Jacques Vallée's Messengers of Deception

This wonderful photo from the mid-1970s depicts a young man named John Shepherd who "established this UFO-detecting station in his grandparent’s home… His equipment includes radar, sonar, scanners, and homing devices which attempt to track the 'Aliens' he believes are studying the earth." The photo appears in a new, lightly-revised edition of my friend Jacques Vallée's classic 1979 book Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults. The rare book has just been republished by Daily Grail Publishing. From Fortean researcher Mark Pilkington's post on the Further blog about the book:

MOD is a fascinating examination of the UFO subculture’s sinister underbelly. Vallee considers the ways that the UFO mystery can be manipulated by those seeking to exert psychological and psychosocial control over marginal elements of society, and falls prey himself to the kind of controlled paranoia experienced by Robert Anton Wilson in his own Cosmic Trigger. Thirty years down the line we can see that Vallee was absolutely spot on with some of the concerns he expressed in MOD: amongst the groups he investigated were Bo and Peep, the ‘Mysterious Two’ who went on to lead the Heaven’s Gate suicides two decades later.

Jacques Vallée's Messengers of Deception on Amazon, Messengers of Deception at Further

[#1 posted by kaiza , June 25, 2008 9:35 PM]

Maybe his need to hunt for UFO's has something to do with his latent ATA gene...

[#2 posted by Jake0748 , June 25, 2008 10:09 PM]

This is indeed a wonderful photo. There is something evocative about the juxtaposition of bizzaro-high-tech (for the time) equipment and the homey, wood-paneled grandpa living room.

But really... radar? sonar?? and homing devices?? (What were these homing devices attached to)? How did this hippie pay for all this expensive hardware and still be able to afford the newspaper subscription for his granny?

As cool as it is, it could also be a nice audio recording or ham radio setup. I will definitely check out the book to get my answers.

Still, it's excellent mid-70s techno-pron.

[#3 posted by Jack , June 25, 2008 10:19 PM]

Looking at this picture all I can think of is that guys grandfather saying the exact same thing thatthe old guy said in 40-Year-Old Virgin after "the virgin" rode off:

"That boy needs to get laid!"

[#4 posted by number11 , June 25, 2008 10:33 PM]

Looks photoshopped. Well, they hadn't invented Photoshop yet, but fake. Note the tape reel above the guy's left hand doesn't appear to be in the same plane as the panel it's against (should be more eliptical from that angle). And that back room is huge, which is implausible though not impossible.

[#5 posted by Anonymous , June 25, 2008 11:54 PM]

IIRC, John Shepherd features prominently in the film based on Douglas Curran's In Advance of the Landing where he was interviewed in his mobile UFO detector van. (I think he also had an X-Files character based on him.)

My favourite moment from the film was where he recounted an experiment he'd conducted which involved him getting completely dressed in black, wearing a large headress in the shape of an inverted cone the rim of which was decorated with flashing coloured lights. Thus garbed, he'd go out to a field in some remote area at night and run around a bit. Next day he'd scan the local newspapers to see if anyone who'd seen him had reported a UFO. When they did, he pointed out, they often described massive glowing craft zooming about thousands of feet in the air before disappearing over the horizon at supersonic speed. And yet this demonstration of the fallibility of witnesses didn't seem to shake his belief in UFOs.

[#6 posted by bill streeter , June 26, 2008 4:52 AM]

No, not PhotoShop. That guy is real. He's still around. Here is his web site: http://www.projectstrat.com/john_shepherd/ there are a ton of other photos like this and later, and modern ones there too.

[#7 posted by Jake0748 , June 26, 2008 7:06 AM]

Thanks for the link Bill. Some really interesting stuff.

[#8 posted by mwiik , June 26, 2008 10:06 AM]

Not sure why, but when right-clicking Boing Boing amazon links from NetNewsWire to open in Safari, it always fails the first time, saying it can't find amazon.com

[#9 posted by ill lich , June 26, 2008 10:47 AM]

)+(

[#10 posted by George Curious , June 26, 2008 2:19 PM]

Further proof that everyone in the 70's looked like Jim Henson.

Well, everyone who wasn't an Osmond anyway.

[#11 posted by hikeebahikeeba , June 26, 2008 6:53 PM]

*cough* max fennig *cough* @ #5's x-files character
all that tv-conspiracy-wasted-brainspace aside though,i love this photo.

[#12 posted by Master of Space and Time , June 27, 2008 3:46 AM]

Is it Jacques sitting in front of the machine ?
Or in the Sofa...

LOL

Jacques, va te coucher! monte dans ta chambre tout de suite !