Fabulist, Fraud, or Phenom? A Critique of Paul Schatzkin’s The Man Who Mastered Gravity (2023)

A conventional biography about a fringe scientist/UFO researcher turns to tales of antigravity, espionage, sketchy sources, & time travel + the Octopus returns

Previous reviews can be found in the Table of Discontents.

i.

T. Townsend Brown is a largely forgotten figure in the history of science who has become a bit of an enigma. He was a college dropout with grand ideas that his professors thought “impossible,” but Brown was born into a wealthy family which helped to fund private experimentation and research throughout his young life. The obsession that drove him was his goal of demonstrating the validity of Einstein’s Unified Field Theory—a task that Einstein himself was unable to do—and showing a definitive link between electricity and gravity, a now fringe field known as electrogravitics. Brown was convinced he had seen these principles in action on a smaller scale, leading him to essentially posit that a craft could utilize opposing charges to create thrust. If such a craft could somehow have a compact but strong enough power source available, it could be a worthy competitor to solid fuels. After all, the more volts used, the stronger the thrust. Curiously, he postulated that a saucer shape was the best fit for an electrogravitic flying machine: “The way he proposed to control the craft was by dividing the disc into segments, each of which could be selectively charged. By moving the charge around the rim of the saucer, it would, Brown said, be possible to make it move in any direction.”¹

Spending most of his life trying to accomplish this objective, Brown joined the Navy where he was quickly placed within the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. His lofty promises about harnessing gravity for use in military contexts captured the attention of numerous higher ups, although, according to official record, it was never utilized. While his jerry-rigged “gravitor” devices could attract the interest some of the military brass, the Navy soon “refused funding for further research because of the negative opinion of other scientists.”² Brown’s lack of success followed him from one lab to the next, crisscrossing the country in various ventures dealing with antigravity, radio, radar, and other electronics.

Nowadays, it is nearly unanimously concluded amongst aviation researchers that the effect Brown was observing was more likely to be ionic (or corona) wind, i.e. charged particles in the air being moved by electric discharges. While not a seismic technological shift, he was observing a phenomenon that still had its uses militarily. One paper arguing against Brown’s interpretation of the effect, nevertheless observes that corona wind “is indeed used for new propulsion concepts, such as drag reduction systems for supersonic aircraft and future launchers.”³ Brown’s interest in other amorphous forces included his theory of “sidereal radiation,” the influence of cosmic radiation on Earth and its inhabitants. This postulation went beyond classical physics and into dodgier “ether theory” territory. One pamphlet that circulated in the post-WWII period suggested that “sidereal radiation”—the existence of which is not firmly established scientifically—could be measured and used to predict the stock market.⁴ Paul Schatzkin, author of the Brown biography The Man Who Mastered Gravity, writes that “the FBI was interested in Townsend Brown,” tracking his movements and activities for decades. But Schatzkin suggests that the “why” of Brown’s surveillance “remains an open question.”⁵ But I believe a possible answer is relatively clear: Alleging the creation a device that can predict the stock market through inscrutable fringe science feels like a distinctly old-timey grift that would elicit the attention of the Bureau.

Other activities did not help to bolster Brown’s legitimacy. He formed the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in 1956 in response to his strong interest in flying saucers. Yet, he was asked to step down after less than a year due to financial mismanagement. Curiously, he had brought in two individuals—one of them psychological warfare expert, China Lobbyist, and presumed CIA asset Count Nicholas de Rochefort—to fundraise for the organization, although other board members were suspicious of his motives. In Jack Brewer’s Wayward Sons: NICAP and the IC, UFO researcher Barry Greenwood notes:

With very fragmentary information (…) I gathered that de Rochefort and Carvalho were brought on by Townsend Brown to fundraise, but due to questionable financial activities they appear to have been gone by the time (Maj. Donald) Keyhoe took hold. There is no evidence either were into UFOs otherwise.⁶

Engaging in dubious financial activities and bringing your CIA/China Lobby buddy into a UFO organization does not a good director make, it seems. Schatzkin’s book does not spend much time examining Brown’s short NICAP tenure but does note his curiosity about UFOs. One chapter sees a family friend recounting his lecture on biblical flying saucers.⁷

