Parallel worlds in Eureka Springs
When Welcome to Eureka Springs: The I-Sh*t-You-Not History of America’s Quirkiest Town comes out this summer, it will boldly go where no local history has gone before: the past half century.
Sure, there are scattered references to the city’s 1979 centennial and other scraps. But no book has attempted to reflect all the subcommunities that have actually shaped the town over the last half century: hippies, the gay community, bikers (both kinds), tiger wranglers, UFO researchers.
UFO researchers?
The Ozark Mountain UFO Conference is a venerable Eureka tradition that hovers under the radar of most locals and tourists alike. Minus a pandemic year, it has been held every April at the Inn of the Ozarks since 1988. Or 1989, depending on how you count. Boundaries get blurry in Eureka Springs.
Lou Farish, who led the conference for more than two decades, will be the subject of a chapter in my book. To find out more about him, I interviewed current conference emcee Forest Crawford by telephone.
I admit, I had no idea how big a deal Lou and the conference were among serious UFO buffs across the globe.
“It is seen in the UFO community as one of the best conferences anywhere in the country,” Forest told me.
My chapter will discuss Lou’s pivotal role in UFO research, the time Heaven’s Gate cult members showed up, and the New Age thought leader whose publishing company now runs the conference.
Forest and I also talked about Pentagon confirmations in recent years of “unidentified anomalous phenomena.”
Forest said more people are coming around to the idea that the government knows a lot more than it has been telling us.
“Their job is to keep us safe and fat and happy, so we’ll buy another big screen TV,” he said. “They’re certainly not gonna get on TV and go, ‘Oh, hey, by the way, aliens are real. They’ve been visiting us for thousands of years. Sleep tight!’”
Whatever the next disclosure may be, you can be sure that hundreds of the most serious UFO enthusiasts from across the globe will be talking about it next April in Eureka Springs.