by Colin Wilson
Keel details such anomalies for several chapters before returning to modern times, and demonstrating that all these sightings fit the same pattern of what he calls ‘flexible phantoms of the skies’.
After studying thousands of reports of sightings, Keel concluded that they tended to occur repeatedly in certain areas; he labelled these ‘window areas’. He calculated that every state in the US has from two to ten window areas, where UFOs appear repeatedly for year after year. A huge number lie along the arc of a circle drawn from northwest Canada, down through the central states of America, and back to northwest Canada. Another is centred in the Gulf of Mexico and covers much of Mexico, Texas and the Southwest. And a majority of these are over areas of magnetic deviation—that is, areas in which the Earth’s normal magnetism is distorted. The famous disappearance of five planes on 5 December 1945—one of the great mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle—took place off the coast of Florida in one of Keel’s window areas. (The flight leader reported over the radio that ‘his instruments were going crazy’.)
Keel also noticed a ‘January cycle’ of UFO sightings which led him to predict correctly that there would be a ‘flap’ in January 1969.
As to the significance of such absurd sightings as those of 1896–97, or the Scandinavian wave of giant aircraft of the 1930s, he reaches the conclusion to which the book owes its title. He is not inclined to accept the explanation that these were some kind of bizarre practical joke; the alternative seems to be that their purpose is associated with some kind of information gathering, and that they wish to deceive us into assuming that they are simply a piece of advanced human technology. Flying saucers, he suggests, may be a part of something else—of Operation Trojan Horse. In religious ages, the phenomenon has set out to convince us that it was of religious origin. When man came of age technologically in the nineteenth century, they began disguising it as balloons and aircraft. During World War Two, they could masquerade as ‘foo fighters’, which were assumed by both sides to be enemy secret weapons.
Yet this interesting theory hardly seems to make sense if, as Keel and Vallee believe, the ‘ufonauts’ have been visiting Earth for thousands of years—they should surely have finished their surveying activities by now?
In a chapter called ‘The Cosmic Jokers’, Keel comes closer to a theory that has been suggested by many other writers on the subject, notably Brinsley Le Poer Trench—that there are two types of UFO entity, the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’, and that the bad guys can be dangerous. He tells the story of a man who had been investigating a UFO flap near Ithaca, New York, and left his home to drive to a meeting, then, for some inexplicable reason, returned to the house and rearranged some books. Back in the car, he switched on the ignition—then lost his memory. But subsequent events show that he drove to a railway crossing just in time to meet an oncoming train, which demolished his car—although he escaped with only minor injuries.
Then, of course, there are the Men in Black—men who pose as military intelligence or air force officers, who call on witnesses of UFO activity, question them for hours, and warn them to keep silent. Since it seems to be one of the aims of UFOs to be seen—presumably to make as many people as possible aware of their presence—then we have to assume that the Men in Black belong to the ‘other side’, and are trying to prevent publicity about UFOs. As a theory, this hardly seems to make much sense—but, then, neither does anything else about UFOs.
What Keel does not explain is why either good guys or bad guys should want to devise absurd encounters—for example, of a woman who found herself paralysed in the middle of the night, and watched a football-sized object float through the window and lower a ramp, down which tiny figures descended. After apparently carrying out repairs to their craft, they climbed on board again and vanished through the window—after which her paralysis disappeared. Are such encounters intended—as Vallee suggests—to re-create folklore and myth about ‘little people’ in modern terms?
Yet, although Keel comes no closer than dozens of other ufologists to solving the problem of the purpose of the UFOs, his remarks on their technology have a ring of common sense.
In late November 1966, Keel had interviewed an eighteen-year-old girl named Connie Carpenter. Connie was the niece of Mary Hyre, the stringer (local correspondent) for Associated Press in Point Pleasant, Virginia. On the morning of Sunday 27 November 1966, Connie had been driving home from church when she had suddenly seen a giant. The figure was grey and shaped like a man, but far bigger, and it was staring at her with glowing red eyes. As she slowed down, a pair of ten-foot wings unfolded from its back, and it rose into the air, swooped towards her car, and zoomed past overhead. She drove home in a state close to hysteria.
