Flying Saucer to the Center of Your Mind: Selected Writings of John A. Keel
Page 1
FLYING
SAUCER
TO THE
CENTER OF
YOUR MIND
Books by Andy Colvin
The Mothman’s Photographer: The Work of an Artist Touched by the Prophecies of the Infamous Mothman
The Mothman’s Photographer II: Meetings With Remarkable Witnesses Touched by Paranormal Phenomena, UFOs, and the Prophecies of West Virginia’s Infamous Mothman
The Mothman’s Photographer III: Meetings With Remarkable West Coast Witnesses Touched By The Anomalous Activities Of Interdimensional Entities, Archetypal Avatars, And The Eerie Yet Enlightening Phenomenon Known Infamously As “Mothman”
The Mothman Speaks: Candid Conversations Concerning Cosmic Conundrums - Cryptic Creatures, Chimeras, Contactees and the Cleverly Coded Coincidences and Correspondences of the Collective Unconscious
The Mothman Shrieks: Controversial Conversations Concerning Cosmic Conundrums - Cryptic Creatures, Chimeras, Contactees and the Cleverly Coded Coincidences and Correspondences of the Collective Unconscious
Flying Saucer to the Center of Your Mind: Selected Writings of John Keel
ISBN-13: 978-1492206606
ISBN-10: 1492206601
© 2013 Metadisc Books, All Rights Reserved
PUBLISHED BY: Metadisc Books and The Seattle Conceptual Art Museum
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON JOHN KEEL: WWW.JOHNKEEL.COM
FRONT COVER: JOHN KEEL AT THE MOTHMAN STATUE UNVEILING CEREMONY, PT. PLEASANT, WV, SEPT. 2003 (PHOTO BY ANDY COLVIN)
BACK COVER ILLUSTRATION: SELF-PORTRAIT IN PHOTO BOOTH BY JOHN KEEL, NEW YORK CITY, CIRCA 1966
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION BY TESSA B. DICK
EDITOR’S NOTE
FOREWORD: THE GOLDEN BOY BY GRAY BARKER
INTRODUCTION: FIRST AND LAST WORDS
CHAPTER I
What the CIA Is Not Telling Us About UFOs – Male magazine Project Beta: An Analysis of Reports of Unidentified Aerial Objects
What Are They?
North America 1966: The Great Wave
CHAPTER 2
Investigating UFOs: Probing a Phenomenon Wrapped in Mystery
CHAPTER 3
Keel’s Speech to the Congress of Scientific Ufologists – New York City MIB: 1967-68 – Saucer News, Spring/Summer 1969
CHAPTER 4
The UFO Silencers – SAGA magazine, May 1975
CHAPTER 5
“Contactee” Rustling – 1979 Lecture
Type 1: Trance Contactees
Type 2: Post-Hypnotic Contactees
Type 3: Hallucinatory Contactees
Type 3 Subgroup: Distortions of Reality
Type 4: Astral Projection Contactees
Type 5: Cosmic Illumination Contactee
Type 5 Subgroup: False Illumination
Type 6: The “Genuine” Contactee
Cattle Mutilation For Beginners – Anomaly #11, April 1974
CHAPTER 6
The Flying Saucer Evidence Everyone Ignores – SAGA magazine, June 1973
CHAPTER 7
The Mothman Monster – SAGA magazine, Oct. 1968
CHAPTER 8
Never Mind The Saucer! Did You See The Guys Who Were Driving It?
