Radio Interviewer of the Forteans, Barry Farber Dies

Radio talk show host Barry Farber, 90, died, of natural causes, on May 6, 2020.

His daughter tweeted on May 6, "My father Barry Farber, beloved, died this evening, at 6:45 pm. He was home, in bed, and we were all with him. He turned 90 just yesterday. He told me recently that his concept of death was 'going somewhere I've never been before, like Finland or Estonia.' May God rest his soul."

Called a "radio legend" and "talk radio pioneer" in the media notices of his death, Farber was remembered as a popular radio personality. He was active in radio from the mid-1950s, until the day before he died. Farber, who vowed never to completely retire from broadcasting, remained active on his CRN show until the day before his death, appearing to celebrate his 90th birthday.

Like his contemporary Long John Nebel (who died April 10, 1978), and the later successful radio host Art Bell (died April 13, 2018), Farber, born May 5, 1930, had many ufologists, Forteans, and cryptozoologists as guests on his radio show. 

One frequent interviewee was his friend, Ivan T. Sanderson, both of whom had apartments in New York City. Sanderson even took over as host of Farber's program when Farber ran for office. (See Sanderson's brief obituary in the New York Times.)

Barry Farber wrote and spoke extensively of his ability to speak and understand over 25 languages. 

"Long before the advent of Art Bell and company, New York radio had Long John Nebel and Barry Farber, both of whom frequently featured guests like Ivan Sanderson, John Fuller, and other popular [authors and investigators of the unexplained]." Joseph M. Felser, The Way Back to Paradise: Restoring the Balance Between Magic and Reason, 2005.

Besides Sanderson and Fuller, Farber hosted shows with ufologists Jerome Stanton, Timothy Beckley and Barry Cohen. It was on Barry Farber's WOR program that Woodrow "Woody" Derenberger's West Virginia UFO story of Indrid Cold rose to national attention. Farber also had on Derenberger's psychiatrist to give his reinforcing testimony of the credibility of the UFO encounter.

Barry Farber may have also interviewed fellow New Yorker John A. Keel, who did appear on Long John Nebel's show, but I cannot find any records of that appearance. Nevertheless, Farber was known as being interested in all matter of Forteana.

"The radio show Ivan was referring to actually belonged to the well-known conservative talk show host (and friend of Ivan), Barry Farber, himself a fascinating fellow who is a student of about 25 languages. As it happens, in 1970 Farber was running for Congress in New York City's 19th district on the Republican ticket, but was defeated by Bella Abzug. During the campaign, Farber was absent from his show much of the time and employed guest hosts to fill in for him. Ivan Sanderson hosted the show every Thursday night for 20 weeks, from 11:30 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. The show originated from WOR-Radio in New York, but was broadcast to stations in 38 U.S. states." 

"Ivan also made many appearances on other celebrities' radio shows, such as those of Arlene Francis and Mary Margaret McBride, who was a sort of cross between today's Barbara Walters and Martha Stewart. As talk show host Barry Farber later told me, he made sure that one of the first guests of his career was Ivan Sanderson, because he had read in one of McBride's books her declaration that the most fascinating radio guest to appear on her show in 20 years of broadcasting was Ivan Sanderson."~ Richard Grigonis, 2011.

Two summaries from CRN staffers note Farber's remembrances with Grigonis of Sanderson:

Barry Farber on CRN
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
1/5-Investigating the Unexplained

Barry and publisher RICHARD GRIGONIS share memories of IVAN SANDERSON, a respected naturalist and scientist who sacrificed his career to his outspoken belief in the "Yeti" (Abominable Snowman) and many other [cryptozoological] phenomena. Ivan theorized UFOs were "natural and organic". He founded SITU, the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained!

And.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014
7/30-ARE THERE ZONES UPON THE EARTH INSIDE WHICH THE “RULES” BEHAVE SO DIFFERENTLY, SHIPS AND PLANES CAN BE CAUSED TO DISAPPEAR?

