Flying Saucer to the Center of Your Mind: Selected Writings of John A. Keel

by Keel, John A.

  This is not a phenomenon restricted to the U.S. The MIB have been reported in many parts of the world, including Italy, Germany, Spain, Great Britain, and Sweden. In 1973, a young Swedish journalist working on a UFO story was sitting in a restaurant outside of Stockholm, when a stranger walked over to his table and sat down uninvited. “You should give up your interest in flying saucers,” he stated flatly in perfect Swedish. Before the startled reporter could ask any questions, the man rose and quickly left the restaurant. The only unusual thing about him was his clothes, the reporter recalled. They didn’t seem to fit properly.

  There have been countless episodes of this type in the U.S. In 1968, Peter Stevens, a young building contractor near Albany, NY, was sitting in a snack bar when “a tall, tan, saturnine-looking man” sat down on the stool beside him. “There have been people watching the sky every night down by the river in Scotia,” the man said suddenly. “People who look for UFOs should be very, very careful.” Like the Swedish mystery man, this one then made a quick exit. At my request, Stevens later made some drawings of the man. He sent the best one to me. A few weeks later, he and his wife returned home to find their house had been ransacked. Nothing was missing except the MIB drawings! A few months later, Peter Stevens suddenly died.

  Flying saucer contactees seem to have more trouble with these mysterious men than any other single group. It is not unusual for a witness to receive unwelcome nocturnal visitors of this type soon after his encounter with a grounded UFO. The standard procedure is to openly threaten the witness, advising him to keep his UFO experience to himself. If the witness has managed to collect any kind of physical evidence, the MIB will demand it in forceful terms. There are almost endless variations to the games they play, however.

  Stan Gordon, one of Pennsylvania’s most active UFO investigators, has come across several bizarre MIB cases involving not UFOs, but tall, hairy monsters. (There has been an epidemic of Bigfoot-type “creature” sightings throughout the U.S. in 1973-74.) In one creature case, the monster appeared outside a house trailer and left some sharply defined footprints. The witnesses reported directly to Gordon. The footprints were not mentioned in the local news media, but while they were photographing the impressions with a Polaroid camera, a station wagon with Ohio license plates pulled up. A man who seemed slightly tipsy climbed out, looked at the footprints, and then grabbed the Polaroid snapshots away from the witness. “You have just taken a picture for us,” he announced. Then he kicked at the footprints, smoothing the dirt over them and destroying the evidence. The witnesses became angry and told him they were going to call the police. He leaped into his vehicle and raced away. As in so many cases, his license numbers were unregistered. (Think about this for a moment. There are nearly 100 million vehicle registrations in the U.S. If you tried to invent a false license number, chances are you would come up with a number that is actually in use.)

  Sometimes the MIB’s tactics are subtler. They are cunning imposters. For years, amateur UFO investigators heard stories about Air Force officers who threatened witnesses into silence. They never bothered to collect descriptions of these officers, but simply assumed that the Air Force was engaged in some kind of conspiracy of silence. Following a wave of such “silencings” in 1967, I discovered that the witnesses had been visited by bogus officers, usually short men with Oriental features, who adopted the names of actual military personnel from nearby bases. For instance, if a Sergeant Snodgrass was stationed nearby, a “Colonel Snodgrass” would drop in on local witnesses. In February 1967, Air Force headquarters in the Pentagon recognized the problem by issuing a letter to all commands urging security officers to be alert for these phantom airmen. Since impersonating a military officer is a violation of federal law, the FBI was also alerted, and their agents became involved in several UFO episodes. But the MIB remained elusive…

  Scores of other investigators, including well-known personalities such as Ivan T. Sanderson, Otto Binder, Brad Steiger, Dr. James McDonald, and Dr. J. Allen Hynek have become involved in MIB cases. All had unwelcome experiences with mysterious telephone monitors. Sanderson’s phone on his farm in the mountains of New Jersey was plagued with harassing noises and interference, and his mail was apparently being closely watched. Peter Stevens and his wife changed their phone number several times, but the harassment persisted, even after they switched to an unlisted number. Stan Gordon recently revealed that “a great amount of mail containing reports from our investigators, and signed affidavits from witnesses, never arrived at our office. One investigator who had detailed information on a very strange case, mailed the report to us three different times, and we still never received any of them.”