Further occulting Brown’s history was his suggested connection with the Philadelphia Experiment hoax. This incident is a clear historical fib that for some reason, aviation journalist Nick Cook writes, Brown held a steadfast “refusal (…) to dismiss (…) as hokum.”⁸ This connection most prominently appeared in William L. Moore and Charles Berlitz’s The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility where the authors postulate Brown’s involvement in the disappearance/transportation of the USS Eldrige from the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in 1943.⁹ Of course, the urban legend shifts upon each retelling. Schatzkin attempts to avoid the Philadelphia Experiment claims entirely—who can blame him?—though he included an online appendix that copy-pastes an AI response to determine what, if any, tie to the incident Brown has. Not a great sign, given that the LLM gets the origins of the story incorrect. Forgive the prelude of relevant background, let’s move onward to the book I’m critiquing.

ii.

Author Paul Schatzkin’s treatment on Brown, dubbed The Man Who Mastered Gravity: A Twisted Tale of Space, Time and the Mysteries in Between, was a long-delayed effort. This delay was in large part due to the lack of documentation on Brown’s life in specific periods of his life, as well as confusing claims coming from mysterious sources who sought Schatzkin out (more on these later). The initial version of The Man Who Mastered Gravity was published chapter-by-chapter online from 2005-2008, the author using forum discussions to aid his research which inevitably led to deeper rabbit holes. But, after finding himself at his “wit’s end,” Schatzkin “closed the book in the first weeks of 2009.”¹⁰ This exasperation is understandable. Even in the finished product, published in 2023, the narrative shifts back and forth between decades, following various storylines and personalities as it attempts to grasp the truth within the jigsaw puzzle of Brown’s career—if there is such a truth to be attained.

The book begins as a conventional biography, covering much of the same ground that Nick Cook’s The Hunt for Zero Point did a few decades prior. However, the author is clearly prone to believing the shadowy, secret rumors surrounding T. Townsend Brown’s work. Early on, Schatzkin pens a first-person chapter recalling a trip to the Denison University archives looking for info. Brown, repeatedly a poor student in the traditional sense, spent one year at Denison. The archivists, clearly overwhelmed with information requests from UFO and antigravity researchers, had a prepared printout with the information that they had developed throughout the years, discounting many commonly held assumptions. Rather than taking the words of these trained archivists at face value, much of the rest of the book seeks to discount them.

For instance: Paul Alfred Biefeld was an astronomy professor at the institution in 1930s who Townsend Brown had invoked as a consistent collaborator, even naming his theory on electrogravitation the “Biefeld-Brown Effect.” Unfortunately, Biefeld had barely any recollection of Brown and did not advocate for his name being attached to the “effect.” Biefeld’s son also rejected most, if any, association between Brown and his father. There were also notes from the archivists that recounted more sketchy schemes involving Brown’s tech investment opportunities, “concentrating on the elderly, especially widows,” in Meadville, PA before skipping town, “leaving bills at all the places he had established charge accounts.”¹¹ Schatzkin mostly glosses over these accusations, challenging the Biefeld claims directly by pointing to an affidavit signed by Biefeld in support of Brown’s research after visiting his home lab in 1930. This affidavit, which was purportedly found in Brown’s Naval records, is quoted from but not cited more specifically. If it exists somewhere on the book’s website or elsewhere online, I have not been able to find it. Given the archivist’s warning that Brown “made up a lot of things,” coupled with Biefeld’s insistence of only casual contact, I don’t think the legitimacy of this document is completely beyond reproach if it is not publicly available for scrutiny.¹²

As the book develops and documentation of Brown’s activities grows scarcer, slowly but surely, the reader exits the earthly realm—not unlike antigravity crafts themselves. This descent (or ascent) begins when Schatzkin is introduced to pseudonymous “Morgan” and “O’Riley,” two individuals that claim a lifelong affiliation to Brown through an intelligence organization known as the “Caroline group,” led by veteran British Security Coordination figure Sir William S. Stephenson. Schatzkin “never met either of these men in person,” instead getting their input from “voluminous email exchanges that started in 2004.”¹³ Linda Brown, T. Townsend Brown’s daughter, advocates for both contacts, Morgan being a long-lost love interest who became involved in the shadowy world of espionage and covert operations though Brown’s research. When put in touch with Morgan, who was previously presumed dead by Linda, he speaks in bizarre riddles filled with Jimmy Buffett references. He later claimed, as strange figures like this love to do, that he was depicted in another book: He appeared as an intelligence operative going by the moniker “the Reverend” in John Brotherton’s memoir of running a Russian mafia-connected casino, A Fistful of Kings—a book that seems to be riddled with its own odd confabulations and strangeness.¹⁴ The red flags start frantically waving in the wind very shortly after these two anonymous figures are put forward as sources.