A show with lower self-esteem might raise its voice at this and yell, “Special!” at what’s upcoming. RICHARD GRIGONIS of Newsmax and Barry are proud to have been best friends of a world-reknown unique scientist. The late IVAN SANDERSON of England was so resoundingly respected as a serious scientists with dozens of books to his credit that he was “allowed” to investigate phenomena such as the Bermuda Triangle, in which ships and planes simply disappeared with never a trace. Ivan founded the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained and that committee concluded there were certain zones – lozenges – inside which the world behaved differently. The Bermuda Triangle was one of them. Most of them were in the Far East. When Grigonis visits with Sara and Barry this evening the overhanging question will be: “What would Ivan Sanderson say about Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 and why should we care?”

Barry Farber's legacy was a long one, and he marked nine decades of an active life on his last birthday.

+++

The following information is from the general entry on Barry Farber, found online at Wikipedia (May 2020).

Barry Morton Farber (May 5, 1930 – May 6, 2020) was an American conservative radio talk show host, author, commentator and language-learning enthusiast. In 2002, industry publication Talkers magazine ranked him the 9th greatest radio talk show host of all time. He also wrote articles appearing in The New York Times, Reader's Digest, The Washington Post, and the Saturday Review. He was the father of journalist Celia Farber and singer-songwriter Bibi Farber.

Farber was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Sophie (Marcus) and Raymond Farber, who both worked on the family's Jay-Ray Sportswear line. Farber was Jewish and grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina.

After nearly failing Latin in the ninth grade, that summer Farber started reading a Mandarin Chinese language-learning book. A trip to Miami Beach, Florida, to see his grandparents, coincidentally put him in the midst of a large number of Chinese navy sailors in training there. His Chinese rapidly improved.

Back in Greensboro, he took up Italian, Spanish, and French on his own before summer vacation was over. He started taking French and Spanish classes in his sophomore year and also learned Norwegian on his own while in high school. He graduated in 1948 from Greensboro Senior High School (see Grimsley High School).

He then attended the University of North Carolina, where he learned Russian. As a delegate from the National Student Association to what he later called a "Tito propaganda fiesta called the Zagreb Peace Conference", he found other Slavic languages were closely related to Russian. A 16-day boat trip back to the United States with Yugoslavs allowed him to practice his Serbo-Croatian. After covering the 1952 Summer Olympic Games in Helsinki, he learned Indonesian on another boat trip back to the U.S.

As a newspaper reporter in 1956, Farber was invited by the United States Air Force to cover the airlift of Hungarian refugees from the uprising in Hungary that year. In an Austrian border village, Farber later wrote, he so impressed a Norwegian man, Thorvald Stoltenberg, with knowledge of the man's native tongue that he was allowed to go on one of the covert missions smuggling Hungarians into Austria.

Farber had knowledge of more than 25 languages, including the ones mentioned above. He published a book titled How to Learn Any Language that detailed his method for self-study. It was based around a multi-track study of the language, the use of memory aids for vocabulary, and the utilization of "hidden moments" throughout the day.

Farber preferred to say that he was a student of a certain number of languages, rather than saying that he spoke them. Of the languages he studied, half he "dates" and the other half he "marries". According to Farber: "By languages I date, I mean no grammar and no script, languages like Bengali."

Aside from Bengali, the 25 foreign languages he studied include these 19 ("marriage" or "dating" specified, when known): Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Mandarin, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish (marriage), Swedish and Yiddish, as well as Bulgarian and Korean.

Farber's book, How to Learn any Language never specifies all of the 25 languages that his publicity materials say he studied. He said in the book that when he was inducted into the U.S. Army in 1952, he was "tested and qualified for work in fourteen different languages" and since learned more in some of those languages as well as the others. He mentioned in the 2005 interview that he still constantly learned bits and pieces of new language—some Albanian phrases or a new phrase each time he went into a grocery store where a Tibetan woman works.

His radio career began in New York City, working as the producer for the Tex and Jinx interview program from Peacock Alley in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, a live remote broadcast over WNBC in the mid-1950s at 10:30 PM to midnight, Monday through Friday.

