The last thing in the world I would have suspected was that James Sylvester Rigberg was supplementing his income selling pornography. Not the Jimmy I knew. Not the quiet and unassuming owner of New York City’s only flying saucer bookshop. Not my friend.
I think the first time I heard about Jimmy’s bookstore was in a short profile that appeared in Official UFO Magazine around the mid ’70s. As a teenage Ufologist I was so excited to learn that an entire bookstore devoted to my life’s passion was only a short train ride away in Manhattan’s West Side and I couldn’t wait to go see it.
The store was about the size of a shoebox bodega on the street level of a five-story apartment building at 359 West 45th Street. The window display was a low-budget DIY affair—maybe a pie tin spacecraft hanging by a thread and some books. Inside, running along the two longer walls, you would find steel bookcases crammed with UFO, metaphysical, and self-improvement books and magazines. More books were neatly displayed on a table in the center. The space was so tight and the aisles so narrow, that it could only comfortably accommodate about three customers at a time. Usually I would have the entire store to myself.
Tucked in a corner at the front of the store by the entrance, sat Jimmy behind a waist high glass display case and a cash register. A small, soft-spoken, balding man in his 60s, Jimmy had been running the store since 1955 from various locations in Manhattan. I think mail order sales accounted for the bulk of his business. He would place small ads in the UFO periodicals of the time, such as American contactee Dan Fry’s Understanding, and wait for the orders to stream in, which they inevitably did, especially during periods of well publicized sighting flaps. There were probably only a handful of competitors nationally.
Flying Saucer News over the years.
He published Flying Saucer News, a 16-page newsletter/book catalog filled with the latest sightings, announcements, club news, and feature articles. Jimmy was also a self-published author, writing booklets with titles like “God’s Greatest Gift,” “Every Devil’s Dictionary,” “Flying Saucers and the Bible” and others.
Ritual
After my first encounter, a visit to the bookstore quickly became a part of my weekend ritual. This might be followed by stops at Samuel Weiser’s Occult Bookshop and The Strand Bookstore near Union Square Park. On a good day I’d ride the No. 7 IRT train home to Queens with one or two shopping bags filled with books for my ever expanding Fortean library. Over the years I probably spent a couple of hundred dollars at Jimmy’s. I would rarely leave without making at least one purchase. On a few occasions I would really luck out and find some rare gems, like back issues of Jim Moseley’s Saucer News.
Once I took his picture for a photography class I was taking in college. I asked him if I could and he easily obliged. It was a very formal pose taken of him standing in front of a bookcase—Jim beaming in his worn sports jacket and tie with his hands clasped in front. That black and white photo and its 35mm negative have long since disappeared but the memory of that moment is still vivid.
Even though I visited him countless times over a period of several years, I learned very little about the man. He didn’t volunteer much about himself and I didn’t probe—all I remember today was that he was from Pennsylvania! We did become very comfortable with one another, however—relaxed enough for him to send me to a deli across the street to get coffee for us both.
The last time I saw him would have been around the spring of 1981 after I quit my job at Catholic Relief Services in Manhattan and moved to Denver on a wholly out-of-character whim.
Jimmy was a significant part of my life back then and I’ve been thinking a lot about him lately. Middle age does that to you. He was an enigma then, and today, 40-years later I’m still wondering who he was. So, with the help of the internet I endeavored to find out.
Google Search: Tapping into the Akashic Records
In metaphysical teaching, the Akashic Records or The Book of Life “acts as the central storehouse of all information for every individual who has ever lived upon the earth. More than just a reservoir of events, the Akashic Records contain every deed, word, feeling, thought, and intent that has ever occurred at any time in the history of the world.”
Intuitives, mediums and mystics have been able to access the Akashic Records at will, while the rest of us mere mortals are stuck with Google.
Our first stop on the internet was a video on YouTube of a low-budget UFO documentary from 1977 titled, “The Force Beyond” that I had never seen before. It showed up on my search because Jimmy is listed in the film’s credits (as ‘Jim Rygberg’).
