Clark, Jerome

Introduction

Jerome Clark is a leading UFO historian and reference author best known for compiling large-scale UFO encyclopedias. He is essential to UAPedia as a “map-maker” of the field: people, cases, concepts, and the shifting boundaries between folklore, misidentification, and unresolved reports.

Background

Clark’s work reflects deep engagement with the historical record of UFO reports and the organizations and personalities that shaped modern ufology.

Ufology career

His career is largely editorial and historiographic: organizing a chaotic literature into structured reference tools. This makes him especially valuable for wiki-style knowledge projects.

Early work (Year–Year)

Early influence comes through writing and compiling, building credibility as someone who could synthesize many decades of material into usable entries.

Prominence (Year–Year)

Prominence grew because reference works become infrastructure: researchers cite them, newcomers learn from them, and debates reuse the same baseline definitions.

Later work (Year–Year)

Later editions and updated reference publishing reflect the ongoing churn of new claims, new archival releases, and new interpretive battles.

Major contributions

Clark’s major contribution is building “lookup capability” for ufology: a way to quickly orient to a case, a person, or a concept without reading hundreds of scattered sources.

Notable cases

He is connected to many cases through documentation rather than being a primary investigator on one signature incident.

Views and hypotheses

Clark’s writing typically treats ufology as a mixed domain: some reports are explainable, some become folklore, some remain unresolved, and all should be tracked carefully.

Criticism and controversies (if notable)

Reference authors can be criticized for selection choices and framing, but Clark’s enduring strength is broad coverage and utility as a field guide.

Media and influence

His influence is pervasive in books, documentaries, and online research because reference structures quietly shape what people consider “the canon.”

Selected works

The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial; The UFO Encyclopedia (various editions).

Legacy

Clark’s legacy is foundational: he helped make ufology navigable, which is exactly the kind of role a site like UAPedia can build upon.