William Safire hired Farber as a producer. Farber eventually hosted his own show on WINS.

Begun in 1960, his first talk show was called Barry Farber’s WINS Open Mike. It was the only talk show on what was then a rock n’ roll station and was on weeknights at 11pm. He left that job for an evening talk show on WOR in 1962, and then became an all-night host in 1967.

In November 1977, Kaiser Broadcasting debuted a weekly talk show hosted by Farber as a replacement to its program hosted by Lou Gordon, who died earlier that year, but it was short-lived.

Farber then joined WMCA for an afternoon drive time talk show, which lasted until 1989 when WMCA changed its format to Christian radio.

In 1990, he became a national talk-show host on the ABC Radio Network, which was trying to build a group of nationwide talk shows at the time. Lynn Samuels was forced to share her local WABC show with Farber which led to on-air confrontations, and resulted in her departure from the station. ABC's project later was abandoned, and Farber, Michael Castello, and Alan Colmes got together and quickly formed their own independent network called Daynet. He eventually joined Talk Radio Network as a weekend and fill-in host until that network ceased operations in 2017.

Farber then moved to CRN Digital Talk Radio Networks, hosting a one-hour weekday show.

Early in the 1970s, Farber was an adjunct professor of journalism at St. John's University in New York. Often, his former students are heard calling his radio program with admiring words and memories.

On the radio, Farber became easily identifiable by his unique combination of drawn-out Southern drawl, intense delivery, verbose prose, and quick wit. Sponsors loved his ability to deliver a live commercial spot, often ad-libbed, and make whatever the particular product was sound tantalizing; he always sounded like he truly believed in the product.

In 1991 he was named "Talk Show Host of The Year" by the National Association of Radio Talk Show Hosts.

In 2008 Farber married Sara Pentz, a television news reporter and journalist.

Farber was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2014.

In his youth, Farber fell in love with Norway, marrying Norwegian national Ulla Fahre and embracing the Social Democracy popular in that Scandinavian nation. During the 1960s his political commentary combined militant opposition to Soviet Communism with lavish praise for the achievements of Social Democracy, which he patriotically hoped America would one day adopt. But when the long-incumbent Swedish Social Democrats faced defeat at the polls, he began to re-examine his beliefs and would come to advocate the liberal economics popular among those called conservatives in America.

At onetime a Democrat, in 1970 he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in New York City's 19th district as the candidate of the Republican and Liberal parties, in a lively uphill race against Democrat Bella Abzug, the victor. In 1977, Farber left his talk-radio career for a time to run for Mayor of New York City as the candidate of the Conservative party, receiving almost as many votes as the Republican candidate, but vastly fewer than winner Democrat Ed Koch.

Ohio's Sasquatch Triangle

Ten years ago, on June 18, 2008, Don Keating, the head of the Eastern Ohio Bigfoot Investigation Center, appeared on MonsterQuest to detail his investigations of local sightings. The creatures were known as the Ohio Grassman and where they lived was called the Sasquatch Triangle.

The Sasquatch Triangle of Ohio is a well-established research area of Bigfoot sightings, although some investigators may disagree on the exact borders of the "triangle."

As Guy Edwards notes in his Bigfoot Lunch Club, January 28, 2012: "This triangle, including sections of Tuscarawas, Guernsey, Muskingum and Coshocton counties, is home to the most frequent Bigfoot sightings in the state."

Don Keating is generally given credit for coining the word, although you will find internet mention of a "newspaper" having come up with the term in 1987. I find this a misunderstanding of the stories that began to appear about Keating's search groups.

For example, in the following article published on April 19, 1987, in the Dover Times Reporter, Dover, Ohio, the content centers on Don Keating and his associates.

Below, on the right is Donald Keating, who first published in 1987, The Sasquatch Triangle, about this specific area in Ohio. Keating began the concept of large Bigfoot conferences in Newcomerstown, Ohio; they evolved into the Ohio Bigfoot Conference today run by Marc DeWerth.

In 2001, Keating self-published his The Sasquatch Triangle Revisited, a revised edition of his original work.

