The Silver Bridge (2 page)
Authors: Gray Barker
As for Gray’s general attitude toward UFOs, I do understand it, yet it is hard to explain. He thought of the paranormal as he did motion pictures: as make-believe, wonderment, entertainment, fantasy, and fun and games. Yet, when I tried to pin him down, as I often did, asking if he didn’t think at least
some
of the phenomena might be real, he would say that if there
was
anything to it, it was psychic, extradimensional, or esoteric - but definitely
not
interplanetary. West Virginia’s Mothman seems to have inhabited this same extradimensional space. The Mothman is a strange being that John Keel immortalized in his
Mothman Prophecies
in 1975 - a full 5 years after the groundbreaking
Silver Bridge.
With it, Keel established himself - alongside Barker - as one of the leading lights of four-dimensional saucering. It was Keel who would coin the term
MIB,
for the notorious “Men in Black” invented by Gray. With Gray Barker’s passing, the door fully closed on the “classic” era of saucering. There’s not much more to say, except perhaps to share this poem that I penned a year after Gray’s death:
Back to You, Gray Barker
I tried to phone Gray Barker tonight
Like we used to do.
I dialed the 304 area code
(So close to 305, in Florida);
And the robot said,
“You can’t dial him where he is now
The lions don’t go out that far.”
And I sassed the robot, saying,
“How far out do the li-ons go?”
And it replied, mockingly,
“Thank you for using AT&T.”
I tried to write Gray Barker the other day
Like we used to do.
I put on a “D” stamp
(Was there
ever a.
“C”?)
And the letter came back to me,
Together with a warning
Stamped on the envelope:
“For Domestic Use Only.”
A man from the Post Office Department came by
And informed me
That R. E. Straith is dead.
I tried to reach Gray Barker the other night,
Telepathically, as if in a dream;
And I saw this circle of Beings
Clustered around a smoldering cauldron.
Here was Palmer and Arnold and Jessup and Wilkins;
And Layne and Edwards and Scully and Van Tassel;
All their differences forgotten;
And George Adamski, with his telescope;
And here too was Gray Barker With a drink in his hand,
Stirring the cauldron so vigorously That his hand shook;
So I asked him, “When may I join you?”
And George Adamski answered, for the group:
“Time Will Tell.”
| | SAUCERIAN BOOKS | | Clarksburg, West Virginia |
FIRST EDITION
Copyright, 1970 by Gray Barker. Library of Congress catalogue-card number: 70-119512. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form, except for short quotations in critical essays and reviews.
Printed and bound in the U.S.A. by
TOMORROW RIVER PRINTERS
AMHERST, WISCONSIN
SECOND EDITION
| Copyright, 2008 | | ISBN: 1-4392-0427-6 E-Book ISBN: 978-1-61789-798-6 |
| METADISC BOOKS | | Seattle, Washington |
To The Bird Creature
“When a thing is hidden away
with so much pains, merely to
reveal it is to destroy it.”
—Tertullian
AN INTRODUCTION
“…
We hope Dr. Condon will not mind, if, in our enthusiasm in making the point that the saucers are real, we involved him in a few imaginary situations, exercising a great deal of literary license to make our point…”
Gray Barker
in
Saucer News
W
e are dealing here, perhaps, in this book, in this work, not with prose alone but with poetry as well. If so, it might be well not to judge it in the terms that one might employ in the assessment of conventional non-fiction—scientific non-fiction at that—but rather judge it in terms appropriate to its particular nature…possibly a hybrid that is—strictly speaking—neither poetry nor prose, but something of both.
I suspect that Gray Barker, the author of this work, in the format of a “conventional” book dealing with strange phenomena has in fact written—how intentionally I do not know—something else again.
We have here literal details, literal facts, which presumably to one extent or another could be checked for accuracy for their individual and/or collective merit. The results of such a study could be compared with Mr. Barker’s descriptions, the degree of consistency being used as the standard for judging the book.
One
could,
presumably, do this, but I have serious doubt as to whether this would present the appropriate evaluation of the true worth or meaning of the book. It might well be akin to questioning the value of the fable of the fox and the crow on the ground that it is “unrealistic”.
There may well be a “physical cause” for the strange phenomena with which Mr. Barker deals. But
strangeness itself,
and the reaction of mankind to it, may have an importance.
When a man takes pen in hand and documents an event or series of events in a factual “one-two-three” form, it is one thing. But, read these lines from chapter 5:
“…On the outside there raged fires of even greater dimensions, and within them terror, for they were furnaces of Hell—as beings struggled madly with each other in unconscionable and inexplicable acts of physical and mental violence. Oftimes his physical forges raged and burned to contribute to that diabolic outside scene.
“Today, however, he had rebelled at those things he loathed, and forged a golden ball for the children in the world.”
Whether this event happened literally—and happened in the way it is here described, I do not know. But in terms of this work, is this the essence of the matter?
Of the literal details, some comment can be made. Chapter 12 deals with the so-called “Men in Black”, a subject Mr. Barker has dealt with before, notably in a previous book,
They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. I,
myself, don’t “buy” the “men in black” stories, but neither do I consider this to be something to be placed in a back file, stamped “solved” in big red letters. The concept of such individuals
is
somewhat fantastic, but this doesn’t mean that there aren’t unsolved cases, and it might be well to observe that what seems “fantastic” is not necessarily “fantasy”. There may well be something to the “men in black”. Indeed, perhaps a great deal.
