BRJSummer25WebReduced - Flipbook - Page 24
...at Howard Menger9s First East Coast
Simon Bradfield
Anything Out of This World
Was Possible...
Interplanetary Space Convention
Howard Menger was rocketed into flying saucer stardom when he claimed that Venutians landed
on his farm and carried him away to outer space. But behind the scenes, his life was unraveling
like the flimsy plot of a 1950s sci-fi movie and his short rise to fame peaked at a cosmic carnival
on the fringes of Tewksbury Township, New Jersey, in 1958. By C.G. Wolfe
S
pipe. But behind his charisma, there was a hint of sadness and
ix hundred cars and a small herd of befuddled cows eyed
distant flashes of a shy and awkward youth. Menger was at the
each other warily in a pasture beside Rockaway Creek, on
the dirt road fringes of rural Tewksbury Township, New Jersey.
height of his flying saucer stardom in 1958. In the two years since
Above the motors and ruffled mooing, public address announcehe reported meeting with beautiful and benevolent spacemen and
ments and garbled background music
women in Hunterdon County, New Jersey,
Menger’s galactic adventure
he was receiving top billing in the flying
beckoned an excited throng towards a beabegan shortly after moving to a
saucer lecture and convention circuit
con-white clapboard house on a hill. Believers, skeptics, the bizarre, and the farm on West Main Street, in High alongside contactee and ufologist A-listers
curious had all arrived at Howard and
like George Van Tassle and George
Bridge, New Jersey...
Connie Menger9s farm on a summery, midAdamski.
Menger9s galactic adventure began shortly after moving to a
September day in 1958, for the First East Coast Interplanetary
farm on West Main Street, in High Bridge, New Jersey, with his
Space Convention. The only visitors that hadn9t shown up yet
parents and younger brother Alton, when he was eight years old.
were the flying saucers.
He was haunted by strange flashbacks of events and places that
Howard Royal Menger (pronounced men-jer) was lean and lank
seemed to be
