NZ Skeptics Articles

A Review of “UFO Warning” by John Stuart (1963)

Al Blenney - 18th February 2025

In a previous article on Men in Black (MIB), I referred to the frightening experience of New Zealander John Stuart that caused him to abandon his UFO research. The above book is an account of those apparent experiences. (The cover above has nothing much to do with the tale)

John Stuart’s saucer research began in 1950, when he started saving UFO sighting reports from international newspapers and correspondents, and reading every book on UFOs that he could find. One night in 1952 there was a knock on his door, and when he quickly went to answer there was no-one there. He thought, for no apparent reason, that this was not a child’s game, but somehow caused by his UFO research. Sometime after this event, Stuart was in bed one night reading when his phone rang. Answering it, there was a machine-like voice on the other end, who didn’t identify themselves, but claimed to be from another planet. It asked Stuart to confirm he was a UFO researcher and then, after some skeptical words by Stuart, said “I warn you to stop interfering in affairs that don’t concern you!” The call finished with “You have been warned!”

Undaunted, Stuart decided to press on with his investigating. After falling out with other UFO enthusiasts (reasons not given), he enlisted the help of a friend, a beautiful young lady called Doreen Wilkinson (referred to in UFO Warning as Barbara Turner). He was married at the time, but usually the few references to his wife are that she is asleep in bed, while he and Wilkinson stay up many late nights discussing their work, sometimes as late as 3am. He is at great pains to emphasise that their relationship was purely platonic, and reviles the “evil-minded persons” who tried to blacken their names on the basis of their suspiciously close friendship and his apparently compliant wife. Even so, in spite of all his denials, it seems a bit dodgy.

Notwithstanding the gossip-mongers, they plough on together. Stuart had been receiving reports of UFO sightings from all over the world. They decide to plot the directions that the UFOs come from and go to on a world map. Remember, this map of movements largely comes from reports of UFO sightings, which may be very vague on details such as direction of movement. Even so, there is apparently enough detail that they can draw “lines between each sighting”, which doesn’t make much sense. But it seems that lines, plotting apparent UFO flight patterns, all converge on Antarctica. Perhaps they have found the UFO’s base!

But why Antarctica? They wonder if the UFOs come from Mars, carrying descendants of the Aztecs; since the Aztecs disappeared suddenly – perhaps Mars was their refuge. Wilkinson says “[T]he Aztecs were a very clever people… They made a deep study of science… seeing that the earth was doomed to destruction… and immediately went about leaving the earth to escape death.” She suggests the Easter Islanders made a similar escape, just before the world suffered an instantaneous Ice Age – the deep-frozen Siberian mammoth is the clue they use to confirm the occurrence of the instant freeze.

So if that Ice Age was so complete, it would have wiped out all the earth’s remaining humans (and animals: maybe pairs were taken to Mars too, in a Space Ark!). So where did our ancestors come from, if there were none left to repopulate? Obviously Mars! Two humans, male and female, convicted (on Mars) for some horrendous crime (forbidden apple?), were banished to Earth after the ice age had ended, and found an Eden. Thus the biblical legend of Adam and Eve. One of their children returned to Mars to find a mate (which takes care of some inbreeding problems).

Wilkinson suggests the different skin colours to be found among Earth’s people could be because they are immigrants (presumably post-dating “Adam and Eve”) from planets at varying distances from the sun. And why are the Martian UFOs so interested in our ice caps?

She proposes that “the Earth may be approaching some sort of catastrophe, and they are clinically interested in our means of escape.” (Elon Musk, anyone?) “To them, we earth people are just guinea pigs in a matter of life and death.”

The next chapter contains an account of how Wilkinson suddenly became overtly sexual with statements like “I like to tease boys”, using things like immodest (for the 1950s) clothing. Stuart is then taken aback when she says “I’d like to sit here naked. Like me to?” as it was completely out of character (but “nothing propinks like propinquity”). She then returned to her normal mien, but Stuart suspected she had fallen a victim to supernatural possession, and the conversation returned to UFOs. It was then time for her to leave, and Stuart escorted her to the gate, where she suddenly said “Help me, Jonnie, help me” and ran off before Stuart could ask her what was the matter. And it was never resolved.

