Everything I said about Adam Allsuch Boardman’s An Illustrated History of Ghosts is just as true of his earlier book, An Illustrated History of UFOs (2020), and perhaps doubly so, as he succeeds in making UFOs just as cool as ghosts. Which is not to say that UFOs are uncool, but rather that ghosts are just that cool (monsters, of course, are miles cooler than both, and I hope his forthcoming urban legends book is a stealth monster book for this reason [Update: it sort of is!]).

I read them out of order, so to me, Ghosts sets up a question — why are ghosts so important to us? — that Boardman seems to answer in UFOs. I have always known the UFO phenomenon really took off (ugh, pardon the pun) in 1947, but I didn’t realize that the Spiritualism craze was winding down around the same time, marking the end of a period of unprecedented interest in ghosts and the possibility of an afterlife. I also didn’t realize how similar the accounts of ghost and UFO encounters play out, and how the language around the research of both phenomena is essentially interchangeable (and also how singular encounters of both seem to uh…clearly influence later encounters). Almost as if, as the world changed, so did the nature of the Unknown that humanity craves.

Deep thoughts aside, I think UFOs also excels because Boardman has so much more material to work with — there are so many ship and alien variants! His style seems perhaps slightly more suited to the curving mechanical lines. I have to say, outside of The Vast of Night, I don’t find UFOs or aliens to be a concept that is scary or particularly awe-inspiring. But many of Boardman’s illustrations of UFO sightings have a numinous quality I find unnerving and ominous. There is a stillness in his work that benefits his subjects. The feeling reminds me a bit of descriptions I’ve read of the experience some folks have being in proximity to standing stones and other neolithic monuments.