  Disturbingly, investigators who suspected their mail was being screened have suddenly received batches of mail from communist and neo-Nazi organizations. If any government agency were actually watching their mail, it would look as if they were engaged in subversive activities.

  These manipulations have contributed to the atmosphere of paranoia that has dominated the UFO field for years. The common conclusion is that only the government – the CIA or the military – has the machinery needed to tap large numbers of phones and intercept the mails. But I learned that these same problems often plagued the official investigators. Official reports and photographs sent by mail, instead of courier, have even been switched en route with doctored documents! The MIB seem to have an intelligence organization that makes our CIA seem like a bunch of cub scouts. They have often zeroed in on UFO witnesses who have not disclosed their sightings to anyone. It is not unusual for a family to return to their home after watching UFOs cavort above their front yard and have the phone ring immediately, sometimes with nothing but silence on the other end, sometimes with a mysterious voice warning them to keep their mouths shut.

  In 1969, a blonde woman visited witnesses in West Virginia and Ohio, winning instant admission to their homes by claiming to be “John Keel’s secretary.” Somehow, this woman was able to locate people I had interviewed, but had never written about. She carried a clipboard and asked a series of involved, very sophisticated questions – not the kind of questions usually asked by UFO enthusiasts, or even by the Air Force. Over the years, other pseudo-investigators have turned up claiming to represent nonexistent universities or amateur organizations like NICAP and APRO, while they deliberately acted in strange, suspicious ways, adding to the dissension that has always kept the UFO field in confusion.

  Deception and paranoia are the MIB’s stock in trade. It becomes impossible to sort the genuine government agents from the frauds. The late Frank Edwards reported the story of a minor official at a large industrial plant, who saw a huge glowing object at 4:30 a.m. one morning in Dec. 1965. The man stopped on his way home and reported the sighting to the state police. A few hours later, two “military officers” appeared at his plant and questioned him for two hours. At the conclusion of the interview, one of the officers said, “We can’t tell you what to do, but we can offer a suggestion: Don’t talk about this matter to anyone.” How had the two officers heard of the sighting and moved so fast? And why would they go through so much trouble over a fairly routine sighting?

  Dr. J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer who has been active in UFO research for many years, tells of two men “engaged in work requiring a military clearance” who saw a UFO land in North Dakota on a rainy night in Nov. 1961. Thinking it was a plane in trouble, they stopped their car and ran toward the object. “Their surprise was understandably great when they discovered humanoids around the craft, one of which boldly waved them off in a threatening manner,” Hynek says. The men did not report their sighting, but the next day one of them was called out from work and introduced to two strangers. “They asked to be taken to his home,” Hynek reported, “where they examined the clothing he had worn the night before, especially his boots, and left without further word.” How had the pair located the witness? And why the interest in his shoes?

  When the two men who were allegedly taken aboard a
UFO near Mississippi’s Pascagoula River in 1973 were examined at a nearby Air Force base, the military doctors carefully examined their shoes and scraped samples from their soles… Betty and Barney Hill, another pair of famous contactees, threw the shoes they had been wearing at the time of their abduction into the back of a closet. Later, they found the shoes were covered with a powdery fungus…

  Some MIB incidents have been the work of mischievous UFO fans – mere hoaxes. For example, shortly before the mammoth flying saucer convention held in NYC in June 1967, many of the well-known UFO enthusiasts in the NY area received phone calls from a lady identifying herself as “Princess Moon Owl.” She claimed she had just arrived from the asteroid Ceres. The lady managed to create quite an uproar in UFO circles.

  All the speakers at the 1967 convention were taped by a young man who planned to make copies of the speeches for later sale. He lived in an exclusive apartment house in midtown Manhattan, in an apartment cluttered with expensive electronic gear and shortwave radios. Soon after the convention ended, he returned to his apartment one day and found someone had broken in. The convention tapes were scattered around the room, but none of his valuable equipment had been stolen. Whoever had broken in was obviously interested in the tapes only, and the tape of Ivan Sanderson’s speech in particular. Sanderson had studied the UFO phenomenon for years and was convinced that it was a terrestrial-based mystery, not the work of an “advanced technology” from some distant planet. Later, he published a book on that theme, risking the wrath of all those who believed in extraterrestrial intelligences.