The next evening the pair met, and Stuart claims he went into some kind of trance and began, somehow, relating an earlier history of the South Pole denizens. It seems that there was a very advanced race living on our planet, well before the Aztecs. They, too, had some warning of an approaching catastrophe which came upon them unexpectedly – another instant world-wide deep freeze. The survivors retreated to Antarctica and waited for the world to warm up again. Unfortunately for them, another race arrived on our planet from “far away”, in the type of UFOs seen today. And the new-comers enslaved the locals, having a character that was “lecherous and sadistic”. Their leching was perpetrated upon the women of the earlier race, resulting in hybrid offspring (mutual fertility was an amazing coincidence between races so widely separated).

The following section is rather confusing, and little description is given of the hybrids. I think we are supposed to assume we are the descendants of the earlier inhabitants. The only description given is that of the invaders, who have “a large head, a big body and webbed feet.” “Why webbed feet?” “Because they live, and still live, in the sea”!

This entire chapter is suffused with latent sexuality. Most of the chapter’s length contains discussions of nudity, the necessity (or otherwise) of clothes, revealing clothes, lechery and sex slavery and rape, and the apparent origins of the myth of horny satyrs and their pursuit of innocent nymphs. The chapter ends with Wilkinson, in a very small voice, wondering if “[O]ne of these blokes… might rape me too?” Prophetic words, even though Stuart dismisses the idea as “[T]oo fantastic to entertain”.

The next chapter begins with a discussion of the powers of the UFO denizens, with a brief interlude where Wilkinson offers to strip naked and a startled Stuart declines the offer. He hastily gets back to the subject in hand. “I too believe that the UFO controllers can project their inner-selves to any point they care to. It’s easy, really, because I learned the use of such a power myself.” Wilkinson is surprised at this revelation, and the technique Stuart describes sounds very much like “Remote Viewing” that I cast some shade upon in my review of the book Imminent.

The next chapter contains a human-like visitor who suddenly appears, and on Stuart asking who he is, replies that he is a “space-man” and was there to repeat the previous warning that Stuart and Wilkinson should stop their UFO research. But he also warns that Wilkinson would be in danger if they didn’t cease. Later they hear a whisper in the room, but there is no-one there but themselves. Wilkinson admits she is frightened, but refuses to give up their research, even as Stuart insists that it is dangerous. Then things start to get serious.

Wilkinson goes out to buy cigarettes (the two are inveterate smokers, very handy in moments of fear) but bursts into the house (and Stuart’s arms) obviously frightened: “There’s something out there!”. In an attempt to reassure her, Stuart goes outside to be met by an appalling stench, apparently like burnt plastic and sulphur. Stuart goes around the front of the house, but is pursued by strange sounds with no obvious source. And then the monster manifests. “The monster’s head was large and bulbous. No neck. A huge ungainly body supported on ridiculously short legs. It had webbed feet. The arms were thin and not unlike stalks of bamboo. It had no hands, the long fingers jutting from the arms like stalks… The monster was definitely male.”

Seeing this eight foot tall “loathsome, hideous, evil, disgusting, horrifying” beast, Stuart and Wilkinson were suddenly unable to move. Stuart suggests that they were paralysed by some psychic force. He realises, to his horror, that the beast has evil designs upon Wilkinson, who seems completely under its control. Stuart spares us her (presumably lascivious) actions, telling the reader “This wasn’t my little friend: she was a stranger! She had to be!” Just before the creature touches Wilkinson, it vanishes.

Later one evening, as Stuart was walking Wilkinson back to her hotel, she idly wondered whether there might be a space man waiting in her room. A handsome one might be worth taking to bed with her. Later that night, Wilkinson was attacked in her room by an invisible entity that raped her over a two hour period. (Stuart is deliberately vague in the book about what actually happened). This horrible experience is enough to convince Wilkinson to abandon her collaboration with Stuart’s UFO investigations. But Stuart presses on alone.

After a few weeks working on his research, he is visited by another loathsome creature, different from the first, with a vaguely humanoid body. Again it warns him to cease his investigations, or else Wilkinson will further suffer. It refers to her dreadful experience, and suggests she was raped by three humanoids, while another ten watched. If they were invisible, as her previous visitor was, she is to be forgiven for thinking there was only one.

