Buck Nelson, the Ozark Spaceman

Podcast: Download

MYS430: On a remote ridge in the Missouri Ozarks, twelve and a half miles from the nearest town, a subsistence farmer stepped out his kitchen door one afternoon in July 1954, saw three discs hanging over his house, and waved a flashlight at them. Instead of landing, they shot something at him. When he picked himself up off the ground, fifteen years of chronic back pain were gone.

That was the beginning. Over the next two years, Buck Nelson‘s account grew into one of the strangest and most elaborate stories of the 1950s contactee era: a round trip to Mars, the Moon, and Venus; a two-hundred-year-old space pilot named Bob Solomon; a distant cousin who had emigrated to Venus to teach English; a 385-pound dog who stood taller than a man and shook hands; twelve laws of God dictated on a rock outside the ship; and a homemade saucer detector built from a magnetized bar on an eighteen-inch string. For years running, an eighty-acre Ozark ranch with no phone line became the saucer capital of the Midwest, drawing believers, reporters, tourists, and concession stands every June.

Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli work through the whole of it — the healing ray, the joyride at the controls, the Venusian book machines and hover cars, the men in black who got run off with a rifle, and the cancelled disability pension Nelson read as payback for talking.

Nelson is a case study in how a 1950s UFO contactee legend actually gets built. He wasn’t abducted; he was invited, repeatedly, and he said yes. His booklet, My Trip to Mars, the Moon and Venus, reads in stretches like a home-and-garden feature: built-in beds nobody has to make, seventeen-hour clocks, a world with no roads and therefore no police, no jails, and no wars. Endorsements from bigger names in the contactee world gave him standing. One letter to a Springfield newspaper, forwarded east by a stranger, did the rest.

From the reason perspective, the story does not survive contact with an almanac. Venus has no moons. Its day runs 243 Earth days. Its surface sits around 460°C under a crushing atmosphere and clouds of sulfuric acid. Within fifteen years of Nelson’s claimed trip, our own spacecraft had reached all three worlds and found nothing he described.

But there is a twist, and it arrives late. It has nothing to do with astronomy, it turns an amusing tall tale into something considerably darker, and it puts a very specific question about what the “space brothers” supposedly cared about squarely in front of the listener. Stay for it.

Then stay a little longer, past the credits, for what Springfield schoolchildren were actually served for lunch the week of February 26, 1956.

Get all new episodes automatically and for free:

Follow by Email | Watch this episode and subscribe on YouTube

Help us continue to offer Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World. Won’t you make a pledge at SQPN.com/give today?

Links for this episode:

Chapters:

  • 0:00:12 – Intro
  • 0:00:47 – Cold open: The Ozark Spaceman
  • 0:01:50 – Today’s Mystery: The UFO Contactees
  • 0:02:58 – Mountain View, Missouri
  • 0:04:57 – Ozark Caves and Karst Country
  • 0:06:00 – Who Was Buck Nelson?
  • 0:08:11 – July 1954: Three Discs and a Flashlight
  • 0:09:44 – The Healing Ray
  • 0:10:28 – The Saucers Come Back
  • 0:11:54 – Bucky, Bob Solomon, and Big Bo
  • 0:14:04 – The Spacemen Tour the House
  • 0:18:01 – The Twelve Laws of God
  • 0:19:53 – At the Controls
  • 0:22:03 – Mars
  • 0:24:10 – The Moon
  • 0:27:00 – Venus
  • 0:29:21 – Home After Three Days
  • 0:29:37 – What the Space People Were Like
  • 0:33:26 – Atlantis and the Pyramids
  • 0:35:01 – Christmas with Bucky
  • 0:37:24 – Thank you to Patrons
  • 0:37:56 – Sponsor: Rosary Army and School of Mary
  • 0:38:38 – Sponsorship opportunities
  • 0:39:26 – The Lecture Circuit and the Booklet
  • 0:41:46 – The Spacecraft Conventions
  • 0:45:16 – The Men in Black
  • 0:47:50 – Trouble With the Government
  • 0:48:49 – How the Story Ended
  • 0:50:44 – Reason Perspective
  • 0:52:46 – Faith Perspective
  • 0:53:50 – The Twist
  • 0:57:18 – The Civil Rights Backdrop
  • 0:58:53 – Racism Is Evil
  • 1:03:02 – Bottom Line
  • 1:04:11 – Further Resources
  • 1:04:43 – Mysterious Feedback: #419 Zombie Marriage, Holy Roman Emperors, Jesus’ DNA, and More Weird Questions
  • 1:11:10 – Your mysterious feedback
  • 1:11:46 – Thank you to Oasis Studio 7
  • 1:11:51 – Jimmy’s YouTube channel
  • 1:13:13 – Thank you to Craig Hart
  • 1:13:18 – Next Time: Auras
  • 1:13:38 – Share the show, write a review
  • 1:13:50 – Get your Mysterious merch
  • 1:13:58 – Show notes
  • 1:14:05 – Become a Patron
  • 1:14:12 – Sponsor: The Grady Group
  • 1:15:03 – After the Credits: 1956 School Lunch Menus
  • 1:17:15 – Outro

This Episode is Brought to You By:

The Grady Group, a Catholic company bringing financial clarity to their clients across the United States. Using safe money options to produce reasonable rates of return for their clients. Learn more by visiting GradyGroup.us.

Rosary Army. Featuring award-winning Catholic podcasts, Rosary resources, videos, and the School of Mary online community, prayer, and learning platform. Learn how to make them, pray them, and give them away while growing in your faith at RosaryArmy.com and SchoolOfMary.com

Want to Sponsor A Show?
Support StarQuest’s mission to explore the intersection of faith and pop culture by becoming a named sponsor of the show of your choice on the StarQuest network. Click to get started or find out more.

by
Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World Mysterious World 301-500