Flying Saucer to the Center of Your Mind: Selected Writings of John A. Keel (28 page)

In 1973, there was some very unusual activity on the sun, accompanied by some strange disturbances of the Earth’s magnetic field. Simultaneously, a great worldwide wave of UFO sightings occurred, along with a sharp increase in psychic phenomena and the appearances of awesome, hairy, red-eyed monsters (the latter were often accompanied by strange lights in the sky). Apparently all these things are interrelated, and share a common cause. That cause, to greatly simplify, may be a magnetic influence upon the witnesses in the “window” areas!

Modern technology has now given us the tools to “see” beyond the normal, and some of these tools were grossly neglected by ufologists for years. For example, back in the mid-1950s, an engineer in California, Trevor James constable, revealed that he was experimenting with infrared photography. He hauled his equipment to the desert and photographed stretches of empty sky. Some of these photographs revealed curious blobs and objects that had not been visible to the naked eye. Instead of welcoming this discovery, UFO research organizations attacked Constable. Later, qualified scientists and engineers quietly repeated his experiments, with the same intriguing results. And a national magazine sent a team of professional photographers to New York’s Croton Reservoir in 1966, where, using infrared film and filters, they, too, obtained photographs of invisible objects.

Over the years, astonished amateur cameramen in many parts of the world have taken UFO pictures unexpectedly. Usually they were just photographing some landmark or pastoral scene, but when the pictures were developed, objects appeared that they didn’t see at the time. One of the most publicized pictures of this type was taken by a fireman in England, in May 1963. James Templeton had photographed his little girl in a park near an atomic energy station. Later, when he went to the camera store to pick up the developed pictures, the clerk told him that “it was a shame the best picture had been spoiled by the man in the background wearing a white suit.”

“I thought the clerk was joking at first,” Mr. Templeton told me in a personal letter, “because there was not another soul in the vicinity when I took the photograph.” But there, on the negative, is the clear image of a tall, bloated figure in a white outfit, with a helmet on his head. This figure did not appear in any of the pictures he had taken immediately before and immediately after. He showed the puzzling photograph to the local police, who then forwarded copies to Police HQ in Penrith, England, where it was studied by experts. Film company officials said it was impossible for any kind of exposure to have been made on the film before it had been sold to Templeton. Supt. Tom Oldcorn, head of the Carleton CID, made the understatement of the year when he said, “My photography men have had a look at the print and film, and the feeling is that someone else had gotten into the picture.”

What? Someone else? An “Invo,” perhaps, wearing some kind of breathing apparatus?

In 1964, and again in 1966, Yellowstone National Park was haunted by mysterious humming sounds. Tourists taking photographs of Old Faithful found large circular objects in their developed prints, which had not been visible when the pictures were taken.

The manifestations of the UFO phenomenon are filled with baffling contradictions. Amateur photographers have frequently been puzzled when their UFO pictures turned out to be very different from their visual impression when they snapped the shutter. Distinct cube-like objects hovering close to the ground have come out as very indistinct diaphanous blobs in the darkroom. In a great many cases, objects clearly seen by entire groups of witnesses have failed to appear on film at all!

“I can’t understand it! We should have gotten something,” Patrolman Paul Carter of Colby, Kansas, complained in August 1972. He had tried to photograph a brilliantly illuminated saucer-shaped object that was hovering about 150 feet above a trailer home near Gem, KS. It was making beeping sounds like Morse code transmission, and a dog in the area had its head to the ground, trying to cover its ears. Carter attempted to photograph it with an Instamatic camera. Another witness used a Polaroid and did get a smear-like image that “could be anything.”

Some cameras fail to function altogether when a UFO is present, then work perfectly after the object has left. Sites where UFOs have landed often prove to be unphotographable for days afterwards. The film just comes out completely blank!

When a team of professional television cameramen visited West Virginia in 1967, they saw a number of UFOs but were plagued by sudden equipment malfunctions. They did manage to take a few feet of movie film, however, but when they got it back to New York, the footage was “accidentally ruined” in a professional developing lab.