  In my own investigations into the hundreds of MIB cases and their Watergate-style break-ins, I uneasily recognized a common factor in all of them. Our Men in Black are mainly interested in retrieving evidence that might point to terrestrial UFO origins. The earliest MIB incidents back in 1947 revolved around cases in which the witnesses had either recovered earthly substances at UFO sites, or had seen earthmen or normal terrestrial vehicles in conjunction with their sightings. The MIB were concerned with recovering such evidence and discrediting these eyewitnesses. (Although these cases are usually slighted by UFO investigators who believe in extraterrestrial visitants, there are many episodes – reliably witnessed – in which UFOs have descended and discharged passengers, who then entered ordinary automobiles and drove off. In some cases, the automobiles themselves were dropped by the UFOs.)

  One of the first UFO investigators to be harassed by the MIB had figured out – correctly – that UFOs seemed to originate from some point near the North and South poles. Other investigators who have discarded the extra-terrestrial hypothesis and studied the earthly links with the phenomenon have experienced more harassment, mail, and phone problems, etc., than their colleagues who believe in outer space vehicles. If you collect a piece of unidentifiable metal from a UFO witness, you will have no problems. But if a witness hands you a piece of aluminum, magnesium, or silicon – all common earthly substances – you are very apt to receive a visit from the Men in Black. Some witnesses who fall victim to these charades do not consciously understand the importance of what they have seen. Nor do the investigators who believe in the ET hypothesis realize the importance of these cases. In fact, it is common practice for the amateur UFO organizations to denounce such cases as hoaxes and brand the witnesses liars (or worse) when they find their “evidence” is plain old aluminum. They can be excused for this, though, since the U.S. Air Force has also labeled many cases “hoaxes” for the same reasons.

  If any real suppression exists, it is to conceal evidence of terrestrial origin. Whoever is waging this campaign has agents around the world, and technical facilities surpassing those of any known government. By mid-1967, my own conclusions had changed dramatically. I began to freely discuss and write about the terrestrial origin of UFOs. During a trip to Washington, D.C., I was invited to record an hour-long tape for “Voice of America.” At that time, the late Al Johnson was doing a series of UFO programs that were broadcast throughout the world on VOA. Johnson interviewed me for an hour and I discussed at length the theory of terrestrial origin. A few days later, he phoned me full of apologies. Our tape had inadvertently been placed in “the wrong pile” and had been completely erased before it could be broadcast. It was just one of those things. Or was it?

  That same year, a team from a German TV station was touring America interviewing UFO witnesses and investigators. They were seasoned, professional technicians. They came to my New York apartment, set up all their expensive equipment, and filmed me for 30 minutes. A few days later, I received a call from their Washington office. Their film of me was unusable. Parts were overexposed, and the magnetic soundtrack was spoiled by inexplicable static. It was just another one of those things… Variations of these “coincidences” continually happen. Radio and TV transmitters suddenly go dead during UFO discussions. Vital tapes are mysteriously erased. Precious photographs are lost in the mails. Investigators’ phones suddenly go dead at the height of a UFO wave. (The line of my phone was physically cut by a pair of wirecutters twice in 1967.)

  In 1974, France Inter, the Paris radio station, aired a series of 39 programs about UFOs, beginning with a pro-UFO talk by Robert Galley, France’s Minister of Defense. French broadcasters had spent much of 1973 locating and recording statements by leading authorities in France, England, and the U.S. The list was an impressive one and included such luminaries as Dr. David Saunders, the psychologist at Colorado University who has been entering thousands of UFO sightings into computers; Dr. Jacques Vallee, author of three UFO books; Pierre Kohler, a famous astronomer; and even Cardinal Danielou, a prominent churchman. The broadcasts were divided into two parts. The first part consisted of statements by witnesses and local French enthusiasts and officials. Hynek, Vallee, and some of the other “advanced” observers of the phenomenon were scheduled for the second part. The second section was never aired. Someone broke into the radio station and stole the tapes!