The Force Beyond movie poster.
Indeed, he and his bookstore make the briefest of cameo appearances 48 minutes into the film. In this micro-burst segment the film’s narrator, legendary New York City radio D.J. Rosko (William Mercer), dramatically intones:
“At the unlikely corner of 45th Street and 9th Avenue on New York’s West Side, lies a treasure chest of research and knowledge for the novice as well as the expert in Ufology.”
Jimmy and the store appeared just as I remembered it. He’s interviewed briefly off camera and the film moves on.
The storefront at 359 W. 45th Street in 1977 and today. (Bookstore image from the film, “The Force Beyond”)
Next stop on the internet: a newspaper clipping from the May 23, 1955 issue of the New York World-Telegram and Sun. In it a reporter seeking an expert opinion of some photos taken during an alleged UFO sighting from a Manhattan rooftop interviews “Mrs. Margaret Rigberg, president of the Flying Saucer News Club” who runs “a little bookshop …where books on metaphysics, occultism and spiritualism are prominently displayed.”
So we learn that Jimmy had a wife and a soul mate. Sweet! And that revelation in turn raised a bunch of others questions. What was she like? How had they met? What was the quality of their relationship? Had they any children? Where was she 20 years later when I first met Jimmy? The story also revealed that he worked as a deli counterman during the day. Visionaries and dreamers often hold the most mundane jobs.
The news clipping is part of a larger declassified file on the above-mentioned rooftop sighting and resides in the online archives of the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book. The sighting and photos were ultimately judged to be a hoax. It’s no wonder the government eventually disbanded Blue Book after 22 years. The time and resources expended on bogus cases like these could be better spent elsewhere…such as on new and more destructive weapons systems.
In the course of the investigation, the Air Force officer in charge interviewed Jimmy, apparently to get a character reference on the principal witness.
“We have file on the Flying Saucer News.”
Written above the short paragraph dealing with our hero, we find the notation, “Note We have file on the Flying Saucer News.” Sounds rather ominous doesn’t it? Did Jimmy and Margaret know too much about flying saucers? Was military intelligence and the FBI keeping tabs on them? Was their phone tapped, their store bugged? Did the FBI plant a mole at club meetings? Could they pose a risk to national security?
I think not, as much as I enjoy the fantasy of them being the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg of Ufology. The Air Force file was probably no more than an innocuous collection of news clippings. Jimmy was starting to get some attention with local media and he and Margaret had already been profiled in the February 7, 1955 issue of The New York Times.
But it wouldn’t be until the following year when Jimmy really made a national splash—a two-page spread in one of the most popular weekly magazines of the day—The Saturday Evening Post!
“He Runs Flying-Saucer Headquarters,” appeared in the March 10, 1956 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
“He Runs Flying-Saucer Headquarters,” by John Kobler was a lighthearted, human interest piece about Jimmy and the broader UFO contactee movement. It appeared on pages 26-27 and included two photos of Jimmy.
Kobler’s profile was spot on:
“A small, mild, balding man of forty-two, with pronounced psychic leanings, Rigberg operates his store six days a week, from eight A.M. to ten P.M. chiefly as a clearinghouse for interplanetary intelligence. Assisted by his wife, he keeps a file of reports on unearthly spacecraft, as telephoned in or written to him by sky watchers the county over – he gets some 200 reports a week.”
Jimmy could also be a bit of a showman too…
“To encourage earthbound travel by visitors from other planets, Rigberg maintains a standing offer of a free one-year subscription to Flying Saucer News to any of them who will claim it in person.”
During the 1950’s circulation of the Post ran at around two-to-three million copies per week—a lot more than the paltry 1,000 subscribers of the Flying Saucer News. Jimmy was famous!
Smut Peddler?
The Wrath of Coral—Jimmy gets called out for selling ‘mucky books’. Inset: Jim and Coral Lorenzen.
