I don't know, tall blonde aliens, the idea of settling them in the north of Scandinavia, it all has a slightly dubious air to me before we even get on to the content of the story. Is there any evidence about who Frank Johnson was? I can't seem to see much evidence of an exobiologist of this name beyond references to the book - or to a hyponotist Geoffrey McCartney for that matter. Is there any chance this could all be fiction?
Its a good point, and of course it was the year Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released and the official title of the book is "The Janos People: A Close Encounter of the Fourth Kind".
We have the short ATV tv interview with a rather unconvincing/untroubled family we are told are the Manns and during which the book is shown and heavily plugged. Then we have the radio show linked above. Unfortunately, I have been unable to access the actual interview as it requires an academic log-in and mine has expired. It is possible the interview with 'John' and 'Gloria' was a conducted over a telephone link, and of course the two children and the sister are missing. Then we have 'reenactment' of the hypnotic regression being played by named actors, and that is about the sum of it. To the best of my knowledge, he author and the witnesses have stayed silent ever since.
I have not been able to find any information online about hypnotist Geoff McCartney (M'Cartney in some texts) nor Frank Johnson, although his name is too common for a precise search. However, I found the following lurking within the Janos pdf but not in the actual book:
"6.
My knowledge of the Janos story comes mainly from
the Johnson book. I have had some contact with Jenny
Randles, UFO author, in regard to Janos. She and a friend
had some association with the author, the hypnotist and
the family. She ended up with a negative reaction and
claimed the hypnotist was somehow responsible for
planting the story in the minds of the family."
Also:
"
The author of the book, Frank Johnson, is now dead."
Apparently there was a website as well the book. I cannot verify if the above information is true, but it has the ring of truth and it would of course be fantastic to her from Jenny herself (she has been on this forum). This does suggest that there was an actual family, hypnotist and author, but how honest were they being with jenny, as she clearly felt unhappy with the case. Poor old Frank, although killing off Frank could be construed as covering up what was a work of fiction. As ever with all things Fortean, it is a bit of a tangled web.
Frank provides us with a list of UFO books at the foot of the open letter to the Janos people and interestingly it includes this book:
HOLROYD, STUART: Briefing for the Landing on Planet Earth. W. H. Allen;Corgi 1977
I remember it well from the BUFORA book list and it written as fiction. Has anyone on this forum read it? I feel it may be the inspiration for his book. My feeling at present is that it was either a joint work of fiction and an attempt to get well known Ufologist Jenny Randles to authenticate the story and then go after the big money film deal, or a family who had a strange experience on the road that night but were hopelessly led astray by the hypnotist and the author. As regards the latter theory, there are a good number of cases where people - and indeed whole families - have encountered strange mists and/or lights along roads at night that have had some sort of effect on their memories/sense of time.