Gray Barker

Gray Barker was an American writer best known for his books on UFOs and paranormal phenomena, particularly his influential They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers (1956), which popularized the idea of the “Men in Black” in UFO lore. Born in West Virginia in 1925, he graduated from Glenville State College and began writing about local folklore and UFO reports in the early 1950s before building a career publishing books and articles on extraterrestrial claims, including a zine titled The Saucerian. 

Although his work helped shape modern UFO mythology and inspired later fiction and media, Barker was privately skeptical of much of the subject matter he wrote about and was known to treat ufology as largely performative or financially motivated. He also participated in occasional hoaxes aimed at UFO enthusiasts and investigators. Barker, who was gay, was arrested at one point and forced to see a psychiatrist. He died in West Virginia in 1984.

A collection of his poems, Behold the Behemouth: The Collected Poems of Gray Barker (Apport Editions), appeared in 2026. Gabriel Mckee's biography, The Saucerian: UFOs, Men in Black, and the Unbelievable Life of Gray Barker (The MIT Press), was published in 2025.