When Finding Bigfoot broadcast their episode on Sunday, January 29, 2012, about the Sasquatch Triangle and Ohio Grassmen, they focused on local hunter Tim Stover.

In recent years, Don Keating is known and respected in East-Central Ohio, as a television weatherman. 

Sometimes you do need a weatherperson to know which way the wind blows...

++++++++++++++++++++++

About other "Triangles":

See also "Top Ten American 'Bridgewater Triangles'" in Twilight Language, August 30, 2015. 

I first wrote about the “Bridgewater Triangle” in Boston Magazine in 1980, and in my book Mysterious America in 1983. Vincent Gaddis coined the name “Bermuda Triangle” in Argosy, February 1964. There is some thought that Ivan T. Sanderson worked with Gaddis on the concept from the beginning.

Sanderson died February 19, 1973, at 62. Gaddis died February 25, 1997, at 83. Keating and Coleman, needless to say, are still alive and active.

"Space Critters" Ufologist Trevor James Constable Has Died

Another early researcher and writer in ufology has passed away. Native New Zealander Trevor James Constable, 90, died on March 31, 2016, in California.

This news comes after only recently learning of the death of Albert K. Bender, 94.

Not too surprising, because Bender and Constable were from a special era, there's an overlap between their lives.

Ufologist Nick Redfern points out in a communique to me:

Constable contributed a letter to the book Bender Mystery Confirmed. Not many people know of this book. It was a follow-up to Bender's Flying Saucers and the Three Men. It was published by Gray Barker. The Confirmed book is a collection of about 20 letters from people who had read Bender's book and who wanted to comment on it.

UFOs

Trevor Constable was an early foundation proponent that UFOs were actually "space animals," and wrote about his theories beginning in the 1950s.

Trevor James Constable began reading, intensively about "flying saucers" in 1957. Using the name "Trevor James," as the author of They Live in the Sky (1958), he tells of having attended George Van Tassel's Giant Rock convention and learned techniques to contact a mysterious entity called "Ashtar." Some in ufology link Constable to Men-in-Black through these learning experiences, although this merely appears to be his youthful introduction to the field. His direction found him going elsewhere in his exploration of UFOs.

Writing 24 years ago about Constable's role in ufology, historian Jerome Clark observed:

In two books (They Live in the Sky [1958] and The Cosmic Pulse of Life [1976]) Trevor James Constable, an aviation historian, occultist, and contactee, has offered comparable theories [to other writers of creatures living in the upper atmosphere] but gone beyond them to produce infrared photographs of aerial entities he calls "critters," which resemble one-celled life forms "complete in some cases with nuclei, nucleoli, vacuoles, and all the rest," in the words of the late biologist and anomalist Ivan T. Sanderson, a proponent of space animals [Uninvited Visitors: A Biologist Looks at UFOs, New York: Cowles, 1967]. Constable says that these phenomena are visible to the eye only under certain circumstances, when they are perceived as meteors or UFOs. Even those skeptical of space animals have not questioned Constable's sincerity, evidenced in his long commitment to his work, or accused him of faking his photographs. Though the photographs have never been explained, replications have been few, but not nonexistent. ~ Jerome Clark, The Emergence of a Phenomenon: UFOs from the Beginning through 1959 ~ The UFO Encyclopedia - Volume 2 (Chicago: Omnigraphics, 1992: 317)

A summary of his theory appears in Wikipedia:

After reading about radionics and Wilhelm Reich's orgone, Constable became convinced that supposed UFOs were in fact living organisms. He set out to prove his theorem by taking a camera with him, fitted with an ultra-violet lens and high-speed film. The processed pictured showed signs of discolouration, which Constable insisted were proof of amoeba-like animals inhabiting the sky.
Reviewing his new found 'evidence', Constable was moved to write in two books that the creatures, though not existing outside of the "infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum," had been on this Earth since it was more gaseous than solid. He claimed that the creatures belonged to a new offshoot of evolution, and that the species should be classified under macrobacteria. According to Constable, the creatures could be the size of a coin or as large as half a mile across.
The biology of the creatures supposedly meant that they were visible to radar, even when not to the naked eye. To explain supposed cattle (and occasionally human) mutilations, Constable theorised that the use of radar angered the organisms, who would become predatory when provoked. Source.