The following report appeared in the September 1964 issue of the APRO Bulletin, edited by Coral Lorenzen.
Saucer Mags Turn Commercial
It has come to our attention that certain UFO “fan magazines” (not the products of legitimate research groups), and in particular James Rigberg’s “Saucer News” out of New York, are now hawking pornographic literature in addition to their regular lists of saucer books. It would seem that Rigberg is primarily interested in making a profit at his work rather than promoting research. One member wrote: “The UFO Club movement will be incalculably harmed by a new element—advertising in club bulletins of books with pornographic overtones,” after which he listed a few which are listed for sale in the September and December issues of Saucer News. The field of serious research has suffered enough from the misguided pseudo-religious cults, pseudo-scientific groups as well as the contactees. The commercializing on mucky books by a group which passes itself off as a research group will do further harm if it is continued. May we suggest that any members of APRO who also belong to Rigberg’s outfit, register a complaint concerning this matter.
“Oh no Jimmy…say it ain’t so—please tell me you’re not peddling smut!” I wonder how he reacted to this piece, assuming he saw it. Anger, insult, horror? Or would he just have brushed it off.
One thing to keep in mind while considering this episode, is that the “porn” of fifty years ago is not the same as today (not that I’m an expert mind you). We don’t know the titles of these “mucky books” Coral objected to, but I strongly suspect they were just the typical risqué pulp novels or men’s magazines of the time—more salacious than explicit. I’m guessing of course. We won’t know for certain until we can get a hold of those back issues and see what caused so much upset.
Jimmy was no Al Goldstein or Larry Flynt—not by a long shot—so I’m thinking that he was just trying to unload some publisher’s overstock he got cheap. Just a one-time fluke that was never repeated after the negative fallout from his readers and the wider UFO community.
The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization or APRO was founded in 1952 by Coral and her husband Jim. She was widely known and respected in the field for her dedication to the facts and determination to educate the public about the reality of UFOs. Coral had a reputation for being tough, sober minded, outspoken, but most of all—passionate. She wrote five books during her 30 plus years as an active researcher.
The real significance of this piece is what it tells us about Coral. In her eyes, the world of Ufology was black and white. You were either one of the good guys, striving in earnest to investigate and unravel the mystery or you were the enemy—a fraudster, a crackpot, or at the very bottom…a pornographer.
In this case, Coral was right on one point. Whatever his personal beliefs may have been, Jimmy was first and foremost a businessman. Early on he discovered a niche in the book market and he gladly filled it.
Not bad at all
The main photograph of Jimmy, just above the headline of the Saturday Evening Post article was obviously posed—it’s just too perfect. It shows a bespectacled Jimmy, neatly dressed in white shirt, tie and sweater vest and holding a book. He is surrounded by three adoring club members-customers standing in rapt attention. His inventory of books in the background.
Cut and Paste Magic—Jimmy reproduced the Saturday Evening Post photo on the back cover of the August 1961 issue of Flying Saucer News.
Here in this little spot on Third Avenue on the island of Manhattan in 1955, James S. Rigberg was no longer the invisible deli counterman serving up black coffee and thick pastrami sandwiches to obnoxious, cigar-chomping salesmen on their lunch break.
Here he was king. An authority, an expert, a ‘somebody’. Vice President of the Flying Saucer News Club, a publisher/author/lecturer, and proprietor of the Flying Saucer News Bookstore and Prosperity Clinic.
Jimmy was doing his part in helping to explore one of the big questions confronting humanity—“Are we alone in the universe?” He was able to bring pleasure to many, provoke thought in some, and make a few bucks along the way. Not a bad life, not bad at all.
Postscript
This modest account of Jimmy’s life is fragmentary and open ended as many questions remain unanswered. In the future, as more details of his life come to light, I will add to this post. But at least for now, a seed has been planted to honor the man and his memory.
If you knew Jimmy and would like to share your stories about him, please drop me a line or two.
Making a Spectacle of Myself 