Aesthetically speaking, I consider this work to be quite pleasing. But aesthetics and literal detail may not be all that is available to the reader.
I do not know quite what we have—in this book. I wonder if the author, himself, knows what he had done. It may well be nothing, or it may be that…
Perhaps Gray Barker has done, subconsciously, what Mr. Universe did, and forged a golden ball for the children of the world.
Allen H. Greenfield
January 1, 1970
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 4: LIKE A BIG FAT BIRD
hapter 8: THE MAN WITH THE BEARD
Chapter 13: THE CURSE OF CORNSTALK
Chapter 14: THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT
Chapter 15: THE DOG THAT SAW MOTHMAN
Chapter 17: PSEUDOTRITON RUBER RUBER
I
n Point Pleasant, W. Va., Mrs. Ralph Thomas opened the ancient family bible, and with shaking finger delineated the passages she knew so well. Then with a shudder she turned the ponderous volume to the steel engravings that depicted the diabolic realm of the wicked, as they burned forever for their transgressions, deep in the bowels of fiery and eternal Hell.
Yes, the creature was there, or one almost like it. The evil thing, somewhat like an angel, but with wings shriveled and grown blackened, and its face a horrible mask, was indeed terrifying. But never could the picture grip her and hold her in its spell; never could it inspire that power of terror that had welled over her in the vision.
Again Mrs. Thomas prayed long and fervently; then she prophesied and spoke loudly in tongues.
And in Parkersburg, a good two hours’ drive to the north, Woodrow Derenberger was also frightened. The fear that shook him was not at the memory of his strange experience, but from the realization of having told it. His fellow human beings, he thought, through prejudice, ignorance or fear, would be his persecutors.
He had seen a strange ship land and a man get out of it. The man had talked with him, though he spoke no words. Through a process which somebody described as “mental telepathy” he had apparently conversed with a being from a strange world, whose cities were called “gatherings,” and where visitors were known as “searchers”.
Derenberger held no fear of Indrid Cold, which the man called himself.
“I mean you no harm. I come from a country much less powerful than yours,” Cold had assured him.
And in Ripley, midway between Point Pleasant and Parkersburg, Mr. Universe forged his golden ball. He plunged it into the searing heat and drew it out again; then he tempered and retempered it. As he carefully and lovingly polished it, the noise of the forges subsided and he could hear substituted the sounds of laughter and great sport. He could almost see it glistening in the November sun as it was hurled in friendship and good will.
But in the eyes of man, it would inspire only briefly the wonder of an otherworldly origin, and he would soon test it, drill into it, and lock it in a bank vault for its lucrative value, snatching it from the children of Earth, for whom Mr. Universe had intended it.
As to the flying creature, Newell Partridge had probably seen it first; rather its eyes, one should say. The fictional protagonist in Edgar Allen Poe’s classic,
The Telltale Heart,
might have expressed the same fear. “I think it was his eye,” he explains, when he tries, maddened by the telltale beating, to explain why he murdered the old man.
The eyes glistened like bicycle reflectors from the vicinity of the abandoned barn. Partridge’s German Shepherd dog, “Bandit”, rushed at the eyes as he had often charged wild game. But he encountered something from the unknown.
Two young couples, Mr. and Mrs. Steve Mallette and Mr. and Mrs. Roger Scarberry, were the next to see it, and the fiery eyes would be forever implanted in their memories. The old T.N.T. plant, with its black windows, like blind eyes staring at them through the darkness, would help set the eerie, almost unnatural scene. Mothman would follow them as they fled homeward. And even after the creature itself went away, its invisible spectre would continue to haunt their lives.
It was the younger, almost boy-like image of Jesus which Mrs. Ralph Thomas fixed in her mind when she knelt and prayed—not for her personal safety, but for the evils of the world, on Nov. 16, 1966. She first thanked Him for the gift of prophecy which she felt had been bestowed upon her unworthily. Through this gift she had predicted the war in Viet Nam, had accurately foreseen what man would photograph on the moon, and had apocalyptic views of the future, of dire and cataclysmic nature.
The other image of the Christ, which hung in the small ante room, was older and more severe. Although His visage there carried the benign promise to save mankind, it also suggested an avenging power, the idea that Man, however holy, is still born in sin, and must repent of it with penance and suffering.
“Dear Jesus,” she implored, “forgive us for our terrifying sins, for we are not perfect. And further, in Thy infinite mercy, forgive us for those greater and perhaps more terrible sins, those of
omission,
committed against God and His Holy Son!”
It had been the material world which had intruded the preceding Monday. When Mrs. Thomas finished her housework, putting the large eight-room home in neat shape, it was her custom to kneel silently in the kitchen, where, surrounded by her accoutrements of housewifely arts, she would move her lips in a prayer of thanksgiving for her many blessings. Since she could not often remember any common sin she had committed (she was known throughout the neighborhood as an almost saintly person who was the first to comfort a grief or nurse an illness), she envisioned sins that few others would admit or call to mind: the many things she had
not
done in the fulfillment of her daily living and the practice of her chosen faith.