It sounds as if she was suffering from hallucinations. But, in fact, her sighting was the first of more than a hundred. And many of the witnesses suffered the same effect as Connie Carpenter: severe conjunctivitis—her eyes reddened, watered and swelled until she could hardly see. Soon, half the nation’s press and television were in West Virginia working on stories about the creature who became known as Mothman.
At first, Keel did not connect the appearances of Mothman with UFOs, but a wave of UFO sightings over West Virginia—often accompanied by severe conjunctivitis—made it clear that there had to be some connection. A young couple who were making love naked in the back of a car were interrupted by a large ball of bluish fire that hovered close to them, and, the next morning, both were heavily sunburnt, and had red, swollen eyes.
Keel was soon convinced that UFOs are not high-tech craft from another planet, but ‘paraphysical’ entities, who are related to the ‘manifestations involved in religious miracles and spiritual seances’. Like Jacques Vallee, he specifically cites Fátima as an example. But Keel believes that the secret of the UFOs lies in the electromagnetic spectrum.
He points out that visible light is only a tiny part of the spectrum of energy. Below the red end of the spectrum there is infrared (heat) and microwaves and radio waves. Above the violet end there is ultraviolet light and X-rays and gamma rays and cosmic rays. Our human senses are sensitive only to a tiny proportion of this enormous range of energies.
Keel also points out that there have been thousands of radar sightings of UFOs that cannot be seen with the naked eye. That can only mean that UFOs must be a form of energy beyond the light spectrum.
He mentions that one of the most puzzling aspects of UFOs—particularly those that are seen as balls of light—is that they often change colour, usually from orange to red to violet, which leads him to suggest:
Let us assume that UFOs exist at frequencies beyond visible light but that they can adjust their frequency and descend the electromagnetic spectrum—just as you can turn the dial of your radio and move a variable condenser up and down the scale of radio frequencies. When a UFO’s frequency nears that of visible light, it would appear first as a purplish blob of violet. As it moves further down the scale, it would seem to change to blue, and then to cyan (bluish green).
I have therefore classified that section of the color spectrum as the UFO entry field. When the objects begin to move into our spatial and time coordinates, they gear down from higher frequencies, passing progressively from ultraviolet to violet to bluish green. When they stabilize within our dimensions, they radiate energy on all frequencies and become a glaring white.
In the white condition, the object can traverse distances visibly, but radical maneuvers of ascent or descent require it to alter its frequencies again, and this produces new color changes. In the majority of all landing reports, the objects were said to have turned orange (red and yellow) or red before descending. When they settle on the ground they ‘solidify’, and glow red again. Sometimes reportedly they turn a brilliant red and vanish. Other times they shift through all the colors of the spectrum, turn white, and fly off into the night sky until they look like just another star.
Since the color red is so closely associated with the landing and takeoff pr
ocesses, I term this end of the color spectrum the UFO departure field.
(Our Haunted Planet, 1971)
This would explain why Barney and Betty Hill—those early abductees—at first thought they saw a star, which then changed into a flying saucer, and why another famous abductee, the Brazilian Antonio Villas Boas, whose report of being seduced by a ‘space woman’ is generally accepted as reliable, first saw a ‘red star’ which turned into a saucer on a tripod, and later saw it turn red as it took off after his seduction.
The microwave end of the spectrum could explain the intolerable waves of heat often experienced—for example, by the unfortunate Brazilian Salvador de Santos, investigated by Jacques and Janine Vallee, who died with the flesh falling off his bones, as if cooked. Keel also cites the case of Eddie Webb, a trucker who was pursued by a white light on 3 October 1973 in southeastern Missouri, and who stuck his head out to look back; there was a bright flash, and he shouted, ‘Oh my God, I’m burned’. A lens had fallen out of his glasses and the frames had melted. The result was temporary blindness.
