Flying Saucer to the Center of Your Mind: Selected Writings of John A. Keel (33 page)

A month later, Derenberger and his family were invited to Cocoa Beach at Cape Kennedy, where NASA’s immense manned-space rocket center is located.

“I was interviewed every night for a week,” Derenberger said later.

Those men – some of them were supposed to be big shots at NASA – wanted to know every detail. They grilled me about my whole life history. At the end of the week, they told me that I hadn’t said anything new. They’d heard it all before.

“We know more about this than you do,” they said. Then they showed me a big star-map and they pointed out a star on it. “This is where that flying saucer came from,” they said. I don’t know anything about astronomy, so I don’t have any idea which star they were pointing at.

Derenberger came back from Cape Kennedy with Pictures, letters, and other proof that his visit had been real.

Is it possible that NASA might, indeed, know more about flying saucers than even the U.S. Air Force? It is not only possible, but is highly probable. Unidentified flying objects have frequently appeared over our rocket launching sites, where they have been tracked on radar and charted with theodolites. All of our astronauts have reported unidentifiable objects in outer space, and have taken many pictures of them (although it is difficult to wrest copies of these photos from NASA).

During the last American flight in Nov. 1966, James Lovell and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin saw four peculiar things near their orbit. “We saw 4 objects lined up in a row,” Lovell admitted, “and they weren’t stars I Know.”

Lovell should be something of an expert on UFOs. He was orbiting with Frank Bormann aboard GT-7 on Dec. 4, 1965, when a gigantic spherical object slowly crossed in front of them.

“I have a bogey at 10 o’clock high,” Bormann radioed to ground control calmly.

“Are you sure it isn’t the booster rocket?” the technicians on the ground radioed back.

“We know where the booster is,” Bormann said flatly. “This is an actual sighting.”

Neither man would make any further comment on that “actual sighting” once they were back on terra firma. Like the Air force, NASA has adopted a policy of secrecy when it comes to flying saucers. Recently, Mr. Robert Roentgen, the Washington correspondent for a West German television network, prepared a special documentary film on American UFO sightings. He called NASA’s Public Relations office to ask if he could obtain an official statement. He was received with interest, and a public relations officer assured him that the head of NASA, Mr. James W. Webb, would personally film the statement for him. He was asked to call back the next day to set up a definite shooting date. When Mr. Roentgen called back, this same man announced coldly that he could only say: “The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has no interest in unidentified flying objects, nor is it in any way involved in their investigation.” The German correspondent was dumbfounded, and asked for further explanation.

“I’m sorry,” the PR man muttered. “All I can do is read this statement for you again.”

Somebody – a very mysterious somebody – beat both the U.S. and Soviet Union into space. Unidentified orbiting objects were first detected in 1952, following an impossible east-to-west course (manmade satellites travel from west to east to take advantage of the earth’s rotation). At various times in the last 16 years, as many as four of these unknown satellites have been tracked by astronomers and radar stations at one time. There are three of them up there at the moment, circling the globe every 164 minutes. Their exact size is “classified.”

A month after the Russians sent the dog Laika into orbit in Nov. 1957, astronomers in Venezuela photographed not only Sputnik II, but also another unexplained object that was closely following it.

On several occasions, UFOs have suddenly appeared from nowhere and flown alongside unmanned space capsules and rocket probes. One such object doggedly pursued a Polaris rocket on Jan. 10, 1961, and the radar station at Cape Kennedy mistakenly locked in on it. On April 8, 1964, four unidentified objects zeroed in on an unmanned Gemini capsule, and stayed with it for one complete orbit around the earth.

America’s first astronaut, Col. John Glenn, has been quoted by columnist Leonard Lyons as saying that he believed “certain reports of flying saucers are legitimate.” Glenn gave all the UFO buffs a thrill when he radioed descriptions of “fireflies in space” as he made his historical flight on Feb. 20, 1962. He said there were thousands of these greenish-yellow things swirling across the sky. He watched them approach his capsule, noting that he was certain they were not emanating from the capsule itself. “As far as I know,” Glenn said, “the true identity of these particles is still a mystery.”

