Background
James Moseley was born on August 4, 1931, in New York, United States. He was a son of George Van Horn (a general in the army) and Florence Barber Moseley (a homemaker). Most of the childhood he spent on army bases.
1953
Princeton University 33 Washington Rd Princeton, New Jersey 08544, United States
James Willett Moseley during his studies at Princeton.
1954
The Republic of Peru, South America
James Willett Moseley in Peru.
1962
Clarksburg, West Virginia, United States
James Willett Moseley shaking hands with President Harry Truman at a press conference.
1965
6001 Rockside Rd, Independence, OH 44131-2209, United States
The National UFO Conference in Cleveland. Left to Right: David Halperin, Dale Rettig, James Moseley, and Michael Mann.
1968
United States
James Moseley on the Joe Pyne show talking about the Moth-man, flying saucers and showing the “Lost Creek Saucer” film.
1976
Cleveland, Ohio, United States
The National UFO Conference in Cleveland. Left to Right: Cliff Stenberg, Dale Rettig, Rick Hilberg, Edward Biebel and James Moseley.
1979
Green Bay, Wisconsin, United States
The National UFO Conference in Green Bay. Left to Right: Tim Beckley, Rick Hilberg and James Moseley.
1980
James Willett Moseley, amateur archeologist lecturer, author, art collector.
1980
New York, United States.
James Moseley with "Miss UFO" at the National UFO Conference.
1990
Miami Beach, Florida, United States
The National UFO Conference in Miami Beach. Left to Right: Edward Biebel, James Moseley and Carol Hilberg.
1993
Detroit, United States
James Moseley speaking at the Operation Right to Know rally in front of the White House at Lafayette Park. Standing to his right is Hal McKenzie, one of ORK’s organizers.
2002
5691 Kings Island Dr 45040 Mason, Ohio, United States
James Moseley lecturing at the National UFO Conference.
2002
114 N Main St 88203-4706 Roswell, New Mexico, United States
James Moseley lecturing at the International UFO Museum and Research Center.
2004
Hollywood, California, United States
James Moseley about to be "levitated" at UFO Conference.
James Willett Moseley had Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society membership.
James Willett Moseley had Key West Art and Historical Society membership.
James Willett Moseley had the International UFO Museum and Research Center membership.
James Willett Moseley had Key West Chamber of Commerce membership.
James Willett Moseley had Key West Business Guild membership.
(This amusing, revealing, and entertaining romp through th...)
This amusing, revealing, and entertaining romp through the confused and controversial history of the UFO craze is a must for believers and skeptics alike. "Shockingly Close to the Truth!" is the first and only comprehensive tell-all history of ufology from two men who have been at the center of this cultlike movement for close to half a century.
https://www.amazon.com/Shockingly-Close-Truth-Confessions-Grave-Robbing/dp/1573929913/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Shockingly+Close+to+the+Truth%3A+Confessions+of+a+GraveRobbing+Ufologist&qid=1585086340&sr=8-1
lecturer author collector archeologist
James Moseley was born on August 4, 1931, in New York, United States. He was a son of George Van Horn (a general in the army) and Florence Barber Moseley (a homemaker). Most of the childhood he spent on army bases.
James Moseley studied at Englewood School.
He attended Princeton University for two years. Despite earning good marks, Moseley dropped out to pursue his own interests and hobbies, including archeology and ufology.
James Moseley became interested in UFOs (unidentified flying objects) following the 1947 claims of pilot Kenneth Arnold, but his interest deepened following the 1948 death of United States Air Force pilot Thomas Mantell, in pursuit of a UFO.
Moseley’s investigation of UFOs began in 1953 when he traveled throughout the United States trying to elucidate what was then the new mystery of flying saucers. He visited the Project Blue Book facilities at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, meeting Colonel Bob Friend. He attended the famous "Giant Rock" contactee convention and interviewed many witnesses, researchers and officials.
In July 1954, Moseley co-founded "Saucer News," a periodical remembered for its unorthodox, "freewheeling" style. "Saucer News" only occasionally featured serious UFO research; notably, Moseley was among the first to publicize evidence against the claims of leading "contactee" George Adamski, who was then at the peak of his fame. Later, Moseley produced a famous hoax with his friend Gray Barker (an open promoter of ufology who was not shy of "inventing" cases when needed), the so-called "Straith letter" mailed to Adamski by an alleged official from the "Cultural Exchange Committee" of the United States Department of State, which confirmed and encouraged Adamski’s claims of contact with benign blondes from Venus and elsewhere in the solar system. Adamski was delighted and paraded the "Straith letter" as proof of his claims, which led to an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Only after Barker’s death in 1984, James Moseley published the full inside story of how he and Barker created the letter using real American government stationary that Barker had obtained from a friend.
In 1953, he investigated the Ralph Horton flying saucer crash after finding it in the flying saucer file of the "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution." Moseley called the airport and confirmed that the object was a device used by the Air Force to determine wind velocity and direction. It was sent up attached to a balloon and tracked by radar, since radar beams were reflected by the object. Horton retrieved the object from where he had discarded it, and gave it to Moseley. Moseley lost the object. This was the serious period of Moseley’s career when he published Saucer News, which was a critical publication devoted to real cases and investigations and not just gossip.
