Uninvited Guests

About the Author

This site's own Richard Hall key-figures entry documents him arriving in Washington, D.C. in 1958 to work for NICAP, rising from executive secretary to assistant director by 1969 while working alongside director Donald Keyhoe to lobby Congress for public UFO hearings. In 1964 he researched, edited, and wrote much of The UFO Evidence, screening more than 5,000 signed NICAP reports down to 746 cases, a copy of which was mailed to every member of Congress that year. Astronomer John B. Carlson called him "the dean of ufology."

By the time this book appeared in 1988, NICAP itself had ceased operating (around 1980), and Hall had moved into a new constellation of roles: Director of Publications for MUFON (the Mutual UFO Network) and editor of the MUFON UFO Journal, Consulting Editor to the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), and a board member of the Fund for UFO Research, an organization former NICAP staff founded after its collapse. This book fits a recurring pattern in Hall's career of producing periodic "state of the evidence" surveys -- he had done so once already in 1964, and would do so again in 2001 with The UFO Evidence, Volume II -- suggesting this 1988 volume represents a mid-career effort to reach a general trade-book audience from his ongoing MUFON/CUFOS vantage point, though this article was not able to confirm any specific stated motivation from Hall himself for writing it.

Historical Context & Origins

The book arrived at a moment when Hall's institutional base had shifted entirely away from NICAP toward MUFON and CUFOS, and its combined coverage of traditional sightings alongside abduction and alien-encounter narratives -- material with little equivalent emphasis in the 1964 NICAP report -- reflects how much the field's own content had broadened by the late 1980s to include the abduction phenomenon Budd Hopkins and others had popularized earlier that decade.

This article was not able to independently confirm, through a table of contents or accessible full-text search, whether the book specifically discusses the Andersen AFB Guam radar wave or JAL Flight 1628 by name. The Andersen case, occurring more than two decades before publication, falls comfortably within the book's stated historical scope; JAL 1628, occurring in November 1986, roughly a year to a year and a half before this book's 1988 publication, represents a strikingly recent case for a general-history volume to include -- plausible given Hall's MUFON and CUFOS positions kept him professionally current on the case (CUFOS's own International UFO Reporter had already covered it via Bruce Maccabee's analysis in early 1987), but not directly verified from the book's own text.

Core Arguments & Key Concepts

The book's implicit argument, consistent with its subtitle's three-part framing -- sightings, alien encounters, and coverups -- is that these three strands together constitute a single, documented historical pattern warranting serious attention, rather than treating physical sightings and the newer abduction-narrative material as separate categories of evidence.

That broad, inclusive approach drew genuine criticism at the time: one contemporary reader review specifically faulted Hall for treating uncorroborated claims -- citing Budd Hopkins's abduction-investigation work as an example -- with the same evidentiary weight as more thoroughly documented sightings, arguing that only a small fraction of the reports the book relies on had been carefully investigated.

Key Cases & Evidence Discussed

This site's own Andersen AFB 1965-66 Radar Wave case file documents the Guam military radar and multi-witness reporting pattern in far greater depth than this book's general survey format allows, drawing directly on NICAP's own case files of the kind Hall spent his career compiling. Readers wanting that complete record should consult that case file directly.

This site's own JAL Flight 1628 case file similarly documents the 1986 Alaska radar-visual aircrew encounter in full, situating it within the broader history of radar-visual sightings this book's own subtitle invokes -- though, as noted above, this article could not confirm the book's own specific treatment of either case beyond this site's citation of it as comparative documentary context.

Critical Reception & Controversies

As of this article's research (August 2026), the book holds a modest 3.60/5 aggregate rating on Goodreads from 10 ratings and a single visible written review, which described it as attempting "to give a broad overview of the phenomenon, half of it being nothing but summary case studies from around the world" -- a mixed, faint-praise characterization.

A more critical contemporary reader review found on Amazon's UK listing argued Hall approached his source material "a-critically," validating uncorroborated claims without noting that "just a tiny amount of the UFO reports Hall uses in the book have been carefully investigated," concluding the book amounted to "a castle built on the sand." This article found no mainstream trade-press review (Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, or similar), suggesting the book circulated primarily within ufology and small-press channels rather than receiving broader literary review coverage.

Influence & Legacy

The book's legacy sits modestly alongside Hall's far more consequential 1964 work: while The UFO Evidence is remembered as a foundational document mailed to every member of Congress and central to Hall's own historical standing, this later, more general-audience survey shows no comparable institutional impact or critical reception, functioning instead as a mid-career popular restatement of his ongoing documentary project.

Set alongside this site's own Andersen AFB 1965-66 Radar Wave and JAL Flight 1628 case files, and this site's own separately covered Essential Reading breakdown of The UFO Evidence, this book is best read as a broader, more inclusive companion volume to Hall's earlier, more rigorously case-screened work, rather than as an update superseding it.

The Book

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