Oh, That Myron
In the history of American magazines, few publishers exceed the late Myron Fass for sheer industriousness, cynicism, and bald-faced deception. A horror- comics artist in the early 1950s, Fass founded New York-based Countrywide Publications in 1956. His little magazine empire peaked in the 1960s and ’70s with one-offs designed to exploit Jaws, KISS, Swine flu, and other transitory things; and with regular publication of titles built around martial arts, tabloid shock news, black-and-white horror comics, naked women, and crafts for kids.
The January 1978 issue of Countrywide’s Official UFO magazine featured a piece called “The Night an American Town Died of Fright,” which claimed that Chester, Illinois, had been “destructed” by warlike UFOs on August 2, 1977.
The article began, “[T]he news desk has been flooded with reports” that “the entire village of Chester was attacked and burned by a fleet of alien INVADERS.” The piece is dominated by an on-the-spot, first-person account from the Chester sheriff, Luke Grisholm. At about 8 p.m. he saw three “very large” glowing discs in the sky above Main Street. As the objects showed a variety of colors, the engine of Grisholm’s cruiser died. A few moments later, the discs veered away from the business district and headed toward Chester’s residential area. The car’s engine revived, and then Grisholm’s radio crackled, “telling me that there was a house on fire by the Route 2 cutoff.” The sheriff quickly drove toward the flames he saw in the distance. The discs “were dropping down and each time they did there was a plume of fire going into the sky.” Many houses were ablaze.
Panicked residents poured into the streets; others crashed their cars. The aliens even took control of the local television station. The sheriff’s office made calls for help to nearby towns and even the governor’s office, but got no response. Chester was on its own.
Grisholm wrote, “The papers the next day reported that an Air Force jet had crashed in our town, well, that was simply a lie, we all saw the saucers and what they did to the houses in our town. . . . Our best hope is to get this story out to the public, people have to know that these objects are dangerous, people have to be told.” Because nothing concerning Chester had come across the news wires, and because Chester never had a sheriff, a few reporters who smelled an amusing feature story ambled out that way. When the reporters arrived, they found Chester to be perfectly fine. Quiet, modest, and fine.
On a foggy, chilly December day in 1977, just weeks after the publication of Official UFO, KMOV-TV (St. Louis) reporter Al Wiman interviewed residents of Chester. Wiman said he had received a phone call from Bob Nessoff, a New York man who claimed to have worked as a special investigator in the magazine’s employ. Nessoff stood by his assertions, but at City Hall, Chester’s somewhat bemused mayor told Wiman, “Obviously, there has been not only no mass destruction in the town, but I can’t even find any minor destruction in the town.” Wiman thought that over, and then said that the story’s discrepancies suggest that no investigator ever visited Chester. The mayor answered, “What you say is correct.” In his on-camera report, Wiman quoted the Chester Police radio log from August 2. The department took two calls that night: a minor traffic accident and “a complaint about a drunk running around a local motel knocking on doors, disturbing guests.” Taking a cue from Wiman, other reporters found Myron Fass in New York and questioned him about the fabrication perpetrated by Official UFO. The wily publisher had a ready reply: “The aliens had returned, rebuilt the town, and given the townspeople selective amnesia.”