After this and one other visit, Stuart finally gets the message and ceases his UFO work. There are no further warning visitations.

This is an extraordinarily peculiar book. The events described apparently happened in the 1950s, before the UFO meme became popular (although there do seem to be a lot of UFO sightings by Stuart’s correspondents). Certainly this was well before the Men in Black, who have a fairly settled appearance these days - no web-footed horny monsters - became a popular topic.

The pair do seem to be fond of making stuff up, and then accepting it as supporting their theories, e.g. Aztecs and Easter Islanders migrating to Mars, in their spaceships, in historical times, when we are sure Mars was a barren and inhospitable place (Von Daniken published Chariots of the Gods in 1968, which is too late to excuse their fantasy). And they fled to escape an ice age, of which there is no evidence, some time after the Aztecs. On what basis do they believe “[T]he Aztecs … made a deep study of science”? Presumably deep enough that they could construct spaceships, stopping off to rescue the Easter Islanders on the way. Maybe Stuart and Wilkinson, having decided the Aztecs escaped to Mars, thought their exodus in this way must mean they had “made a deep study of science”. Somewhat circular reasoning.

The map of the directions of UFO movements taken from reports of sightings sounds like forcing vague or non-existent path observations, likely taken or recalled under excitable conditions, into their wishful thinking. (I note that Albert K. Bender decided the UFO centre of operations was the North Pole).

Their notion that different skin colours of various “races” is due to their coming from planets at various distances from the sun is at odds with the commonality of much DNA across the world. They really do make things up!

Then there was the idea of advanced people living here, well before the Aztecs. Any relation to the descendants of “Adam and Eve” (including the darker coloured human denizens from other planets)? These are the people enslaved and raped by bad guys from “far away”. This mating of different “species” produced hybrids with webbed feet, which presumably looked like their loathsome visitor. Hybrids are normally sterile, so they ought to have died out, since we don’t seem to have any rapists from “far away” - we can grow our own.

There are too many “humans” in this story. There are the ancient and advanced survivors of an ice age, there are the visitors from “far away”, and there are the Aztecs perhaps still living in their retreat on Mars. Then there are the persons of colour who come from planets further from the sun.

Further weak points in this story:

However, world-wide sightings of UFO inhabitants are wildly inconsistent, so this variation can’t really be held as a defect in the account. A diligent researcher’s case study exemplifies this:

SOURCE: The Humanoids: Gordon Creighton (1969), p. 86.

Leaving aside all their wild and baseless fantasies, which they take as true and build pyramids of speculation upon, there are a few “concrete” events to consider:

The phantom doorbell ringer (who manifested footsteps outside). Stuart considers it unlikely to have been a prank, because he was near the door to answer, and searched the house grounds, and found no-one.

The unexpected phone call at 11:30 at night from an entity claiming to be from another planet, who warns Stuart to “stop interfering in affairs that do not concern you”.

There are some invisible entities that whisper in Stuart’s ear.

Then there is the loathsome, lecherous, mind-controlling and smelly web-footed creature that appears in their garden, seen by Stuart, Wilkinson and one beautiful Terry, who makes a walk-on appearance, although Stuart expends a lot of ink extolling her gorgeous visual qualities. The creature offers no warning, except by its fearful presence.

There is another warning delivered to Stuart by a new hideous figure, described as somewhat human in shape, half man and half woman having “flesh, stinkingly putrid, [that] seemed to hang in folds”.

And finally there are Wilkinson’s gang rapists, invisible, but solid as needed to inflict a horrific experience on her.

This truly is a remarkable book, and there is much in its contents that I have not dwelt upon. But I think I’ve given enough to paint a general picture of its tenor.

It claims to be an account of real events, and a warning to other UFO researchers that, if they receive early warnings, they should cease their investigations. And, as I noted in my previous article on the Men In Black, others claim to have received dramatic warnings and given up their research.

One can take the book as what it claims to be: a warning to other UFO researchers to be careful, i.e. to take initial warnings seriously from strange entities telling them to cease their work. But the pair’s unfounded speculations are so awfully wild that Stuart should have been embarrassed to put them in writing. They do detract from the credibility of the work.