So what we find is that "inspired by Wilhelm Reich's orgone energy, Ruth Drown's radionics, the writing of Charles Fort and Arthur Conan Doyle's story The Horror of the Heights, Constable became convinced that the UFOs he heard so much about in the 1950s weren't alien spacecraft, but living beings," wrote frequent Fortean Times contributor Mark Pilkington in The Guardian in 2005.

But is it not a zoologist who would have these supposed creatures as Amoebae constablea, named after their discoverer, as Pilkington writes. Nor is it "crypto-zoologists" [sic], as Wikipedia would have you consider the basis of that Latin name.

No, the author of Ablaze! is the source of this piece of Constable lore.  The Fortean researcher "Larry Arnold believes that these plasmamoeboids--whom he dubs in gratitude to Mr. Constable with the scientific name Amoebae constablea--emit energies that may be a cause of Spontaneous Human Combustion if they are in close proximity to a human being," notes Andrew Gaze.

Trevor Constable took the photograph directly above, on May 17, 1958, at Giant Rock, California, the object above the ridge was not seen by witnesses at the time. 

The Cosmic Pulse of Life was revised and reissued at Sky Creatures: Living UFOs, in 1978.

Trevor Constable was still taking photographs that he said were of living UFOs into the 21st century.

++++++++++++++++

++++++++++++++++

In lectures early in the 2000s, Constable would use NASA's own space infrared films to show evidence of space animals, as can be seen five minutes into the video posted above. Constable would also make appearances on radio programs.

Cloud busting

Constable, after becoming interested in the cloud busting work of Wilhelm Reich, studied the field.

Trevor James Constable, originally from New Zealand, worked in the merchant marines for over 31 years as a merchant marine radio officer, he travelled on enormous ships crossing the north eastern pacific ocean over 300 times, this gave him the opportunity to experiment with his research based on Wilhelm Reich's work.

 Constable (left), LeMay (right)

After Trevor retired from the Merchant Marines, Trevor launched the world's first Airborne Etheric (another name for Orgone) Weather Engineering Operation based in Singapore from the late 1980s to the 2000; Trevor worked with US Air Force retired Colonel W.A."Willy" Schauer, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer George K. C. Wuu and US Air Force General retired Curtis Emerson LeMay [November 15, 1906 – October 1, 1990]. Trevor has proven rain records, radar and federal filling showing his success. Source.

Aviation Histories

Trevor Constable was also a military historian and author, having written eleven non-fiction books, many well known to aficionados of famous fighter aces. Mostly coauthored with Colonel Raymond F. Toliver, Trevor J. Constable's titles included Fighter Aces of the Luftwaffe, The Blond Knight of Germany: A Biography of Erich Hartmann, and many similar books. In 2015, a volume appeared combining his interest in little-known military histories, UFOs, and rainmaking, entitled Hidden History, Rain Engineering and UFO Reality.

.

Life

Trevor James Constable had a long and varied life. 

Living in San Pedro, California, at the time of his death on March 31, 2016, he was born September 17, 1925, in Wellington, New Zealand. 

Wikipedia (unaware that Constable had died earlier, as of 4.16.2016), nevertheless, have online a thoughtful entry on the man, and recalled Constable "served 31 years at sea, 26 of them as a radio officer in the U.S. merchant marine."

Constable is remembered in his official obituary as "a prolific author of WW2 aviation histories, and pioneer in the subjects of ufology, and rain engineering. Professionally, he enlisted in the Merchant Marines at age 17 and worked for most of that time as the radio-electronics officer. Later he was employed by Matson Shipping and served as the Communication's Officer aboard the U. S. Maui for nearly two decades.
Besides his writing and research work, Mr. Constable was known to have a great understanding of homeopathy and good health, a love for cats, a remarkable vocabulary, and a wonderful sense of humor."

