Monday 7 December 2015

Scott Corrales' review of "UFOs over Poland"

Scott Corrales
by Scott Corrales

Ufology has often been accused of being provincial. On the whole, the average researcher or reader of materials dealing with anomalies has little interest in cases dealing with matters beyond sightings over their hometown, state or even country. Many cases – no matter how fascinating – are relegated to the “here be dragons” category: the text on ancient sea maps indicating that anything was possible beyond what was normal or of interest to those at home. Keep away. 

Piotr Cielebias’s UFOS OVER POLAND encourages us to take a contrary perspective, leading us by the hand into a part of the world that has not been particularly known for UFO/paranormal sightings. Eastern Europe as a whole has been overlooked by U.S. researchers, aside from books on Soviet – era cases by Paul Stonehill and translations of originals in the 1970s involving psychic phenomena. 

With the careful eye of a trained historian, Cielebias guides us through a fascinating landscape of cases old and new, a tapestry of enigmas reaching far back into the past, when Poland was one of Europe’s largest and most influential countries. UFOS OVER POLAND can be described as a full-service book: no reader will walk away with an empty sensation, as all tastes are covered. Those interested in high strangeness events will delight in learning of the Glinik Anomalous Zone, where UFO, religious and entity phenomena blend into one; students of the abduction phenomena will marvel at the Zofia Namlik experiences; adepts of nuts-and-bolts ufology will find a wealth of cases involving strange flying machines, substantiated by the testimony of airline pilots and police officers. 

"Most of the close encounters and other perplexing cases revealing the complicated nature of the UFO phenomenon, contained in this book, have never been known in the West [...] Many things we will mention here may sound exotic to some readers," Cielebias writes in his introduction, and this is precisely what the reader will find. Events from the distant and recent past alike that constitute a refreshing break from the shopworn UFO histories that have cluttered the landscape for two decades. 

It can only be hoped that this will be the first of many books by Mr. Cielebias, and we owe a debt of gratitude to Philip Mantle’s Flying Disk Press for making it available to Western audiences.

Scott Corrales directs the Institute of Hispanic Ufology (IHU) and is the author Chupacabras and Other Mysteries, Flashpoint: High Strangeness in Puerto Rico and The Humanoid Agenda  ____________________________

"UFOs over Poland..." now available via Amazon