First and foremost, the only purported connection between William Stephenson and T. Townsend Brown comes from Morgan. To my knowledge, it appears nowhere else, though Schatzkin claims that Brown’s wife Josephine also worked as a courier for Stephenson’s executive secretary during the couple’s “sham” divorce from 1937-1940. This is, of course, uncited but presumably comes from Morgan as well. Brown’s supposed introduction to Stephenson came in 1933 aboard businessman Eldridge Johnson’s yacht, the Caroline, during a Naval research mission. But Stephenson is not listed on the ship’s manifests at the relevant times and a purported “affiliation” with Johnson is also “largely circumstantial,” Schatzkin admits.¹⁵ “Morgan,” whoever he is, insinuates a deep knowledge of a hidden world without any documentation beyond his word to prove it.

Linda Brown’s recollections of Morgan do nothing to oppose the lingering feeling that he’s a fictional character. Their interactions have the aesthetics of a heavy-handed romance novel, the descriptions of the duo’s time together often being a bit saucier than I expected in biography about an antigravity scientist. While Schatzkin never met Morgan himself, Linda Brown served as an intermediary, allowing them to exchange meaningful gifts. At one bizarre point, Linda describes a meetup with Morgan while on her way to visit Schatzkin at his home near Nashville in 2005. “She was reluctant to tell me that Morgan—and a handful of his most able-bodied cohorts—did most of the driving,” he writes. Linda told him that on her way from California:

A hundred miles west of Alamogordo, New Mexico, a small convoy of black Hummers and SUVs converged on the little red Pontiac and guided Linda to a stop by the side of the road. The passenger-side door of a Hummer flew open, and out jumped Morgan, who walked up to Linda’s car and slipped into the driver’s seat. “We’re in the wind,” he said.

Morgan drove for a couple of hours to Holloman Air Force Base. “He just held up some kind of badge and flew through the gate without even stopping,” Linda recounted. Once inside the base, Morgan ushered Linda aboard a black helicopter. Eighteen hours later, with a few stops along the way, the chopper landed in an empty field a few miles from my house where a Hummer picked them up. After waiting a few minutes at the end of the road, the red rental car drove up behind them. Linda got out of the Hummer, got back in the red rental, and drove the short distance to my house.¹⁶

This incident, illustrating Morgan’s immense resources and high security clearances, feels too outlandish to be real. The selection of Holloman Air Force Base, too, could be invoking the UFO rumors surrounding the base—the supposed site of a flying saucer landing. Whatever the case, it reads more like romantic fantasy than real life, made all the stranger by the fact that Linda Brown was married throughout most of her time fawning over the studly Morgan post-2000.¹⁷

Back in the past, through the shadowy individuals “Morgan” and “O’Riley,” Townsend Brown goes from a largely unsuccessful crank with some experience in military labs to a jet-setting superspy. The two allege that Dr. Brown—who never received a doctorate—was conducting classified research at every stage of his career, even taking part in a secretive Alsos-type mission post-WWII to bring a German electronics specialist to the U.S. They also claim that the “Caroline Group” was more than your average intelligence collective. By the end of the book, Morgan admits that Brown and the Caroline Group were working on “a time machine” or at least, “a way of reaching forward and back” and “traveling between dimensions.”¹⁸ At another stage, a box of important research was returned to Brown via a UFO with humanoid occupants connected with the Caroline project, either traveling through time or dimensions.¹⁹ Befuddlingly, according to O’Riley, Morgan died while secretly deployed with Navy SEALs in 2005 during the War in Afghanistan, despite being at least in his 60s by this point in time. The story gets convoluted, a science fiction spy thriller occasionally interspersed with normal biographical study. Schatzkin accepts a lot of hard-to-swallow information while receiving nothing in the way of proof—not even seeing his most integral sources face-to-face.