So, what to make of the pair’s claimed experiences? Certainly the book was not written to be a best-seller, since it was published by Barker’s Saucerian Books, which appeals to a very limited audience. That possibility seems to suggest the book is not fiction, or not badly written fiction to warn off other UFO investigators. However, the pair really are gullible and prone to make things up. And if they can make things up, they can also exaggerate.

Obviously, as skeptics we must be wary of taking their stories at face value, and there is certainly a Freudian aspect to their encounters. So do I dismiss the pair’s experiences as entirely fictional or as hallucinations or dreams or as real? The best I can come up with is that it is a folie à deux; a shared psychosis, a psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from one individual to another. My only other interpretation is that the pair’s relationship was indeed sexual, and the book is an attempt to put an innocent spin on events. But I’m not happy with this latter as a good explanation, since there are sexy episodes in the book which would be omitted if the book was a cover up. I’m also not happy with any of the other explanations I can think of.

There are other reports of aliens discouraging UFO investigators. But I can’t help feeling (without evidence) that the notion of terrorised UFO investigators largely relies on Barker’s 1956 book They Knew too Much about Flying Saucers. Although UFO Warning was published in 1963, it was rather late to serve as a warning to UFO aficionados. But parts of the pair’s tale, quoting some correspondence from Stuart, were recounted in Barker’s book. These align with the contents of UFO Warning, but do not contain the more sensational parts in that book, such as lecherous and smelly hairy monsters, and gang rape. Maybe these were made up later, to give emphasis to the book’s warning.

Barker’s book includes numerous other personal stories of researchers who claimed to have been silenced, and the profound impact that their intimidation had on their lives, careers, and mental health. My guess is that Barker’s book started the meme that aliens warn UFO researchers off, sometimes with menace.

However there have been serious criticisms of Barker’s book, including that his book relies heavily on anecdotal evidence, and lacks verifiable proof to support its claims. Some critics point out that Barker’s sources, including Albert K. Bender, have been discredited or shown to have inconsistencies in their accounts. This casts doubt on the reliability of the information presented in his book. Barker himself has been accused of perpetuating hoaxes and manipulating people’s beliefs for personal gain. James Lewis wrote, in the encyclopedia, UFOs and Popular Culture, of Barker’s book They Knew too Much about Flying Saucers: “Barker considered himself an entertainer and folklorist rather than a factual reporter and was a gifted writer with a gentle, understated sense of humour.”

There is a CD by Stuart, which apparently tells somewhat of the further lives of Stuart and Wilkinson (hers is apparently sad). But I can’t find a copy of it.

The major online book retailers all have one, similar, review of UFO Warning, although Amazon has a couple, one of them five-starred. Most reviews concentrate entirely on the concrete events listed above, and completely ignore Stuart’s and Wilkinson’s outre speculations, e.g. from Amazon:

May this book serve as a warning to many other UFO students, since it informs us that within the framework of the enigma, pitfalls exist that can cause grief and grave danger. What is the evidence that the “Men in Black” are responsible for murdering some of our most experienced researchers?

Indeed, what is the evidence?

There are other reviews to be found after a diligent search, but they all have the same omission. An example is a review from “Saucers, Space and Science”:

Probably the most frightening and horrifying book ever published on the subject of UFOs. It tells the strange story of John Stuart who discovered what he felt was the secret of the saucers. His continuing research resulted in the appearance of a vile, lecherous monster. UFO WARNING tells you what not to do in UFO research and what to avoid, lest you too, be given the WARNING

There is a strange digression in the middle of the book, when the pair decide that the pyramids were built by UFO engineers. Wilkinson tells of her trip to the Egyptian Museum, where a young curator informs her that there is a door between the Sphinx’s paws, as pictured on the cover of the book. This door conceals a long passage at the end of which is a message laying out Earth’s future. Neither Stuart nor Wilkinson scoff at this revelation. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that perhaps it was really an under-paid curator taking in another gullible tourist, in the hope of a big tip? I can’t find any photos of this mysterious “door” between the Sphinx’s paws.