The startling thing is that this very same phenomenon had been reported a decade earlier by the controversial contactee, George Adamski. Adamski claimed that he had been taken for a ride into space by a flying saucer. In a book published in 1955, he described passing through “a belt of billions of multi-colored fireflies.”

Astronauts Scott Carpenter and Gordon Cooper also told of seeing these belts of glittering objects. Bormann and Lovell said that the belt appeared in front of them, moving at right angles to their path. NASA’s official explanation for the phenomenon is that the “fireflies” are caused by particles of ice coming from the life-support systems of the space capsules themselves. But if you study the many excellent photos taken of manned capsules in orbit during the rendezvous tests, you will not find any sign of ice of any kind.

Soviet cosmonauts have reportedly had more than their share of problems with mysterious objects in outer space. A three-man space capsule orbited in Oct. 1963, and was buffeted and tossed around like a ping-pong ball when a group of large circular objects surrounded it. The objects were said to have followed the Russian craft halfway around the world, and nearly caused the flight to end in disaster.

In March 1965, the Soviet Union proudly announced that cosmonauts Pavel I. Belyayev and Alexei A. Leonov were in orbit for “a prolonged space flight.” But a few hours later, a “satellite” appeared near their capsule, according to the Russian news agency
Tass,
and after only 18 orbits, they came hurtling out of the sky, engulfed in a ball of flame. They crashed into a snow bank 873 miles north of their planned target area, and nearly froze to death before rescuers found them.

Col. Vladimir Komarov died of a sudden heart attack while in orbit on April 24, 1967. Monitoring stations all over the world were tuned in to the medical apparatus attached to his body, and heard his heart stop. What could give a healthy and thoroughly examined and tested space pilot a heart attack in the stillness of the outer limits? We’ll never know… The official Soviet explanation for his death was that he was killed when his space vehicle crashed.

Being a space pioneer is a hazardous business. Nine American astronauts have been killed suddenly in the past three years. Three died in a fire aboard an Apollo capsule, while the others were killed in plane and automobile crashes. Russia’s first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, was also recently killed in a plane tragedy. Both John Glenn and Gagarin “slipped in the bathtub” after their historic flights and suffered damage to the inner ear, which kept them grounded and affected their sense of balance. It is a rather remarkable coincidence that both men should have the same kind of freak accident and sustain identical injuries.

The late Frank Edwards, a well-known writer and newscaster, claimed that “one of our early astronauts” had such a hair-raising encounter with a UFO in outer space that he went into emotional shock and was never sent up again.

Astronauts James McDivitt and the late Edward White reported seeing “a mysterious object in space” as they orbited over china. Millions heard them describe it live on radio and TV. It was “a glowing, egg-shaped thing with arms or projections sticking out of it,” they reported. They also saw another UFO over Hawaii on that same flight in June 1965. Later McDivitt asserted, “I don’t know what it was and, so far, no one else does, either.”

Two pilots of the X-15 rocket plane also had close brushes with unidentified flying objects in the early 1960s. The late Joe Walker (who was killed in a freak air collision that destroyed the prototype of the A-11 supersonic bomber) saw a formation of cylindrical objects at an altitude of 246,700 feet in the spring of 1962. His onboard cameras photographed the objects. These movies were later shown at a single press conference, and then never heard of again.

A few months later, on July 17, 1962, Major Robert White was flying the X-15 at 314,750 feet when a gray-white object appeared and paced alongside his plane.
He was doing 3,832 miles per hour at the time.
The thing
moved ahead of him
and finally glided out of sight over his canopy. “There are things out there!” he shouted excitedly into his radio. “There absolutely are!”

Both the U.S. and soviet space efforts have been plagued by a bizarre sequence of coincidences and accidents that appear to be tantamount to sabotage. This is ridiculous, of course, unless we are trying to sabotage
each other.
Actually, there is a surprising amount of cooperation and exchange of information between the two nations on matters dealing with space.

Nevertheless, both American and soviet rockets have an eerie habit of disappearing soon after launch. Since these rockets are carefully tracked both visually and by radar from the moment they leave their pads, the disappearances are all the more baffling. They do not explode. They do not crash. They simply vanish.