CHAPTER 9
West Virginia: A Plethora of Paranormal – 1994 Lecture The Infrared Tower – 1990 Lecture
CHAPTER 10
The UFO Name Game – Beyond Reality magazine, Jan. 1976
CHAPTER 11
The Subject of Saucers – Anomaly magazine #1, May 1969
CHAPTER 12
The Contactee Key – UFO Report, Aug. 1977
CHAPTER 13
Behind the FBI’s Undercover Flying Saucer Investigation
CHAPTER 14
Mystery of the Invisible Flying Saucers – SAGA magazine, Winter 1974
CHAPTER 15
UFOs and the Mysterious Wave of Worldwide Kidnappings
CHAPTER 16
Mysterious Gas Attacks – SAGA magazine, July 1968
CHAPTER 17
The Secret UFO-Astronaut War – Men magazine, Sept. 1968
CHAPTER 18
UFOs and Abominable Snowmen: A Noted Authority’s Weirdest Cases
CHAPTER 19
The Flying Saucer Crime Wave They Can’t Cover Up
CHAPTER 20
Ocean-Based UFOs Ring the United States – Male magazine, Dec. 1970
CHAPTER 21
Was Philip K. Dick a Flake? – New Frontiers magazine, 1987
CHAPTER 22
The Secret Tape to the Congress of Scientific Ufologists
CHAPTER 23
Medical Aspects of Non-Events – Anomaly magazine, 1969-72
Sex and the Single Saucerer
Symptoms of Hallucination
Classification of Hallucination
CHAPTER 24
Secret UFO Bases Across the U.S. – SAGA magazine, April 1968
“A Question of Responsibility”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to the following researchers who have either shared their personal insights about John Keel with the editor, or have helped promote recent popular interest in Keel’s work – particularly regarding the seeming connections between “Mothman,” UFOs, and the occasional conspiracy. This book would not have been possible without their help:
-Skylaire Alfvegren
-Christopher Knowles
-Greg Bishop
-Regan Lee
-Walter Bosley
-Clyde Lewis
-Mike Clelland
-Jim Marrs
-Tessa B. Dick
-James Moseley
-John and Tim Frick
-James Evan Pilato
-Adam Gorightly
-Jeffery Pritchett
-Rosemary Ellen Guiley
-Nick Redfern
-Jerry Hamm
-Phil Reynolds
-Keith Hansen
-Doug Skinner
-David Houchin
-Kenn Thomas
-George Knapp
-Jeff Wamsley
Special thanks to my team of “Mothy” proofreaders – truly a sacred brain trust. Their enthusiasm, thoughts, and advice during the past two decades of research into Keel has been invaluable:
-John Bonanno
-Ben Camp
-Lisa Neesvig
-E.E. Parker
-Harriet Plumbrook
-Ted Torbich
INTRODUCTION
BY TESSA B. DICK In his own work, Andy Colvin digs deeper than the headlines when he comes across a story. Inspired by personal experience with the Mothman phenomenon, he delves into realms of mysterious and fascinating events which, according to common sense, ought not happen. From phantom armies of angels (which have been reported as recently as the 6 Day War in Israel) to fantastic creatures that morph into something even more strange, Colvin has taken on the decades-long task of documenting, compiling, and theorizing about the evidence for Mothman, UFOs, and earthly conspiracies.
Along the way, Colvin has archived and re-popularized the “lost” works of John A. Keel. Keel is one of our best sources on the history of Mothman, since he was there, onsite, and interviewed the witnesses at the time of their sightings. Keel also happens to be perhaps the top UFO and Fortean investigator of the late 20th century.
This volume, which explores the writings and thoughts of John Keel , goes deep into the flying saucer mystery and other strange phenomena. It is a fascinating read.
Although much of Flying Saucer to the Center of Your
Mind was written decades ago, this book sheds new light on UFOs and other mysterious phenomena. For those who are not already familiar with Keel’s work, it will be a mind-opener. For those who have read Keel , this volume not only provides a useful refresher course, but also includes rare material from now-defunct magazines and other obscure sources that many have never read or even heard of before.
One tale in particular caught my attention: three teenagers who swear they saw a huge bird transform into a golden boy. This tale is reminiscent of El Dorado, the legendary Inca chief who used to bathe in gold dust until he shone like the sun.
It also brings to mind Philip K. Dick’s story, “The Golden Man.” If you saw the movie Next, which was purportedly based on that story, you have no idea what Phil really wrote. The story was about the dangers of eugenics programs. (Although within the story, the biological mutations are caused by nuclear contamination.)
Of course, the chapter on Philip K. Dick interests me the most, since I was married to Phil. This chapter accurately describes bits and pieces of my husband’s experience and his attempts to deal with it intellectually.