Likewise, another recurring problem is that the book’s citations are messy, often the most intriguing claims left uncited or presumably sourced from “Morgan” or “O’Riley.” The book promises a bibliography, appendices, and endnote links online, but following the links leads to pages that are still in progress or do not provide the primary sources cited. While some documents may exist within the forums or via other online links, the collections are incomplete and disorganized. When given a tough nut to crack, one does not expect the nutcracker to be an under-construction Rube Goldberg machine, nor should they. The reader, therefore, is asked to take much on faith. But unless you’re shopping for a new religion, that faith would be hard to come by in this instance.

Linda Brown—the only linkage to the two key covert sources Schatzkin adopts, as well as the originator of much information corroborating her father’s secreted legacy—is far from a reliable source herself. If one were to trawl through the series of web forums dedicated to the study of T. Townsend Brown and Schatzkin’s book, (such as ttbrown.com, ttownsendbrown.com, and the now partially defunct cosmic-token.com,) one would see a recurring issue: Linda Brown gets into fights with regularity, accusing other web surfers of being “agents” seeking to discredit her or her plight to cement her father’s name in science history. This attitude is even seen when she was asked for verification while giving a Reddit AMA, where she told one user that “its (sic) good to worry about the possibility of ‘agents’ trying to discredit a forum.”²⁰ All manner of mudslinging occurs in the forums, but I am loathe to rehash old internet drama. There are accusations of lies, exaggerations, and infidelities. Several examples are still accessible via Wayback Machine for those curious.

iii.

The forums also illustrate the underlying games of smoke and mirrors being played somewhere along the way in the T. Townsend Brown story. As much as I wanted to be done with it, another “Octopus Conspiracy” tentacle has felt its way into disturbing contacts with this narrative, specifically with Schatzkin’s research. I had noted in Cystic Detective #6 that Michael Riconoscuito, the supposed “Danger Man” involved in every conspiratorial covert action since the 1960s, claimed to have continued Brown’s research while working at Learjet. Indeed, The Man Who Mastered Gravity notes that Bill Lear had an interest in Brown’s technology, though this is not cited to any specific source, again likely coming from one of the three unreliable contacts.

One of these contacts, the secretive source “O’Riley,” was “one of the many (alleged) spies in th(e) story,” and was purported to start “his career as Royal Marine, attached to the British Special Operations Executive group during WWII.”²¹ While this would mean he was likely in at least his 80s by 2006, he nevertheless cropped up on the Townsend Brown forums that year, offering more information to curious readers. It is here where he made a strange, mysterious claim, quoted verbatim:

First couple of bubbles, Drawn from another thread. There are direct connections between the “electrohydrodynamic pineapple bomb”, a genius named “Mike”, his partner... more than a genius ... named “Lavas”, The Cabazon Indians, the NRO, The CIA, oh lets see a whole slew of situations that have been hinted about but never actually brought to the surface and yes.... it is slowly becoming time.²²

One might recognize that we are again entering the realm of the Octopus Conspiracy. The “genius named ‘Mike’” referred to here is Michael Riconoscuito, purveyor of endless questionable scoops clogging up multiple parapolitical research endeavors. The “Lavas” mentioned in the O’Riley forum post is referring to Raymond Lavas, also part of the same clique of Octopus sources. Researcher Cheri Seymour notes that Lavas appears in Danny Casolaro’s “typewritten and handwritten lists of contacts,” firmly placing him within the milieu.²³ He was most closely associated with Ted Gunderson, for whom he claimed to serve as forensic expert while Gunderson was working at the FBI. Notably, Gunderson’s career in the world of conspiracy (he insinuated himself into the Jefferey MacDonald murders, the Franklin Scandal, and the McMartin Preschool case among many other controversial topics) was dogged by accusations that he was a COINTELPRO agent. These charges were later partially verified, with Gunderson leading operations to infiltrate and disrupt the New Haven Black Panter Party.²⁴ Michael Riconoscuito, a mutual friend of both Gunderson and Lavas, claimed the latter was “a former protege of Robert Maheu,” Howard Hughes’ right hand man, though this should be taken with a grain of salt.²⁵

