Book Reviews Perceptions Magazine, September 2025
The Orb Incident:
A True Account by E. B. David
By Reinhard Denke (Author)
Fortridge Publishing
Los Angeles, CA
2025, 178 pages, Paperback, US $16.95
ISBN: 979-8-9995430-0-4
Reviewed by Brent Raynes
This bizarre, high strange account was investigated and documented by the author in a very appropriate manner, following thorough and objective guidelines of questioning and carefully and comparatively reflecting upon the contents and potential implications of this case study with the thousands of other accumulated case studies collected worldwide over the years from many other sources.
The author of this book, Reinharde Denke, a noted screenwriter who has written for film and TV, a graduate of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, and the author of “It’s a Wonderful Time,” “The Inventors,” and part of “The Hollywood Time Travel Series,” admits that the UFO subject was something that didn’t interest him that much. He could take it or leave it. He had never written on the matter before.
Then one day in March 2021, at a social event Denke ended up at the same dinner table as this E. B. David, who he found out shared his love for TV and cinema. For the next three years the two kept in touch, mostly by phone now and then, discussing both classic and obscure films and television shows. “First and foremost, I considered E. B. to be a knowledgeable, dedicated fellow cinephile,” Denke noted. “Although I never thought of us as particularly close friends, he generously gifted me with a few rare, vintage, original movie one-sheets and lobby cards. I had them framed, and they are now prominently displayed on the walls of my home office.”
One day their conversation turned to the fictional portrayal of extraterrestrial lifeforms, during which E. B. turned noticeably and oddly silent for “more than a brief moment.” Then when he rejoined the conversation, in a low, halting mumble, E. B. mentioned that he had personally encountered a UFO back in June of 1982. As Denke listened and drew E. B. out further in conversation about this incident, he became interested in how this peculiar experience had seemingly impacted E. B.’s life, He learned how there was even evidence in the form of medical records and MRI images that supported his claims that something anomalous had occurred to him.
“I’ve scrutinized every aspect of E. B. David’s story,” Denke wrote, “and if I didn’t feel incredibly confident that it’s an authentic account of an actual encounter, you wouldn’t be reading these words.” He sees this man as someone who is quite grounded, admits how from the beginning of hearing his story “my mind was totally blown,” at which point he became determined to conduct an extensive interview of him.
He didn’t in any way come across as someone who had slipped down the rabbit hole of fantasy. In fact, he not only was someone who had never gotten hooked on Star Trek or Star Wars, but he had also never even watched a single episode of The X-Files.
E. B. admits that for 42 years he had kept most of this story to himself. “People might claim the orb was just advanced military technology,” he stated. “Let’s pretend that’s true. It still doesn’t explain the being that was at the controls. It wasn’t human. It was something…else.”
Bigfoot Sightings:
True Tales from Across America
By Jim Willis and Michael A. Kozlowski
Visible Ink Presws
43311 Joy Road, 414
Canton, MI 48187-2075
2026, 320 pages, 6” x 9” Trade Paperback, US $22.95
120 Photos and Illustrations
ISBN-13: 978-1-57859-869-4
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-57859-881-6
eBook ISBN: 978-1-57859-882-3
Reviewed by Brent Raynes
This is a comprehensive compilation of material on the so-called Bigfoot, Sasquatch, or the Yeti, known by many other names as an elusive, legendary, often very tall bipedal primate looking hair covered creature reported by numerous eyewitnesses the world over.
Author Jim Willis, an ordained minister with a master’s degree in theology from Andover Newton Theological School, had written more than twenty books on history, the apocalypse, and the unexplained. I had reviewed his book Supernatural Gods: Powerful Energies, Parallel Universes, and the Science of Supernatural Paradoxes, in the August 2017 issue of Alternate Perceptions, and in the following September edition I presented an audio interview I had done with him. He was very knowledgeable and articulate on a wide variety of subjects. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2024 while working on this book, so I won’t be able to do a follow-up interview with him this time around. His co-author, a fellow prolific writer and the author of American Ghost Stories, himself a member of the Horror Writer’s Association, also weighed in on this fascinating and thought-provoking controversy. Both authors drilled deep down into the physical evidence (i.e., footprints, hair samples, alleged photos and videos of the creature, the eyewitness testimonies, the giants of folklore and human evolution going back to Neanderthals, Denisovans, and the rather esoteric speculative stories of shapeshifters and of ET/UFO origins.
Whether an old-timer to the field of cryptozoology, as it’s popularly referred to, or a newbie, you’ll find a vast encyclopedic range of information here, both familiar and unfamiliar. It’s a very handy reference book on this subject. I had absolutely no idea that Vladimir Putin had alleged how he had personally seen three Yetis. In years past, I’ve joined in the field in different states from Maine to Florida, a number of Bigfoot hunters, and interviewed my fair share of witnesses, but I’ll depend on people like Loren Coleman of Maine’s International Cryptozoology Museum to keep up with the full spectrum of historical, folkloric, testimonial, physical trace and scientific studies and analysis on all of the evidence, including footprints, hair samples, and alleged nonhuman primate DNA reportedly found in the Appalachian highlands of Kentucky. .
