Strange Secrets

About the Author

This site's own extensive Nick Redfern key-figures entry and three companion Essential Reading articles on his other books already document his broader career. This site's own Andy Roberts key-figures entry already documents his role in the 2000s Lakenheath-Bentwaters re-investigation alongside David Clarke and Jenny Randles, his co-authorship of The UFOs That Never Were (2000) and Out of the Shadows (2002), and his solo book on the Berwyn Mountains Incident. This article establishes his first coverage on this site as a book author in his own right rather than only as a co-investigator, and notes this 2003 book falls squarely within his and Clarke's usual UK-government-files territory, alongside Redfern's typically US-focused FOIA research -- though this article was not able to confirm a specific division of chapters between the two authors from any available source.

This article's own research identified a bibliographic detail worth noting precisely: the book's publisher of record, per the Library of Congress catalog, is Paraview Pocket Books -- a co-published imprint between Paraview, a small paranormal-nonfiction press, and Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster's mass-market division, active roughly 2002-2007. This gave the book wider trade distribution than Redfern's usual New Page Books/Red Wheel Weiser titles, without making it a mainstream S&S acquisition in the ordinary sense.

Historical Context & Origins

This article confirmed the book's three-part structure directly from its own table of contents: "Saucer Secrets" (UFO-related government files), "Mind Games" (Cold War psychic-espionage programs -- remote viewing, psychokinesis, telepathy -- on both the American and Soviet sides), and "XCreatures" (cryptid files, including British Ministry of Defence material on the Loch Ness Monster and the CIA/DIA's photo-interpretation files on the "Ararat Anomaly," tracked from 1949 through 1994).

This article's research found the book's confirmed subject matter is entirely US/UK/Soviet in geographic scope -- covering topics including a U.S. Air Force nuclear-powered flying-saucer program, British Ministry of Defence and JARIC (UK photo-intelligence) files, CIA and KGB psychic-spy programs, Men in Black reports, cattle-mutilation and biological-warfare records, and crop circles -- with no indication in the indexed text, published reviews, or the book's own "common terms" index of any South Asian or Himalayan content.

Core Arguments & Key Concepts

The book's evidentiary standard, confirmed via an independent trade review, works from real declassified paper trails -- actual CIA, DIA, FBI, and Ministry of Defence documents -- rather than alleged or unconfirmed files, presenting excerpted document sections directly to readers. That same review notes a genuinely notable pattern in the book's own findings: the documented government files, once examined directly, tend to explain reported phenomena through mundane military or intelligence activity rather than validate cover-up narratives -- a fact-forward approach the review calls "a bit dry" but credits as responsible.

This structural and evidentiary approach is consistent with this site's own prior characterization of the book as concerning cases "where genuine intelligence and missile-testing interests intersected with UFO reporting" -- this article's research confirms that framing is accurate to the book's general method, even though, as established above, it does not extend to the specific Himalayan case this site had cited it alongside.

Key Cases & Evidence Discussed

This site's own 1968 CIA Himalayan Border UFO Sightings case file (Case File #284) documents six separate 1968 sightings along the Himalayan frontier and the 1972 recovery and USAF analysis of a metallic fragment near Pokhara, Nepal, on the working theory it was Chinese missile debris -- a case this article confirmed does not appear in this book's own text, though it shares the same general category of Cold War intelligence-UFO overlap this book documents in other countries.

Critical Reception & Controversies

As of this article's research (August 2026), the book holds a 3.46-out-of-5 rating on Goodreads from 54 ratings and 4 written reviews -- the lowest rating and by far the least reader engagement among the four Redfern-associated titles this site now covers (compared to 3.59/5 for The Real Men in Black, 3.56/5 for Top Secret Alien Abduction Files, and 3.88/5 for The Rendlesham Forest UFO Conspiracy), consistent with its status as an older, out-of-print, lower-visibility title. A trade-style review (SFReader, Steven Sawicki, 3/5 stars) praised its fact-forward, non-sensationalist approach while finding it "a bit dry," concluding it offers "a revealing insightful look" for readers unfamiliar with the intelligence community's genuine documented interest in paranormal and UFO topics.

This article found no Kirkus Reviews or Publishers Weekly coverage despite the book's more mainstream co-imprint distribution, suggesting it did not receive broader trade-press attention even with wider retail availability than Redfern's smaller-press titles.

Influence & Legacy

The book's legacy rests on its function as an early, broad-scope survey of genuinely declassified government paranormal-adjacent files across three distinct subject areas, predating Redfern's later, more narrowly focused solo books this site covers by seven to seventeen years.

Set alongside this site's own 1968 CIA Himalayan Border UFO Sightings case file, this book's value is thematic rather than case-specific: a comparative reference for how Cold War intelligence and military interests intersected with UFO, psychic-research, and cryptid reporting in other countries during the same general era.

The Book

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