In late 1953, Moseley began a great odyssey "tracking the elusive flying saucer." He drove from his home in New Jersey to Washington, D.C., to ask at the Pentagon to see the saucer cases that the Air Force had investigated. To his astonishment, he was allowed to do so, with no clearance required. He interviewed the famous saucer author Major Donald E. Keyhoe, and said: "I wasn’t impressed. I felt - correctly, I still believe - that Keyhoe routinely made too much out of too little, at least in part just to sell books." From there it was on to interviews in South Carolina, Georgia, then west to Mississippi, Texas, Arizona.
Moseley drove on to Hollywood where he interviewed best-selling author Frank Scully, who vigorously defended the Aztec, New Mexico "crashed saucer" story given him by Silas Newton and Leo Gebauer. On the way back Moseley interviewed Newton in Denver. Moseley wasn’t impressed by Scully or Newton, either. He contacted the office of former President Truman in Independence, Missouri, asking for an interview about flying saucers. Amazingly, even though this was just over a year after the famous and controversial 1952 "flying saucer invasion" of Washington, DC, while Truman was still president, Moseley’s request was granted. Truman took Moseley into his private office, where the former president joked around with him a bit, then told him that he’d never seen a saucer, and didn’t know anything about them.
"Saucer News" was sold to Gray Barker in 1968. Moseley became a regular lecturer on UFOs for several years and organized an annual convention. Moseley played an important role in organizing UFO conferences in the period between the sixties and mid-nineties. His most famous conference was a huge one with well over a thousand attendees in 1967 at the Commodore Hotel in New York City, at the peak of the flying saucer controversy in the sixties. He put another one in New York in 1980. Moseley also appeared on television and radio shows.
In 1970, he founded a newsletter that went by several titles until Moseley settled on "Saucer Smear" in 1981. He produced the newsletter irregularly and mails it free-of-charge to about 200 friends and associates. "Saucer Smear" typically had a joking, gossipy tone.
In 1984, Mosely established an antique store - "Rose Lane Antiques" - in Key West, Florida, that featured some of his own discoveries from his time in Peru, as well as various other South American artifacts, which were found during numerous expeditions in the 1950s and 1960s in Peru, as well as various other South American countries. The store did not do well, and so Moseley donated the artifacts to the Graves Museum of Archaeology and Natural History in Dania, Florida, where they are on permanent display.
James Moseley kept complete diaries of his early investigations in the fifties with the intention of publishing a book someday, but he needed a partner to sort them out. This finally happened in the late nineties when he teamed up with Karl Pflock. Karl had an interesting background which included a professional career in the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense and also a longstanding interest in UFOs. After his retirement from government service, Pflock became a Roswell researcher (in the end accepted the government official explanation of the Mogul balloon). The book, entitled "Shockingly Close to the Truth!", was published in 2002. About this book, Moseley wrote: "All I can say is that there has never been a UFO book remotely like this one. The perspective is unique. If we can get the attention of the major media - which is not unlikely - this book will take off. I love to travel and to massage my ego by lecturing and/or doing media appearances. I am semi-retired and have plenty of free time for this kind of activity."
(This amusing, revealing, and entertaining romp through th...)
Over the career, James Moseley exposed UFO hoaxers and engineered hoaxes of his own, but Moseley didn't see himself as a skeptic or "true believer" and believed himself to be more on the middle ground.
James Moseley believed that a core of the UFO phenomenon was real and truly unexplained after filtering out all the hoaxes, conspiracy theories, misidentifications and just plain nonsense that pervades much of the field.
Moseley accepted, then rejected, a number of explanations for UFOs. He considered the extraterrestrial hypothesis; a secret weapon and aircraft hypothesis, psychic, supernatural, interdimensional hypotheses in the vein of John Keel or Jacques Vallee; deep skepticism; agnosticism.
Quotations: "My ufological motto is consider everything, believe nothing."
Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society , United States
Key West Art and Historical Society , United States
International UFO Museum and Research Center , United States
Key West Chamber of Commerce , United States
Graves Museum of Archeology and Natural History , United States
Key West Business Guild , United States
Broward County Archeological Society , United States
Many in the UFO community considered James Moseley a skeptic because he was always reluctant to accept the validity of some of the more famous incidents like the Roswell crash, the abduction cases researched by Budd Hopkins and others. But Moseley was also equally skeptic and sarcastic of the debunkers, making fun of many of the explanations. He could also keep a good friendship with some witnesses and researchers, even though he didn’t believe in their cases.
Quotes from others about the person
James Moseley's roommate of two years at Princeton University, John Leinfelder, recalled that James got into long philosophical discussions: some witty, some serious - about satellites.
Patrick Huyghe of The Anomalist described him as "one of the last remaining old-timers from the golden age of flying saucers."
Longtime researcher Jerome Clark wrote that, despite his massive presence in the field, "he was less interested in UFOs as such than in the social world of persons concerned, intelligently or otherwise, with UFOs. His role in the UFO subculture cannot be captured in a single word. And if one has to use two, it was sui generis."
Antonio Huneeus, a reporter and Moseley's friend wrote after his death: "Jim Moseley was a unique personality that will never be replaced. He played the role of the joker, making a permanent social commentary about the state of ufology in America. He was an equal-opportunity cynic as the debunkers and skeptics were certainly not immune from his barbs. But underneath it all he was a good guy and he was also truly fascinated and baffled by the inside core of unexplained UFO incidents. His iconoclast style will certainly be missed."
James Moseley met his wife, Sandra Svendsen, in Greenwich Village, where they lived and had one child, Elizabeth. Later, James and Sandra divorced. They had seven grandchildren.