Not content with merely being referenced, Lavas himself also appears within the T. Townsend Brown forum, going under the username “trickfox”—subtle, I know. Within the forum, Lavas speaks about an intricate plot involving Riconoscuito, the research of Brown, and lost Tesla technologies.²⁶ Elsewhere, he apparently ranted about the coming technological singularity in deleted videos that Schatzkin nevertheless felt worthy of discussion.²⁷ He also provided a translation of a French report of T. Townsend Brown’s activities in the 1950s which was used in Schatzkin’s book. However, a later complaint on the forum notes (among many other contradictions within the book, some of which I have tackled here) that there were issues or omissions with Lavas’ translation.²⁸ I hope one can see what a mess this exploration has become, filled with suspicious individuals and accusations of sockpuppet accounts posing as top-secret sources.²⁹

There are several conclusions one can draw from these conflicts and developments. Maybe Linda Brown or associates have made up most of the story the comprises Schatzkin’s book. Perhaps an Octopus tentacle like Raymond Lavas or an everyday trickster was feeding false information to a daughter who wanted to know more about her father’s legacy. Perhaps Brown was a fabulist, and this quality wound up being an inheritable trait. Whatever the case, The Man Who Mastered Gravity has, as my wife would say, made a pig’s ear out of the entire subject. The sources are shaky, the information is suspect, and the figures involved in discussions integral to Schatzkin’s book are not to be trusted. He even admitted on the forum in 2023, that after years of struggling to come away with a clear story, he “overcame the impasse” by com(ing) up with a version of things and run(ning) with it, however uncertain I was of the veracity.” He added: “Maybe the book should come with a disclaimer: ‘Pretend it's all fiction.’”³⁰ Such a decision would have probably been wise. Schatzkin concedes at around the book’s halfway point that it becomes “impossible to separate” the input of his “two confidential informants” from his own. He states that “it’s all rabbit hole from” that point on, notwithstanding the possibility that the rabbit he is chasing might be as illusory and hallucinatory as Alice’s own.³¹

iv.

This inconsistent story is even more disappointing given that Schatzkin is genuinely a talented writer. One would not have to twist my arm to get me to admit that I enjoyed the read—if anything it was one of the better paranormal/ufological books I’ve read in a while in terms of pure entertainment value. In my book, The Fortean Influence on Science Fiction, I spend a good chunk of time meditating on the term “maybe-fiction,” a word half-borrowed from Fort. Through “maybe-fiction,” I intended to describe a broad swath of fringe literature:

To call them fiction would not be giving them enough credit—but calling them non-fiction would give them perhaps too much. They exist in the ambiguous and contentious divide between fiction and fact, covering a variety of topics: ancient astronauts, cryptids, mysterious disappearances, folklore, UFOs, teleportation, time distortions, and much more. (…) A maybe-fiction work is a story presented as truth at the time of publication (even if later disputed or debunked) and ranges from data-backed entries and explorations to anomalous experiences to those likely to be hallucinogenic visions and pure fabrications. Their actual truth value holds little importance to this exploration, but the texts are nearly always about contentious subjects.³²

Of course, I have grown as a researcher and writer since penning this book, and I would say the subjects involved have outgrown their pulp paperback origins and entered the mainstream. We are now dealing with an entirely different beast, one that cannot be relegated comfortably to the fringe without any material analysis. Yet when I said that these works of crank literature had an appeal, I meant it. Schatzkin’s book, while admittedly an acquired taste, is one of the most enjoyable works of “maybe-fiction” I’ve encountered in the past few years. It’s a spy thriller, a romance novel, historical fiction, and a fast-paced biography all at the same time. If one considers it a piece of outsider art—more like underground civilizations of Richard Shaver or the strange letters Carl Allen wrote in support of the Philadelphia Experiment—it becomes a callback to the good old days Grey Barker, Albert Bender, M.K. Jessup, and the scores of contactees. Just forget that it has endnotes and don’t let suspension of disbelief become belief.

