Hilary Agard Evans (6 March 1929 – 27 July 2011) was a British pictorial archivist, author, and researcher into UFOs and other paranormal phenomena.[1]
Evans was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, United Kingdom[2] and educated at St George's SchoolatHarpenden. After National Service in Palestine he went up to King's College, Cambridge, to read English, followed by a Master's at Birmingham University. He then spent some time as a private tutor before joining Mather & Crowther advertising agency as a copywriter in 1953.
In 1964 he and his wife Mary Evans (1936–2010) founded the Mary Evans Picture Library,[3] an archive of historical illustrations.[4] In 1981 he co-founded the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena.[5][6] Evans was an exponent of the Psychosocial Hypothesis of UFOs as culturally shaped visionary experiences.[7]
Evan's Harlots, Whores & Hookers: A History of Prostitution (1979), was criticized by historian Vern Bullough as an "anecdotal collection of incidents, some true, some not so true, with little analysis of the sources from which they came and even less understanding of the historical forces."[8]
Sceptical researcher Philip J. Klass described Evans one of the "best informed and more sensible of the pro-UFOlogists." Klass however, found it "regrettable" that Evans was the editor of the anthology UFOs, 1947–1987 published by the Fortean Times. According to Klass the book is unreliable and filled with pseudoscientific claims.[9]
Christopher Scott in the New Scientist criticized Evans for his lack of scientific understanding. Scott noted that Evans was heavily biased and credulous for accepting reports of paranormal phenomena at face value. Evans in Intrusions (1982) had presented a photograph of the medium Eusapia Palladino allegedly levitating a table "without trickery", but her hands or feet were not visible, nor two of the legs of the table. Scott concluded that Evans' description of the photograph was "sheer fantasy".[10]
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