He is survived by his wife Gloria of 35 years, and his daughter Diana (Neroni) currently of Las Vegas, and grandson Maximilian Constable now living in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Trevor James Constable has many admirers in ufology.

(h/t to Patrick Huyghe for this sad news.)

Old Ufologist Replies To Young Ufologists

Pondering such postings as "Are You Still Alive? UFO Deaths, Revisited" and "Ufologist Stan Friedman Suffers Heart Attack," a seasoned ufologist has forwarded a response.

Encounters with Aliens by George W. Earley (1978)

Be advised this "dinosaur" of ufology is still alive and reasonably well. At 87, I may be one of the few left who read the original news story on the Arnold sighting: June 25, [1947] front page of one of the St. Louis papers. 

It was only a one column piece, maybe 6" at most long. At the time, I put it down to him having seen jets out of Boeing Field, not too many air miles from where he was. Learning more later, including UFO sightings by night by bomber crews over Korean air space during that fracas, I became more and more curious. Earlier, during a visit of our AFROTC unit to Wright-Pattterson, I was sternly admonished by the Colonel who was our tour guide, when I asked about "flying saucers," as they were still being called then. 

"Mister!" he snapped, "We do NOT talk about such things!" 

I thought, "Ok, sir . . . but we sure in hell can THINK about them." 

And so I did and still am. 

I would also note that Willy Ley ("Uncle Villy" as a few of us were privileged to call him) indicated some interest in the topic early on but later decided it was not worth his attention. He definitely does not warrant being called a "ufologist."

As for me, I was the only ufologist to interview Phil Klass AND get said interview published by FATE Magazine. Did a few other interviews/articles for them as well as numerous reviews for Fate and a number of other publications, eventually winding up as a reviewer/article writer and 'contributing editor' for the currently moribund UFO Magazine. My final article [~15000 words serialized over 4 issues] was a hard-nosed look at the Maury Island Hoax, resulting from by brief appearance on the first UFO Hunters TV show where 20 minutes of discussion with Bill Birnes was boiled down to 1 or 2 brief sentences. 

I live on one of Mount Hood's old glacier moraines with 25 acres of woods and ~5 acres of open meadow where neither Bigfoot nor Flying Saucers seem interested in visiting.

Cheers, 

George Earley, July 12, 2014.

P.S. Publish this if you want; these upstart ufologists are historically illiterate and misinformed about how well many of us are!

Mystery Flight 370 Ends in the Indian Ocean Vile Vortex

As I previously noted here and in the most popular posting I've written for this Twilight Language blog (with over 17,000 readers as of today), "Terrorism, Aliens, Vile Vortices: The Mysteries of Missing Flight 370," on March 9, 2014, I hinted where the focus of the search would end,

The Wharton Basin, especially its southern portions, is the key to this vile vortice. 

Ships and planes have not been the subject of study here but whirling rings of lights under the Indian Ocean.

Ivan T. Sanderson's Indian Ocean Vile Vortex.

Unlike the Bermuda Triangle and Japan's Dragon's Triangle or Devil's Sea, the area where Flight 370 appears to have vanished has no popular culture name.

Because of its location of several storied waves and terrible winds, locals call these seas just south of here the "Roaring Forties." But those seas may have distracted searchers for days.

The area of interest is known in Fortean literature as the Indian Ocean's vile vortex, labeled "Wharton Basin" on one map.

While it was plotted out to be a predicted area of vanishings by Sanderson and others, there is a clear explanation of why it was ignored.

"There would appear to be ten lozenges, or vortices, ringing our earth in two belts, one in the northern, and the other in the southern hemisphere. These are approximately, if not precisely, centered 72° apart, and those in the southern hemisphere all shifted to the East (or right) exactly the same distance to about 40°. All but two lie over water but there is no evidence for one in the southern Indian Ocean; probably because no ships or planes ever passed through or over it."
Ivan T. Sanderson, Invisible Residents, 1970, p. 143.

The Flight 370 search areas have moved around until now, when the focus is in the vile vortex of the southern Indian Ocean.