Good, sharply defined UFO photographs are so rare that most investigators are very suspicious when a witness produces a distinct picture. Even so, the photographic evidence accumulated over the past 25 years indicates that the stoic mechanical eye of the camera is able to see and register things that are invisible to limited human vision.

It is now a well-established fact that some UFOs radiate powerful rays in the ultraviolet and infrared range. A logical starting point for laboratory experimentation would be a relatively inexpensive series of tests, photographing various metals and plastics bathed in these rays in an attempt to duplicate the effects produced by amateur photographers in the field. Some work has been conducted along these lines by government scientists, and especially by researchers in the Soviet Union. We now know, for example, that very low frequency (VLF) radiowaves produce the same medical effects on test animals as do UFOs.

Unfortunately, the few American scientists who have been attracted to the subject of flying saucers have been sidetracked by the quest for proof of extraterrestrial visitations. On the other hand, the controversial UFO contactees – who now number in the thousands in the United States alone – have been talking about invisible UFOs for years.

On April 24, 1964, a young farmer named Gary Wilcox allegedly encountered a grounded UFO in a field in broad daylight. Two small men in silvery suits were apparently collecting soil samples outside the objects, and they were startled that Wilcox could see them at all. According to Wilcox’s story, they told him they and their craft were normally invisible at distances of beyond 190 feet in the daytime. At night, however, their saucers glowed in the dark and were easier to spot. (Mr. Wilcox was later carefully investigated by Dr. Berthold Schwarz, a prominent psychiatrist, who found no trace of hoax in his story.)

It is true that there are many reports in which the witnesses claimed the objects did not fly off, but simply disappeared into thin air after lifting several feet off the ground. We might speculate about this “focusing effect.” Objects that slip out of focus to the human eye may remain at least partially in focus to a camera lens at greater distances.

Contactees who claim to have been taken aboard flying saucers – and there are many of them – often report that while the exterior of the object appeared solid and windowless, once they were inside, they found the walls were transparent and they had a clear view of the surrounding countryside. One man in Texas, Carroll Watts, allegedly had an encounter with a grounded UFO in 1967. A bodiless voice invited him aboard and, among other things, told him that UFOs were based all over this planet, could not be detected, and possessed instruments that could tell them how many people were in a given building, and their ages. In some respects, Mr. Watts’ story was reminiscent of the biblical account of Zachariah (
Zachariah,
5-6), the prophet who described seeing a “flying roll.” Zachariah was told by “a messenger” that these flying rolls were “the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole Earth,” and could even penetrate into homes to spy on the occupants.

Thanks to the diligent efforts of a handful of hard-working researchers, we now know that UFOs have been seen in our skies since the dawn of mankind. So they are not really “alien” but are, instead, a permanent feature of our environment. While the behavior of the UFO occupants is often mischievous, even backward (the late Ivan Sanderson, a zoologist, observed that they seemed to have the mentalities of 5-yr. old children), the overall source of the phenomenon seems to be extraordinarily complex. If UFOs are normally invisible, then they could be everywhere at once. But what purpose do they serve? Are they keeping close tabs on all of us, generation after generation, century after century? This seems to be the case.

To understand this phenomenon, we must discard all our preconceived ideas and come to grips with the hard facts of the empirical evidence. Our 20
^th
Century technology has now given us the tools necessary for fruitful investigation. Having now identified the problem, we can examine its many bewildering aspects and search for the cause… Two of our tools, radar and photography, have proved to be unreliable. Radar can be deceived electronically. And the phenomenon seems able to manipulate cameras and film in ways that seem almost magical. Perhaps this is why the USAF stopped taking radar reports and UFO photographs seriously several years ago.

Among our other tools is the infrared detector – a simple device that can be built by any teenager for a few dollars. They consist of a photoelectric cell mounted behind an infrared filter. The Army’s famous “sniper scope” is similar to this kind of device. NASA and the CIA have orbiting satellites containing highly sophisticated infrared detectors… Another device is the ultrasonic microphone, though this really cannot be used by amateurs. It is capable of picking up sounds radiated above the range of human hearing. The National Bureau of Standards has experimented with them. In 1965-66, the NBS mounted such instruments along the East coast, facing the notorious “Bermuda Triangle” where so many ships and planes have vanished mysteriously. They picked up some odd “whispering sounds” of unknown origin.

