Strange Skies

About the Author

This site's own extensive Jerome Clark key-figures entry and its five other essential-reading articles on his work -- The UFO Encyclopedia, The Emergence of a Phenomenon, The UFO Book, High Strangeness, and Extraordinary Encounters -- already document his career as one of ufology's most respected historians in depth. This article does not repeat that ground, and instead focuses on what specifically distinguishes this 2003 title.

This article's own research confirms all five of Clark's other books covered here were published by reference-book imprints -- Omnigraphics (the multi-volume UFO Encyclopedia, of which High Strangeness is Volume 2), Visible Ink Press (The UFO Book, the encyclopedia's abridged one-volume edition), and ABC-CLIO (Extraordinary Encounters). This book instead comes from Citadel Press, an imprint of the general trade publisher Kensington -- a real structural difference in intended market and format, not just a difference in subject.

Historical Context & Origins

This article's own research confirmed the book's table of contents directly via Google Books: "The Mystery Begins," "There It Is," "Killed by a Flying Saucer," "Estimating Extraterrestrial," "Grounding the Saucers," "Discs in Daylight," "The New War of the Worlds," "High Strangeness" (a chapter title here, not to be confused with Clark's separate 1996 book of the same name), an afterword, bibliography, and index -- a thematic/chronological narrative structure, not the alphabetical entry format of his reference works.

This article's own research was able to confirm specific case coverage only through an independent 2003 review by Peter Rogerson in the UK Fortean journal Magonia (issue 83), which discusses the book's treatment of the 1948 Mantell case, the Kinross Air Force Base disappearance, the Chiles-Whitted "double-decker rocket ship" sighting, and a Puerto Rico mass-sighting incident. This article was not able to independently confirm whether the book also covers other famous pilot cases such as Tehran 1976, the RB-47 bomber chase, or JAL 1628 -- those cases fall within the book's chronological scope but no source directly confirmed their inclusion, so this article does not assert it.

Core Arguments & Key Concepts

The book's organizing argument, consistent with this site's own citation of it, is that pilots occupy a distinct evidentiary category among UFO witnesses: trained, typically experienced aerial observers whose professional judgment about aircraft, distance, and speed carries more weight than an average witness's. Per the Rogerson review, Clark applies this standard with real discrimination rather than uncritical acceptance -- explicitly declining to "repackage" the Mantell case as a straightforward UFO encounter, engaging its more mundane candidate explanations directly.

That same review offers the book's most substantive documented criticism: Rogerson argues Clark does not sufficiently engage skeptical counter-analyses (naming Philip Klass specifically) or perceptual and psychological explanations for pilot misidentification, and suggests an alternative folkloric-psychological framing -- that combat-primed pilots may pattern-match ambiguous stimuli to imagined threats -- that Clark's book underweights. This article presents that critique directly rather than treating the book's pilot-credibility thesis as uncontested.

Key Cases & Evidence Discussed

This site's own Treviso 1979 case file (Case File #111) documents the Italian pilot Cecconi's sighting near Treviso-Sant'Angelo Airport in far greater depth than this general casebook could allow, and is where this site's own citation of the book originates. Readers wanting the complete case record should consult that case file directly; this book's relevance is to the broader methodological question of pilot-witness credibility rather than to the Treviso case specifically, which this article found no evidence the book discusses by name.

Critical Reception & Controversies

As of this article's research (August 2026), the book holds a 4.08-out-of-5 average on Goodreads from only 13 ratings and no written reviews -- too small a sample for a firm conclusion, though directionally positive.

The book's most substantive critical engagement is Peter Rogerson's review in Magonia #83 (December 2003), a respected UK Fortean and skeptical review journal. Rogerson's assessment was measured: praise for Clark's willingness to treat even famous cases skeptically when the evidence warranted it, alongside the methodological criticism described above -- that the book's pilot-credibility framework leaves relatively unexamined the specific ways trained observers can still misperceive ambiguous stimuli under stress. This article found no evidence of an aviation-press review (e.g., a pilot trade publication), an absence worth noting though not itself confirmation of anything.

The book is now out of print, with no publisher stock and only secondary-market copies available at prices ranging roughly $23 to over $100 depending on condition -- consistent with a single-printing trade paperback that has not been reissued in the more than two decades since publication.

Influence & Legacy

The book's legacy within Clark's own bibliography is structural: it represents his one attempt at a witness-class-organized trade casebook, aimed at general readers rather than the reference-shelf audience of his five other works already covered on this site.

Set alongside this site's own Treviso 1979 case file, the book's chief value is thematic -- a sustained argument for weighing pilot testimony carefully rather than dismissing or uncritically accepting it -- tempered by Rogerson's contemporary critique that the book could have engaged skeptical and psychological counter-explanations more directly.

The Book

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