Reflections on a 30+ Year UFO Hunt—In Honor of 100 Issues of Alternate Perceptions

by Dr. Greg Little

Beginning in the late 1960s, both Brent Raynes and I started on a parallel quest in hunt of the truth about UFOs. My first book on the subject, The Archetype Experience, was published in 1984 with all of 1000 copies sold, but it remains one of my best works on the subject. Through mutual contacts established because of my book, Brent and I finally hooked up about 18 years ago through his publication—then called "Paraufology Forum." I found Brent to be one of the most caring and meticulous UFO investigators I ever met. He allowed people who had encounters with unknown phenomena to just tell their story and he witheld judgment and ricicule. He truly investigated reports even going so far as to compile a psychological profile of UFO percipients. He faithfully reported on UFO accounts in his "unscheduled" publication seeking out the most interesting and unknown cases.

Over the years Brent became friends with many of UFOlogy's best-known personalities including Betty Hill, Dr. Berthold Schwarz, Marc Davenport, and countless others. In the past 10 years he has managed to interview such personalities as Dr. Jacques Vallee, many of MUFON's section directors, and a host of famous abductees and authors. His recent book, Visitors From Hidden Realms, is a largely unknown but fascinating account of some of ufology's least known but most important theories. While the UFO field is largely comprised of well-known people who have to garner constant attention to sell their books, Brent is a gentle giant in the field who, because of his nature, remains on the edges of the field—but always in play. In truth, Brent should be a regular speaker at all the major UFO conferences. His recent work investigating how Peruvian whistling vessels can alter consciousness is phenomenal.

In the early 1990s, Brent and I embarked on taking his publication to a higher level and we produced about two-dozen issues of the new magazine, which we retitled Alternate Perceptions because the topics expanded well beyond UFOs. The magazine had up to 56 pages and was a slick publication with wide distribution. With the advent of the internet, we decided to take Alternate Perceptions to the web to allow free access and gain more readers. We also went to a monthly publication. We have never run outsied ads and the publication is a true labor of love.

During this time, I produced two more books on UFOs, People of the Web (1990) and Grand Illusions (1994) and Brent wrote a Foreword for both of them. They were both highly successful. Personally, my quest has altered a bit since then, as I believe that the UFO mystery is solved. There are several conspiracies that really exist in the field but they aren't what ufologists want you to believe. Many of those who have an interest in UFOs want to believe they are extraterrestrial, but I think they are something far more intriguing. But that's far more than I want to discuss at the moment.

When I became interested in Native American issues and topics, Brent coincidentally did so too. That took us in amazing directions neither of us anticipated. We saw links to UFO lore nearly everywhere and realized that the topic led to the essence of life itself. It's a great quest and one that is primarily deeply personal but it's also shared. It's neither possible nor proper to try to convince others of the rightness of one explanation in this strange field. What is proper, is what Brent has done. He listens to other's stories, reveals his own, experiments, asks a lot of probing questions, and makes interesting parallels from the information he processes. I'm quite grateful for meeting and working with Brent and I can say that the relationship has put a lot of meaning in my life.

One of the things I wanted to do with the 100th issue of Brent's publication was to show one of the early issues of Paraufology Forum. Here is a copy of his July 1986 issue. I also wanted to make my first book, The Archetype Experience, available to everyone for free. In the past 10 years I have had countless requests for copies. If you have Adobe Reader on your computer and are willing to download a massive pdf file, click here.