The most striking experience that Phil and I shared was with what he and I called Firebright. This name occurred to him because of the bright lights that danced around our apartment, and it formed a significant part of the inspiration for his novel VALIS. He referred to the experience with Firebright and other entities as VALIS, which is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System. Firebright was a blue electrical arc the size of a tennis ball that flitted around the room as if it were a moth. At one point, it landed on Phil’s forehead. (This was some time after his pink light experience, which also targeted his forehead.)
Firebright seemed to be a friendly creature which possessed some intelligence or instinct, such as that of a bird. Birds are actually very intelligent, but that is another story. (The supernatural “king of birds” in Asia, which is known as the Garuda, is depicted in ancient texts and carvings as a bird-man hybrid. The Garuda was at the top of Keel’s list of possible explanations for Mothman.) Firebright’s physical movements seemed moth-like, too, which might connect it with Mothman (the nickname that the media gave the West Virginia Birdman). My experiences with Phil and Firebright did seem similar to those described by Keel as experienced by UFO and Mothman witnesses in the Ohio Valley.
Firebright appeared in the midst of a period of harassment of an electromagnetic nature. For example, sometimes at night our little bedside radio could not be turned off, not even when it was unplugged. The first time that happened, we asked the guys next door, who shared a common wall with us, if they had left their radio on in the kitchen that night. They said they had not. A short time later, after they moved out, workmen in gray coveralls emerged from a yellow Ford Econoline van and carried large cardboard boxes into the vacant apartment next door. After that, the strange electromagnetic phenomena in our apartment increased in frequency and intensity. When we found the door to that apartment unlocked, we investigated and found electronic equipment in the kitchen, which shared a common wall with our bedroom, as well as in the hall closet. Phil recognized some of the devices as ham radio equipment and tape recorders. When we eventually moved, Phil stated that he was going to miss the little air spirits that visited our apartment because they would not move to the house that we rented.
We experienced only a limited slice of the wide spectrum of supernatural experience, but it opened our minds to the possibility that, as Shakespeare wrote, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.
From flashing lights to Men in Black, Keel covered the subject matter with a reporter’s objectivity, and Mothman gets a fair review. Keel’s work includes exploration of the longstanding and ongoing government surveillance of ordinary people who just happen to experience the extraordinary – as did Phil and I. While several explanations for these phenomena can be proposed, we have been unable to settle upon any interpretation as the correct one. These matters remain enigmatic, mysterious, and fascinating.
EDITOR’S NOTE
I first came across John Keel’s work in the early 1990s. When I read The Mothman Prophecies, my life was altered. I had grown up amidst the Mothman craze in West Virginia in the late 1960s, but few people there had heard of Keel or his Mothman book (which didn’t come out until 1975 and was barely publicized in West Virginia). When finally confronted with it, Keel’s reportage confirmed to me much of what I had already suspected about my “unusual” childhood. I knew that several family members of mine, and many friends and neighbors, had seen strange entities and craft in Pleasant Dell – a spattering of houses in a secluded meadow high above the riverside hamlet of “Mound” (today called “North Charleston” and/or “Cross Lanes”). I had seen a couple of strange things there myself.
Above Pleasant Dell loomed the misty summit of “Bird Mountain,” where one can still today see extremely large vultures and – when conditions are right – Mothman. One can still find neighbors along the roadway that crosses Bird Mountain (Woodward Drive) reporting bizarre, anomalous events. The Kanawha River Valley, home to George Washington, Daniel Boone, Charles Manson, and the family of Mark Twain, was once filled with thousands of Indian burial mounds and large, unusual earthworks that referenced the mathematics of the Great Pyramid at Giza. During the first half of the 20th century, the Kanawha Valley became known as the “chemical capital of the world,” and was given the moniker “The Chemical Valley.”
Local legends speak of strange emanations that come from these mound areas along the Kanawha (called “The River of the Dead” by the Shawnee) and its tributaries, the Elk, Pocatalico, and Coal Rivers. (The village of Mound straddles all three of these rivers’ confluences with the Kanawha.) Most of these once-sacred areas are now covered with petrochemical plants, lending a spooky aura to the interplay between ancient myth and high-tech science. This clash of paranormal “magic” with corporate “conspiracy” has been at the core of my research into Mothman, UFOs, and the brilliant work of John Keel.