Additionally, I am not one to completely discount the Brown’s intelligence ties, though the other books cited within this review offer more realistic scenarios as to why there were odd smokescreens surrounding Brown’s work and career. Plus, they involve far fewer hints of time travel or possible extraterrestrial involvement. Nick Cook, for instance, was a seasoned aviation reporter when he wrote The Hunt for Zero Point, only turning to the woo (and Robert Bigelow’s Institute for Consciousness Studies) after the research took him to those fringe locales. His read on the mysterious life of T. Townsend Brown was that his scientific work was not used for antigravity tech, but rather for the electrostatic stealth of B-2 bombers. The need to keep this secret was why he was discredited as a scientist, it would reveal the truth for all to see:

In the archive trawl, somebody would have come across the work of T. T. Brown. Brown's stealth work for the U.S. Navy in the early 1940s, coupled with his use of electrostatics in his electrogravitic work, was an unexpected discovery that needed to be handled with great care. The man's work was a dangerous liability. Something needed to be done—something truly innovative.³³

Cook then postulates that Moore and Berlitz’s The Philadelphia Experiment was another Air Force disinformation campaign, not unlike the later ones Moore would assist AFOSI with. “In the 1980s, the decade when stealth came to be fielded operationally, the technology had acquired its own tailor-made cloak of disinformation,” Cook writes.³⁴ Schatzkin, however, extends this cloaking to every instance of Brown’s discrediting—from early on in his Naval career to later attempts to sell his ideas to private companies. In The Man Who Mastered Gravity, this was an intentional ruse, the so-called “wounded prairie chicken routine,” meant to put people off the trail of every piece of secret research he was involved at the behest of the “Caroline group.” The book stretches the mildly plausible into the highly unlikely, with antigravity, time travel, and interdimensional intelligence agencies within intelligence agencies. All of this was being concealed by Brown acting like an incapable failure his entire life.

This stretching does a disservice to the fact that Brown legitimately did have some suspicious intelligence ties, as noted in Jack Brewer’s Wayward Sons, which illustrates how Brown involved these IC figures in the lobbying and fundraising for the nascent NICAP. If one were trying to conceal secret military tech, the UFO buffs would serve as an important early warning system to leaks or an excellent place to plant the seeds of distracting disinfo. This theory is speculation on my part, though careful readers may note that I am citing books and not anonymous individuals who have sent me thousands of emails. Brown is but a small chapter in NICAP’s untold saga of military intelligence, though his brief tenure was marked by financial ineptitude—a quality that could replace the “wounded prairie chicken routine” as an explanation for his consistent failure to put ideas in action.

The distinct possibility remains that Brown was a crank whose work was not buried but simply forgotten, dredged up again by untrustworthy actors throughout the past five decades. Whether tarnished by exaggeration, disinformation, or outright fiction, Schatzkin’s book is too complex and chaotic to get readers closer to the truth. But it’s a hell of a good time. I’d recommend giving it a read as a fun tale, but also a prime example of how disinformation and rumors travel throughout the fields of conspiracy and ufology. Weaving through the tales told by braggarts, fabulists, and disinformers, Schatzkin does less vetting than should be commonplace for such grandiose claims. Nevertheless, The Man Who Mastered Gravity illustrates how telling a rip-roaring good story, devoid of the evidence backing it, can nevertheless be written with authority and become mildly convincing as testimony towards a mythical reality.

Take, for example, Schatzkin’s appearance on Jesse Michels’ American Alchemy YouTube channel, in an upload bombastically titled “The Man Who Built UFOs For The CIA”—which is not even the exact contention of Schatzkin’s book. Within this video, all of the suspicious elements of The Man Who Mastered Gravity are taken on faith and used to bolster other UFO-related stories. Michels makes note of Linda Brown reviewing Tim (Tyler D.) Taylor’s 2003 book Launch Fever, a book I touched on briefly back in the Bledsoe series.³⁵ Taylor has been a vital source to not only UFO experiencer Chris Bledsoe but to D.W. Pasulka, who used Taylor as the majjor example of ufological religiosity in her 2019 book American Cosmic. Linda Brown’s review of Taylor’s self-published bio is nothing out of the ordinary, simply calling the book: “An Engineers firsthand experience of what it means to be part of the Space Program…. wrapped in his recollections of growing up in the South. A charming legacy to his daughter and all of us.” She ends the review declaring that there is “important stuff here.”³⁶

