Cedric Allingham's Flying Saucer from Mars, Lossiemouth, 1954

In 1954 the London publisher Frederick Muller brought out Flying Saucer from Mars. The name on the cover was Cedric Allingham, an amateur astronomer. Time called him "a British thriller writer." A year earlier George Adamski had described his own desert meeting with a spaceman in Flying Saucers Have Landed. Allingham's story would follow the same path, this time on the Scottish coast. Even the saucer looked much like Adamski's.

18 February 1954. Allingham was on holiday near Lossiemouth, on the Moray coast. The accounts disagree on the setting. A caravan holiday. A deserted beach. A moor. He was watching for rare birds.

At about 12:35 pm he saw a metallic object at about 5,000 ft, heading north and climbing. He took three photographs. A second sighting came at about 3:05 pm. That photo failed.

At about 3:45 pm the craft came down. In Time's words, "a 50-ft. saucer skimmed right past his camera to land beside him." Time described the photographed craft: "circular portholes, three-ball landing gear and a shiny dome with a rod sticking up from it."

Then Allingham met its pilot. About six feet tall. Dark hair, skin like a deep tan, a close-fitting suit from neck to feet, a small breathing device at the nose. They talked through hand signs, drawings, a few words and telepathy. Shown a diagram of the solar system, the visitor pointed to Mars and rejected Venus. Allingham gave him his fountain pen. At about 4:25 pm the craft took off toward the north. A local fisherman, James Duncan, said he had watched from a hill about 500 yards away. He signed a statement.

Members of the British Interplanetary Society told Time the story showed either "a highly susceptible imagination" or a hoax. On 3 January 1955 Allingham gave his only public talk, to a flying saucer club in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Patrick Moore was in the audience. That April a review signed "P.M." in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association called the book "very cleverly written."

Then Allingham was gone. The publisher said he was having lung treatment in Switzerland, then that he had died there. Duncan was never traced either. In 1969 the science writer Robert Chapman called the book "probably the biggest UFO leg-pull ever perpetrated in Britain."

July 1986. Christopher Allan and Steuart Campbell published "Flying Saucer from Moore's?" in Magonia. The publisher had given them an address for Peter Davies in Oxted, Surrey, nine miles from Moore's home in East Grinstead. Davies admitted he had revised someone else's manuscript "to conceal the style." He had posed in disguise for the frontispiece and given the Tunbridge Wells talk. He would not name the author.

The frontispiece showed "Allingham" beside a telescope. Allan and Campbell showed it was Moore's own reflector, in his own garden, with the same trees, shrubs, seat and shed. They found 24 passages and phrases shared with Moore's books, down to the unusual word "Cro-Magnard." Stylometric tests did not clearly point to Moore, which fits Davies reworking the text.

Moore denied it at once and threatened to sue anyone who repeated the claim. He never went to court. He never confirmed it before his death in 2012. Critics said that in one saucer photo "the supporting wire could be seen." Magonia summed it up: "he will neither admit nor deny responsibility, even though it is now an open secret."