In his work, John Keel captured the brooding essence not only of Pt. Pleasant, WV (an hour’s drive from Pleasant Dell), but also of that cosmic “nonlocal” locale where distortions of time and space occur. It is a very complicated area, and I would have gotten nowhere in my research without Keel. (Most of my research has been personal – just trying to make sense of things that actually happened to me and to people I have known all of my life and trust.) I can personally vouch for the fact that many of the unbelievable scenarios Keel discusses did, in fact, happen.
And I am reasonably certain that the paranormal events and conspiratorial scenarios that happened in Pt. Pleasant and Pleasant Dell are connected. Mothman had more than one nest, and so did the spooks. (The X-Files television series did a good job of describing this secret intersection of the supernatural and the supertechnical in West Virginia.) We had real CIA, FBI, and NSA agents living in, or regularly visiting, our neighborhood, and we also saw just about every strange entity one can imagine: Mothman, aliens, ghosts, flying saucers, Bigfoot, Men in Black (MIB), the Virgin Mary, black panthers, and “intelligent orbs.”
I first met Keel in September 2003, at the unveiling of the Mothman statue in Pt. Pleasant, WV. The weather was beautiful that weekend, and he and I were able to spend some quality time driving around or exploring on foot. Often accompanying us were two enthusiastic Mothman buffs, the Frick brothers (John and Tim), and Harriet Plumbrook, a Mothman witness I have known since early childhood. Harriet comes from a family of highly psychic West Virginians who have been recruited for government intelligence work for at least three generations. (Harriet has the same marks on her neck as Agent Scully in X-Files, and is a “medical intuitive” – someone who can read people’s medical conditions and personal histories just by meeting them or “tuning into” them remotely.)
When Harriet and I get together, strange things always happen; windows and doors start opening by themselves, weird thing
s are seen, and prophetic dreams and visions occur. Likewise, when I get together with the Fricks (who have tirelessly researched Mothman for well over a decade), nearby electrical items burn out, odd messages come across the radio, and Men in Black in unmarked vans come to let us know they are watching. Unusual phone calls periodically come to us (often simultaneously), as they came to Keel years before. When Keel and all of us got together that weekend in 2003, it seemed to create a supernova of paranormal energy.
Our visit with Keel sparked a flood of paranormal phenomena that lasted several years, up until Keel’s death. The synchronicities were so stunning that I began to write primarily about that subject and how it might play into the UFO and Mothman phenomena. My basic discovery was that synchronicity can be used as a research tool, and that the psychic powers associated with Mothman and “natural” UFOs can be harnessed for good – for creative purposes or for healing. Through Keel’s advice and inspiration, I was able to expound enough on the matter that an entire new field of research came into being: “synchromysticism” (also known as “synchroconspiracy”). This idea of utilizing synchronicity and psychic ability greatly intrigued Keel. He was, I think, trying to come up with ways to help save the world from its imminent destruction – by us.
This concern for Earth and humanity was in evidence when I asked Keel why he had bothered to come and investigate Mothman and the humble hill folk of the area. (If I had not had personal experience with the phenomenon myself, I am not sure I would have researched it at all.) Keel’s response was that he came to help people understand what might be going on. He cared about people, and had genuine concern for what the darker aspects of the phenomenon could potentially do. (As you read through this book, these dangers will become clearer.)
Keel was definitely on his toes when he was in Mothman country. He could never fully anticipate when he might be hounded either by the phenomenon itself, or by some secret agent or MIB. (For instance, a likely CIA asset signed books next to him that weekend; I think only Keel and I knew it.) And the fact that Keel could never really figure out the Mothman riddle only added to the tension. Keel really didn’t have an answer for it, and it bothered him. Jokingly, I told him I would help him figure Mothman out, since I had met the creature once or twice. He didn’t laugh, but got serious, and asked me to look into myself – to look at why I was obsessed with Mothman. There was a definite gravity to what he said. It seemed like this was the most important thing he wanted say to me.