Silent Invasion: The Shocking Discoveries of a UFO Researcher

The late Ellen Crystall deserves a lot of credit for her stalwart efforts in uncovering the strange activities that became fairly common in this little corner of New York back in the 1980's and 90's. If you do some research you'll find it still occurs to a small degree. Even now in 2008 her efforts are viable and this book is definitely a recommended read. I recognize a nonfiction author on the terms of their qualifications, truthfulness (that I evaluate intuitively as well as through more research) and journalistic aptitude. By these standards I give this book and Ellen Crystall four solid stars. No, I never met her, nor do I live in that geographical area. So I have no first hand anecdotes to apply here, as other reviewers apparently can. Reviewers call her claims `wacko', `looney', `far-fetched' and so on. It would be easy to address each one of those, but why? Ms. Crystall is reporting about her own experiences and, in her own words, "speculating" on what this far-fetched phenomenon is. She explains throughout the book why her photographs of these "ships" are not discernible, why what she saw is not what the photograph shows. And she tells us up front that she is not a scientist. When her experiences began she was not even a professional photographer; just a young woman caught up in something strange that compelled her to investigate further. I never got a sense of pretense or sensationalism in the telling of her story. Very strange things occurred, and are still occurring. The government puts a tight lid on it, and the media acquiesces to the government. It is because of gutsy investigators like Ellen Crystall, Jim Marrs, and Preston Dennett (just to name a few) that we can learn about these strange goings-on. An overt government misinformation campaign is being waged against the public regarding UFOs and ridicule is the number one weapon used to shush people up. Nobody wants to be scorned, mocked and used as the punch line for jokes. Though most of us are too darn busy these days to worry and care enough to do the research regarding the area of discussion in this book, I promise that if you do, you will come away more enlightened and open-minded to this "far-fetched" business. Silent Invasion was originally published in 1991. Plenty has happened since then; some of Crystall's findings can be disputed or even debunked now. But she blazed a trail in Pine Bush and came to some honest conclusions that cannot be denied. I found the information regarding possible underground mining or tunneling very compelling. Today we know there is an abundance of jurisprudential quality documentation to support this. All you have to do is investigate. Ellen Crystall DID investigate. If YOU won't take the time to investigate, your critisism just doesn't hold any weight.

People write about abductions and the military. This book covers what most people who have seen UFOs have had to deal with--sightings of things in the sky while driving and while taking garbage out at night to find a large something-or-other hovering near the house.If this book is true we are all in trouble. Why hasn't this author been on Oprah showing the photographs and video? I want to see this video she has taken.

Though the author of this book does make inferences without much evidence, most of ufology does the very same thing. After all, ufologists have not been able to produce any substantial physical evidence of the existance of extraterrestrial life, yet many people unquestioningly believe that such beings not only exist but visit our planet and abduct people with which to experiment. I feel that this book is valuable, despite its lack of scientific method. SILENT INVASION is more of a "what if?" scenario than cold hard factual evidence, but this has value as well. If a book does nothing more than cause its readers to question "truth" and "reality", what a valuable contribution that book has made! Read SILENT INVASION if only for entertainment purposes...it's quite interesting.