エイモス・ミラー事件の資料メモ

※2012年5月14日追記
UFO研究家・高梨純一さんの1969年の研究誌に載っていたエイモス・ミラー事件についての情報をTogetterに追記しました。http://togetter.com/li/294387

※2012年5月8日追記
machtさんが「New Zealand scrapbook」の記事を翻訳してくださいました。日本語の内容をお知りになりたい方はmachtさんの記事「エイモス・ミラーについてのテキスト」をご覧ください。

※2012年5月1日追記
23行目のorをofに訂正し、抜けていた最後の2段落の文章を追加。

本城です。

以前から「エイモス・ミラー事件」という興味深い事件を追っているのですが、その資料を整理する場が必要になったので暫定的に新しく記事を書きました。

今回、新たに入手した資料は「New Zealand scrapbook」(April 1968-September 1968, p165)です。これはカナダの『Midnight』(ミッドナイト)というタブロイド紙がエイモス・ミラー事件を報じ、その記事が地元のニュージーランドで紹介されたときのものです。
※画像はこちら。右上にカーソルを合わせるとフルサイズボタンが表示されます。

ただし保存状態が悪かったらしく、一部、文字がかすれて読み取りづらくなっています。それでも何とか苦労しつつ、読み取ってみたものが以下のテキストです。もし、ここは違う言葉ではないか、などご意見ありましたらご指摘ください。
※このエントリーは暫定的なものです。今後随時、追記や編集を行っていく可能性があります。

Spacecraft rays kill kiwi cockie
FLYING saucers shooting mysterious death-dealing rays have killed a New Zealand sheep farmer. And a secretive Government has hushed the whole business.
ONE minute Amos Miller, 39, was standing there. Next moment he was on the ground, his head burnt by a ray from a hovering spaceship. Science fiction?
Better than that. It’s the Canadian brand of way-out journalism.
Midnight magazine has come up with a sensational story about this flying saucer murder.
In its lead story Midnight says the incident happened in New Zealand early February this year.
But Midnight doesn’t say where the killing was.
It does say that after the autopsy “It was found beyond a doubt that Amos Miller had been murdered by some unknown being or beings inhabiting a strange flying vehicle…”
With the public welfare obviously driving it onward Midnight says “this is the second case of a death due to a UFO, that Midnight has reported, under the conviction that the public does want to know.”
With its graphic and grisly photographs of a dead Amos Miller. Midnight seeks to expose the authorities for daring to hide the facts about the deadly UFO incident.
But Midnight isn’t too thorough or careful about facts.
The doctor who headed the “team of top medical men in Auckland who performed the autopsy” isn’t listed in the New Zealand medical register.
Midnight says he is Dr John Whitty.
Whitty is quoted: “It’s the most unusual thing I’ve even seen. Aside from the missing skin of the skull there are no marks on the body.”
Sunday News inquiries failed to reveal that an Amos Miller died in early February, or that any autopsy was performed on such a person’s body.
Mr Henk Hinfellar president of New Zealand’s UFO investigation organization says Midnight recently printed a similar article.
The similarity between both articles was obvious — the lack of facts, locations, names, evidence.
“I think this magazine just picks way-out places to locate those sensational stories. Come Canadians haven’t heard of New Zealand. So it makes a good place to locate a make believe story.”
Telephone calls to Midnight’s Chicago and Montreal offices went unanswered.
When Sunday News called it was 5.30pm North American time. Maybe they simply close early for a newspaper office—even a paper called Midnight.
Then again, perhaps the paper was astray on only some of its facts.
After all — how many Kiwis are called Amos? Anyway, it made a good story.