For example, a soviet “Molniya” communications satellite was put into orbit early in 1967, and was meant to stay aloft for years. It disappeared without a trace. Other Soviet Satellites in fixed circuits around the Earth have suddenly and mysteriously de-orbited and crashed aimlessly to the Earth. A number of American rockets have disappeared completely, seconds after being launched.

Another peculiar problem is the malfunction of communications equipment. This may be the most serious problem of all. Between 1962-64, four different U.S. satellites mysteriously stopped transmitting signals back to earth. Then, months later, they just as mysteriously resumed transmissions. In 1967, a satellite that had been silent for almost five years suddenly began broadcasting again.

What makes this so baffling is the fact that all satellites and space capsules carry multiple transmitters and backup systems. If one fails, the other cuts in automatically. This equipment has been developed to a fine degree and should be almost foolproof. But it isn’t. Ufologists are concerned over these incidents, because it is known that the flying saucers can somehow interfere with electrical apparatus at will. This is called the “EM (Electromagnetic) Effect” and has been reported hundreds of times. Cars have stalled, and radios and TV sets have gone dead, when UFOs were in the vicinity. In a number of well-documented cases, police radios have suddenly emitted strange sounds and voices as weird objects loomed overhead. The voices are usually described as “rapid-fire grunting” – guttural sounds somewhat like a combination of Spanish and German. No one has ever been able to identify the language, although thousands of persons, including ham radio operators, have picked up these voices.

Astronaut Gordon Cooper has also heard these weird voice transmissions. During his fourth pass over Hawaii on May 15, 1963, Cooper’s signals to ground control were sharply interrupted by an “unintelligible foreign language.” NASA technicians were puzzled. Who could have deliberately cut in on the VHF (Very High Frequency) channel reserved for space flights? Tapes of the broadcast stymied language experts. The source of the strange “grunting” was never determined.

On the same flight, Gordon Cooper reported that a glowing greenish disk with a red tail was closing in on his spacecraft. He was passing over Australia at the time, and personnel at the Muchea Tracking Station scurried outside to take a look. Over 200 persons clearly saw the object, which was apparently much bigger than Cooper’s little space capsule. His description of it was broadcast worldwide on radio and television but, when he returned to the ground, he refused to discuss it.

“As far as I am concerned,” Cooper said later, “there have been too many unexplained examples of UFO sightings around this Earth for us to rule out the possibility that some form of life exists out there, beyond our own world.”

In June 1966, a whole chain of strange events surrounded the successful attempt to rendezvous a manned capsule and a target vehicle in space. Originally, astronauts Thomas P. Stafford and Eugene A. Cernan were supposed to be launched immediately after the ATDA target vehicle was sent aloft. But their liftoff was suddenly postponed. NASA hastily explained that there was some “interference” with the radio relays to and from the ground. NBC’s Huntley and Brinkley were at the Cape doing a live broadcast of the space launches. That afternoon, June 1
^st
, they set astonishing precedent and entered into a discussion of flying saucers – the only time this was ever done on a rocket launch program. They read a carefully prepared statement from the U.S. Air Force that admitted that UFOs had been seen by astronauts, but that “flying saucers were reported more frequently in other parts of the world, such as South America, than in the United States.” This eight-minute discussion really came out of left field. It seemed to indicate that everyone at the Cape knew there was “something up there” besides the ATDA vehicle.

That night, at about 10:30 p.m., a news flash was aired by all of the radio and TV networks declaring, “The Defense Department has announced that three UFOs are in orbit with the target vehicle.”

These UFOs had been picked up by the radar net tracking the ATDA craft. The next day, there were varying reports of from 4 to 12 unidentified objects in orbit with the vehicle. The Air Force lamely explained that these objects were probably part of the plastic shroud that covered the rendezvous device at launch.

Stafford and Cernan were kept on the ground for two days until those problems of “interference” were resolved. When they were finally launched on June 3
^rd
, they found that the plastic covering of the ATDA vehicle had failed to jettison and was still in place. In any case, the plastic would
not
have given a radar return. There was no further comment from NASA, the Air Force, or the Defense Department about those UFOs.