Indubitably, as in the grand tradition of intertextual maybe-fiction, all these stories cross over into a stew of self-fulfilling prophecies and unsubstantiated rumors. Michels further notes that Ryan Bledsoe has tweeted about the supposed “Nassau group,” (aka the “Caroline group” in Schatzkin’s book,) saying that Taylor told his experiencer father that among his other “secret space program” allegations, he was involved with Brown’s group: “(Taylor) was in an elite group called the Nassau group headed up by T. Townsend Brown. (He) also insinuated they had time travel technology.”³⁷ Taylor is either utilizing the dubious claims of Paul Schatzkin’s cloaked source to embellish his own fringe credentials or—more speculatively—he may have been one of the secret contacts himself. Bear in mind that he has done largely the same thing to Chris Bledsoe and religious scholar D.W. Pasulka: He gives himself a vaunted insider status that does not seem to have the evidence backing it and tells spectacular stories of UFOs, non-human intelligence, secret tech, and time travel that seem too good to be true. It’s fitting that the unverified rumors perpetuated by Schatzkin and mystery man Tim Taylor coalesce with one another, using each other to give the illusion of corroboration. But one wonders if we are witnessing an ouroboros of tall tales that have fooled a trusting subculture.

---

If you enjoyed this review, you may also enjoy:

Christopher Bledsoe and the UFO Cult of Intelligence, Pt. 4: The Transmigration of Timothy Taylor / The Divine Invasion of Chris Bledsoe

Christopher Bledsoe and the UFO Cult of Intelligence, Pt. 6: American Cosmic Revisited / The Ballad of Tyler D.

Forbidden Science Dispatches #10: How Jacques Vallée Was Targeted by a Tentacle of Danny Casolaro's Octopus, or: A Mystery Caller with a Finance Ploy, Robert Booth Nichols, Bob Lazar, the Sam Israel III Ponzi Scheme, and the Endless Octopus Conspiracy

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1. Cook, Nick. The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology. New York: Broadway Books, 2001. Page 23.

2. Ibid., page 29.

3. Tajmar, Martin. “Biefeld-Brown Effect: Misinterpretation of Corona Wind Phenomena.” AIAA Journal 42, no. 2. February 2004. Page 315. https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.9095.

4. Lakes States Securities Corporation. “Sidereal Radiation: A Natural Radiation from Space.” Pamphlet, 1946. https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/47266541/sidereal-radiation-the-thomas-townsend-brown-family-website#.

5. Schatzkin, Paul. The Man Who Mastered Gravity: A Twisted Tale of Space, Time and the Mysteries in Between. Incorrigible Arts / Embassy Books & Laundry, 2023. Page 213.

6. Brewer, Jack. Wayward Sons: NICAP and the IC. Self-published, 2021. Page 56.

7. Schatzkin, Paul. The Man Who Mastered Gravity: A Twisted Tale of Space, Time and the Mysteries in Between. Incorrigible Arts / Embassy Books & Laundry, 2023. Page 327-331.

8. Cook, Nick. The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology. New York: Broadway Books, 2001. Page 25.

9. It should be noted that the two authors of the classic paranormal tome had their own suspicious ties or possible disinformation motives. William L. Moore, of course, peddled disinfo on behalf of AFOSI to receive the “real” UFO secrets in return. He came clean to boos and jeers at a 1989 MUFON conference, including allegations that he helped conduct psychological operations on businessman and UFO witness Paul Bennewitz. His coauthor, Charles Berlitz, was the scion of the Berlitz family who operated the Berlitz Language Schools worldwide. He was also a former Army intelligence captain, spending at least a decade in this role—though different sources give different lengths of tenure.

10. Schatzkin, Paul. The Man Who Mastered Gravity: A Twisted Tale of Space, Time and the Mysteries in Between. Incorrigible Arts / Embassy Books & Laundry, 2023. Page 15.

