Wilbert Smith and Otis Carr

One of the more imaginative and successful con-men in flying saucer history was Otis T. Carr, who managed to dupe more than a few people in the 1950s with his claims of free energy technology, until he was finally convicted in 1961 of "the crime of selling securities without registering the same" in Oklahoma (he eventually served 14 months in prison). Carr passed away in 1982, and although he is largely forgotten today, he still has a few acolytes - while speaking at the 2007 Retro-Con at the Integratron in Landers, California, I shared the bill with Ralph Ring, who once worked with Carr and still professes to believe that Carr was a genius, or something like that.

Wilbert Smith, like many others within the Contactee movement in the 1950s, took Carr seriously, at least for a time. Eventually, however, Smith soured on Carr when he realized that what Carr was selling was nothing but a load of hot air. Here is just a glimpse of the interaction between the two - Carr was clearly interested in using Smith's connections and credibility as a real engineer in order to bolster his own claims, in much the same way as Steven Greer would later appear on the same stage as men like Stan Friedman or John Mack, and look for a similar "rub of authenticity".

The correspondence after the failed Carr test is with contactee David Middleton, with whom Smith maintained a regular correspondence.

Smith was certainly open-minded, but while he was willing to give Carr the benefit of the doubt at first, even he could see through Carr's bogus claims when he had a closer look at them.

None of this stopped him from making his own claims of contact with the "boys topside". So then the question remains - was he just a Canadian version of Otis Carr, was he delusional, or was there possibly something real going on with him?

Paul Kimball