The sunburn and conjunctivitis of other witnesses, like Connie Carpenter, points to the ultraviolet end of the spectrum (although microwaves also affect the eyes and testes).
And what about this curious effect of stopping car engines and causing lights to fade? In a chapter of a later book, The Eighth Tower, Keel points out that, during the 1930s, Marconi—the radio pioneer—began experimenting with waves of very low frequency (VLF radio waves) to short waves (which are beyond the upper end of the radio spectrum—i.e., microwaves). And he was horrified to discover that his microwaves would kill animals in nearby fields. He switched to experimenting with VLF waves, and found that they would stop car engines by interfering with their electrical circuits. (Diesel engines, which depend on pressure-ignition, were unaffected.)
So if, as Keel believes, UFOs can change their energy vibrations and effects, from the stopping of car engines to inflammation of the eyes and testes, would all be explained.
In emphasising the narrow range of our physical senses, Keel is making an important point: that they are pathetically inadequate to grasp the reality that surrounds us. Physical experience gives us an illusory sense of ‘knowing’ the outside world. For example, when you bite into a peach, you feel that you know it about as thoroughly as it can be known: you can see it, taste it, smell it. But the range of your sense of taste and smell is as small as the range of your vision; a Martian might be able to see a wider range of colours, taste a wider range of flavours, smell a wider range of smells. Who has never felt that odd sense of frustration with the senses? They may seem adequate enough when you are hungry and eating a meal; but when we experience the beauty of a mountain or a lake, or even a sexually attractive person, we often feel like a colour-blind man in a picture gallery, or a deaf man at a symphony concert—what Dr. Johnson meant in Rasselas when he said, ‘There must be some sixth sense, or some faculty apart from sense, that must be satisfied before we can be happy’.
If Keel is correct, then the UFO occupants must see us as virtually blind and deaf. He speculates:
Somewhere in this tangled mass of electromagnetic frequencies there lies an omnipotent intelligence . . . This intelligence is able to manipulate energy. It can, quite literally, manipulate any kind of object into existence on our planet. For centuries the occultists and religionists have called this process transmutation or transmogrification. Thousands of books have been published on this process, many of them serving as secret texts for alchemists and sorcerers. The early occultists understood, at least partially, that energy was the key to the whole.
(Our Haunted Planet)
This is why the occultists attach so much importance to the human aura. Keel writes: ‘You are a chemical machine made up of electromagnetic energy. Your brain is actually an electrical computer connected to all parts of your body by a wiring system of nerves . . . Although you can’t see it, your body is surrounded by self-generated fields of radiation. The occultists have always called this radiation the aura’.
And what has this, he asks, to do with flying saucers? ‘Perhaps a great deal. Many contactees have been told that they were selected because of their aura. Occultists have long claimed that each person is surrounded by an aura which reveals his spiritual state. An evil person has a black aura. A saintly type has a golden radiation’. And he cites an Australian contactee who was told by two aliens in spacesuits that they had been able to contact him because of his aura. He goes on to suggest that perhaps only certain types of people can see UFOs.
In The Eighth Tower, Keel writes: ‘Another world of intelligent energy is intermingled with ours and is very aware of us, while we are only vaguely aware of it. Not only has it a clear view of future events in our dimension; it can manipulate past and present events to prepare the way for the more important future events’.
All of which raises a self-evident question. If there is such a superintelligence, why is it bothering with us? We can be no more important to it than—to use one of Keel’s images—the microbes swarming in a drop of water to the boy who is looking at them through a microscope.