The original biblical word
sheol
meant “invisible world,” but was translated into “hell” and given an entirely new meaning. Obviously, the ancients had knowledge of the invisible phenomenon that surrounds us, and all of the early cults and magical societies based their lore upon that knowledge. But the concept of invisibility is hard for us to grasp, although there have been rumors of secret experiments with invisibility for years. And during the 1933 Chicago Exposition, a mysterious “Professor Tompkins” proudly demonstrated an invisibility device. He would have a member of the audience stand on a small platform while he manipulated switches and dials. The volunteer would then slowly fade away. No one seems to know what happened to the professor and his device after the fair closed.

A man named Carlos Allende has kept ufologists in a lather for years with his claim of knowing all about a WWII experiment where government scientists tried to make a Liberty ship invisible. His story has never been corroborated in any way. Allende’s story was taken very seriously by the Office of Naval Research in the 1950s, and a Navy subcontractor, the Varo Corporation of Garland, TX, went to the trouble and expense of reprinting a UFO book that had been annotated by Mr. Allende. At that time, Varo was involved in making infrared devices (such as sniper scopes). Coincidentally, Garland, TX was very much in the news in 1973, when a peculiar fungus appeared on a lawn there. It grew, even bled, and defied efforts to kill it. The press labeled it “The Blob.”

Invisible UFOs are just as possible as interplanetary UFOs. There is, in fact, far more evidence to support their invisibility than there is to support their extraterrestrial origin. But imagine the chaos that would result if the existence of these invisible legions could be verified? Even if the government confirmed it years ago, would they dare release such information to the public?

The answer to that question was contained in a frustrating statement issued by the RAF in April 1955, and widely published in the British press on April 24
^th
. An RAF spokesman told reporters that the official British UFO investigation, begun in 1950, was “completed” and that the mystery had been solved. However, he said, the solution could not be released to the public, because it involved certain top military secrets and would create even more controversy. Soon afterwards, RAF Air Marshall Lord Dowding gave a public lecture in which he stated that UFOs and their occupants apparently had the power of invisibility and were able to walk among us freely and unnoticed. There was very little official comment after that, until Sir Victor Goddard gave his speech in London in 1969.

Since 1949, the USAF has steadfastly adhered to the official line that flying saucers are not extraterrestrial spaceships and do not represent a “superior intelligence with an advanced technology.” The air force line has consistently been that UFOs are swamp gas, conventional craft, hoaxes, or illusions. Obviously, the RAF and USAF had independently put everything together and come up with an answer that they knew would be unacceptable to the public, and, particularly, the hardcore flying saucer enthusiasts. That answer could be more unbelievable, and more frightening, than the UFO mystery itself.

CHAPTER 15

UFOS AND THE MYSTERIOUS WAVE OF WORLDWIDE KIDNAPPINGS –
SAGA
MAGAZINE, DEC. 1970

Every time there is a flying saucer “flap,” people by the hundreds – particularly youngsters – literally vanish from the face of the earth. From remote northern Eskimo villages to population-packed Japanese cities, the reports flood in of their sudden disappearances. And, just as strangely, some of them
re-
appear weeks and months later, thousands of miles from home –
not knowing their own names or where they’ve been!

Early in Dec. 1969, children began to disappear in the city of Vila Velha, Brazil, and what started as a minor mystery soon exploded into a frightening kidnapping epidemic. Within a few weeks, scores of youngsters, all between the ages of 9 and 15, and all from very poor families (which eliminated ransom as a motive) vanished without a trace. Police in the state of Espirito Santo began a massive search for a sinister kidnapping ring. But they had no leads. The disappearances seemed random, were not ordinary “runaways,” and none of the children knew each other or went to the same school.