically named Drop Dead Gorgeous . Murphy's Drop Dead Gorgeous co-star Denise Richards lamented: "Brittany Murphy was in Drop Dead Gorgeous with me and was the sweetest and most adorable. Tragic, sad and devastating. Her poor family." Murphy...

The death of author C. D. B. Bryan, 73, who wrote his last book about an academic symposium that examined claims of alien visitations, Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Alien Abductions, UFOs and the Conference at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (NY: Alfred A. Knopf,1995), has been detailed in an obituary by Bruce Weber at The New York Times . C. D. B. Bryan, a novelist and journalist whose 1976 book, "Friendly Fire," about the accidental death of a soldier in Vietnam, the consequent anguish of his family and their rage at the Army and the federal government, became one of the enduring works of reportage on the Vietnam War, died Tuesday [December 15, 2009] at home in Guilford, Conn....The cause was cancer, said his son, St. George Bryan. Bryan's own military career involved serving in the U.S. Army in South Korea (1958–1960), but not happily, according to source material . He was mobilized again (1961–1962) for the Berlin Crisis of 1961. He was an intelligence ...

Malcolm Oliver Perry II, 80, the doctor who attended JFK in Dallas has died, reports the Dallas Daily News . As noted in the Paraview Press book, Trauma Room One: The JFK Medical Coverup Exposed by Charles A. Crenshaw, et al., Perry was one of the doctors who believed the fatal head shot that killed Kennedy had come from the front (not the back, as was the conventional Warren Commission finding). Dr. Malcolm Oliver Perry II, who attended to President John F. Kennedy at Parkland Memorial Hospital after he was shot in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, has died. The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, the teaching hospital for Parkland, said Monday that Perry died Saturday, December 5, 2009, in Tyler, Texas, after a battle with lung cancer. Perry was an assistant professor of surgery at UT Southwestern and a vascular surgeon on the Parkland staff when he became the first staff surgeon to treat Kennedy. In an extensive interview by the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassi...

Harvey Frand, 68, an Emmy-winning producer who was the "Wizard behind the curtain" on the hit "Battlestar Galactica," died July 23, 2009, in Los Angeles, after a brief hospitalization for respiratory problems. Frand's series-producing career began in 1982 with "The Devlin Connection," Rock Hudson's final series. Other credits include 34 episodes of the 1985-89 version of "The Twilight Zone," "Beauty and the Beast," "The Young Riders," "The Lazarus Man," "The Pretender" and "Strange World." He produced more than 20 pilots and movies of the week. Intriguingly, the plot of "Strange World," which he produced in 1999, is often forgotten but should not. Here's the summary, based on info from IMDb: "The X-Files" writer/executive producer Howard Gordon and producer Harvey Frand present an exploration of a nefarious world where "big business" funds "big scienc...

Richard H. Hall, ufologist, historian Major Donald E. Keyhoe (left) and Richard Hall (right). I knew Dick Hall through letters in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a ufologist (something, really, of a "ufo nerd," if you know what I mean, with appreciation), although I experienced him as an open-minded Fortean, as well. Still others knew him more personally than I did, and I expect tributes to be forthcoming from those in ufology, for Richard H. Hall was a pivotal historical character. We've lost another one, and I'll introduce him to those who do not know the name as well that of John A. Keel, who died July 3rd. Richard H. Hall was a leading ufologist and proponent of the extraterrestrial hypothesis to explain UFO sightings; he had also written numerous books and articles dealing with the role of women in the American Civil War. On the morning of July 17, 2009, Richard Hall passed away due to a long battle with cancer, according to ufologist Jerome Clark and anomalist Pa...

John Alva Keel, 79, a friend, Fortean, fierce fighter for his theories, professionally a writer and journalist, has died. A fellow admirer of Mothman and the anomalies all around us, such as the “name game,” is gone. John A. Keel's non-fiction look at the very real unplanned twists in life were recorded in his 1966 novel, The Fickle Finger of Fate . "Ufology is just another name for demonology," John Keel told me, a week before the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center, which occurred just a couple of miles from where he lives. ...as noted in Mothman and Other Curious Encounters , page 114, (NY: Paraview, 2002). For more images and my complete, detailed obituary, please see "John A. Keel Is Dead." John A. Keel, in 2002.