But what if it is not true that we are microbes in a drop of water? Keel says that this superior intelligence can foresee the future. In fact, so can many human beings. ‘Precognition’ ought to be impossible, but it is not. On 13 December 1949, for example, Mrs. Eva Hellstrom fell asleep on a tourist bus as it left Heidelberg, and dreamt of a beautiful painting of a four-leafed clover in the shape of a cross, surrounded by spirals. Waking a few moments later, she made a sketch of the picture, and wondered if she might encounter it in Egypt, which was her destination. On her last day in Cairo, Mrs. Hellstrom was taken to the Coptic Museum, full of ancient relics of the early Christian churches in Egypt and Abyssinia, and there she saw her picture, corresponding in detail to her sketch. It was a stone slab, and the four-leafed clover was known as a ‘Coptic rose’. She had dreamt of the slab as it had been a thousand years earlier, when it was in full colour).[1] Hundreds of such examples could be cited, all leaving no doubt that human beings possess the power of foreseeing the future—but seldom use it. The same is true of many other powers—for example, the ‘travelling clairvoyance’ and levitation witnessed by John Keel in Tibet, or the simple ability to read someone’s mind. In fact, Keel himself possesses this ability. He writes in The Eighth Tower:
In my early teens, I found that I could sometimes sense what other people were thinking, and I assumed that everyone had this ability . . . Now and then I encounter someone whose mind is actually vulnerable to my own. I can not only sense what they are thinking. I can project my own thoughts into their mind and they accept these thoughts as their own. In short, I can control that person’s mind on a modest scale. There are people who have this power to a very developed degree. They can control others, even from a great distance. It is probable that some world leaders, especially the evil ones like Hitler, possessed and exercised this ability. One famous psychic claimed he could hand a railroad conductor a blank sheet of paper and the man would punch it thinking it was a ticket.
So it seems fairly certain that we all possess a range of powers that extend far beyond our usual limited spectrum. Then why do we not make use of them? Because we take it for granted that the narrow spectrum is ‘all there is’. We accept that our tunnel vision shows us ‘the reality’, when actually it shows us as little of reality as a mole sees, snuffling through its tunnel underground.
Then why do certain human beings seem slightly less blind than the rest? Some seem to be born with a wider vision—the so-called psychics, while some experience a kind of suffocation that drives them to struggle instinctively for a wider vision: poets, artists, philosophers. And some people experience a momentary glimpse of a wider reality which transforms their vision of the world.
Keel himself had such an experience when he first went to New York. He described it to me in a letter of 18 April 1984.
For many years now, I h
ave been quietly interviewing warlocks and trying to develop a book based on the actual experiences of natural witches and warlocks—people who are born with the ability to perceive and control the elementals. They seem to be several steps beyond mediums. Mediums are used by the phenomenon. Warlocks, on the other hand, are able to use these forces. Unfortunately, most of them seem to come to a tragic end—suicides, murders, bizarre deaths. But it is apparent that thousands of people in each generation suffer from this uneasy talent. I think that I had it when I was an adolescent but I diverted my attention by studying physics, chemistry, etc., and lost it by the time I was 18. At 18, I woke one night in a furnished room near Times Square and had what can only be described as an illuminating experience. For a few brief moments I suddenly understood everything and I was really one with the cosmos. The next morning I could remember very little of it but I’m sure it was all entered into my subconscious.
Before writing this section I telephoned Keel in New York—a difficult feat since, apart from the time-zone difference between New York and Cornwall, John is an insomniac who stays awake all night and sleeps all day, so that it is hard to find a good time to ring him. I succeeded by getting up at a quarter to five in the morning and catching him when he came home from dinner at midnight. Among other questions, I asked him about his mystical experience. He described how he had awakened in the middle of the night, and found his room suffused with a pink or orange glow, which led him to assume the house was on fire. He was about to leap out of bed, but, for some reason, changed his mind. Then followed the experience of thinking with amazing clarity, and seeming to know everything—the origin of the universe, the creation and purpose of human beings . . . He felt he ought to get up and write it all down, but instead went back to sleep. The next morning he could remember the experience, but not what he had ‘seen’.