11. Ibid., page 63.

12. Ibid., page 61.

13. Ibid., page 202.

14. Singh, Lisa. “Stalking Texas Ranger.” Dallas Observer. 8 March 2001. https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/stalking-texas-ranger-6405432. (That Schatzkin was under the impression that this book contained possible corroboration is telling: Brotherton’s A Fistful of Kings “included a ‘mystery contest,’” advertised on the cover, “the prize being a trip to Las Vegas.” It is unknown if this prize was ever given out, but as of 2001, Brotherton was “in no hurry to dish out money for the prize.” Strange.)

15. Schatzkin, Paul. The Man Who Mastered Gravity: A Twisted Tale of Space, Time and the Mysteries in Between. Incorrigible Arts / Embassy Books & Laundry, 2023. Page 137.

16. Ibid., page 280-281.

17. Ibid., page 444.

18. Ibid., page 426.

19. Ibid., page 347-349.

20. Brown, Linda (Rittenhouse1). “I am Linda Brown, the daughter of the physicist Thomas Townsend Brown AMA.” Reddit, r/conspiracy. 15 February 2014. https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1y04a0/comment/cfg9rwi/.

21. Lundquist, Jan. “Cast of Characters: O’Riley/Boston/Twigsnapper.” Thomas Townsend Brown: The Man Who Mastered Gravity. 6 December 2023. https://www.ttbrown.com/cast-of-characters/.

22. twigsnapper. “Re: WIRED on ‘The AntiGravity Underground.’” Thomas Townsend Brown: The Man Who Mastered Gravity web forum. 20 July 2008. https://www.ttbrown.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=16651&sid=527c35d2e6c0245d6ba0dc0750255d81#p16651.

23. Seymour, Cheri. The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into The Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal. Walterville: TrineDay, 1994. Ebook. Page 119.

24. Best, Michael. “Ted Gunderson: From COINTELPRO Planner to Criminal and Conspiracy Theorist.” Glomar Disclosure. 6 July 2016. https://archive.is/a26On.

25. Seymour, Cheri. The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into The Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal. Walterville: TrineDay, 1994. Ebook. Page 151.

26. Henry__Yang. “Trickfox Quotes (Massive List).” Thomas Townsend Brown: The Man Who Mastered Gravity web forum. 30 May 2024. https://ttbrown.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=758.

27. Schatzkin, Paul. “Waiting for ‘The Singularity.’” Thomas Townsend Brown: The Man Who Mastered Gravity. 25 March 2008. https://www.ttbrown.com/kurzweil/, https://www.ttbrown.com/us-tube/.

28. Mikado14. “Here are answers to the Cyber Bully.” The Quonset Hut web forum, ttownsendbrown.com. 10 June 2015. https://www.ttownsendbrown.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=1284.

29. Ibid.

30. Schatzkin, Paul. “Re: Confusion over Cornillion/Bergier and Twigsnapper/Sarbacher.” Thomas Townsend Brown: The Man Who Mastered Gravity web forum. 30 March 2023. https://www.ttbrown.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=21823#p21823.

31. Schatzkin, Paul. The Man Who Mastered Gravity: A Twisted Tale of Space, Time and the Mysteries in Between. Incorrigible Arts / Embassy Books & Laundry, 2023. Page 202.

32. Boyle, Tanner F. The Fortean Influence on Science Fiction: Charles Fort and the Evolution of the Genre. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2020. Page 7.

33. Cook, Nick. The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology. New York: Broadway Books, 2001. Page 137.

34. Ibid., page 138.

35. “The Man Who Built UFOs For The CIA (Townsend Brown Documentary).” YouTube, uploaded by Jesse Michels, 22 February 2024. (Timestamp: 1:39:04)

36. Leach, Linda A. “A charming legacy.” Amazon product review for Launch Fever by Timothy Taylor. 18 October 2014. http://web.archive.org/web/20250721200022/https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1LPERWDXZL41X?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B0052VU9XA.

37. Bledsoe, Ryan [@RyanDBledsoe]. “Tim Taylor personally told my father he was in an elite group called the Nassau group headed up by T. Townsend Brown. Also insinuated they had time travel technology. https://t.co/Ryi2K84yuX.” Twitter, 19 October 2021, https://x.com/RyanDBledsoe/status/1450579143461163013.