  Jean-Claude Bourret sent the following explanation to Gordon Creighton, the distinguished British UFO authority: “Unfortunately, on Monday, March 18, 1974, a mysterious burglar carried off all the tapes that were still waiting to be broadcast. That this was an act of deliberate malevolence is beyond question… There were two piles side by side: those interviews that had already gone out, and those that were still to be broadcast. Only this second pile was taken.” What was the gist of the tapes? Like most of the professional scientists and journalists who have undertaken a serious study of UFOs, Dr. Hynek, Jacques Vallee, and their colleagues have found the popular extraterrestrial hypothesis untenable. For some time now, they have been weighing the awesome alternative: that UFOs are earthly in origin, are accompanied by so-called psychic manifestations, and are produced by complex distortions of space, time, and even of reality itself.

  “What the theft was designed to prevent,” Creighton notes, “was the dissemination to millions of European listeners that similar views about UFOs are held by foreign experts of the caliber of Dr. J. Allen Hynek. It looks as though ‘somebody’ is mighty anxious that we Earthlings do not learn the truth about ‘something’ which, I suggest, might relate to the 64-billion-dollar question: who owns and controls this planet…and us?”

  Who, indeed, has the ability to control the mails, the telephones, and radio and television stations worldwide? Are people from some distant planet traveling the backroads of Long Island in black Cadillacs, or was Ivan Sanderson right? Are we dealing with beings that originate on our own planet? Someone has tried very hard for years to convince us that those strange things in our skies are harmless spaceships from some distant world. So long as we believe it, and believe that they originate from far beyond our pitiful reach, we seem to be relatively safe. But when we look in the wrong direction – towards Earth itself – there comes a heavy knock on our door in the middle of the night.

  CHAPTER 5

  “CONTACTEE” RUSTLING – 1979 LECTURE

  Those of you who’ve read some of my books
know that I’m a growing skeptic. I started out as a great believer, and I’ve gradually turned into a skeptic as my investigations have progressed. I’m going to try to explain to you today some of those investigations and why they have made me skeptical of the basic flying saucer premise. That basic premise, of course, is that these things are from outer space. There’s no question that there are strange things in the sky, but where they come from and what they’re doing here is wide open. We know very little about them after 35 or 40 years of investigation. Our main problem, as I’ve stated in a number of books and articles, is that the will to believe is much stronger than the will to understand. People are very quick to accept a belief without any evidence. Sometimes with no evidence at all... A lot of our major religions are based on that strange ability of the human mind to accept such beliefs.

  Harry Houdini, back in the ‘20s, became a good friend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Harry Houdini, of course, was the great escape artist. Arthur Conan Doyle was also a famous investigator of psychic phenomenon in that era. He decided that Harry Houdini was not a magician at all, but a psychic. Doyle believed Houdini wasn’t just escaping from these boxes and things; he was dematerializing and materializing outside the boxes. So he approached Harry Houdini with this theory and Houdini laughed at him saying, “That’s nonsense, I use simple trickery to get out of these boxes.” But Arthur Conan Doyle was convinced that Harry Houdini was a medium, and he stated this in some books and magazine articles. Harry Houdini got so mad that he broke off his relationship with Doyle. Doyle refused to believe that these were magic tricks…

  Now, with flying saucers, we have a similar situation. We have been accepting, at face value, a lot of the things that have been said. I’d say 98% of the literature on flying saucers is absolute garbage. I know because I’ve had to read all of it over the years. When you try to track down some of these things (especially things that happened some years ago), you either end up at a blank wall or you find that it was much different from what was reported in the flying saucer magazines of that time. There are great dissimilarities. So after a lot of bad experiences, I decided to investigate only things that hadn’t received any publicity and had happened very recently. And that got me into the Mothman mess. I went down to West Virginia many items and tried to find out what was happening there. There were flying saucer sightings galore. In fact, I saw so many myself down there that I actually lost count. To a skeptic, this seems incredible. Once, in Washington, D.C., I made that statement when the skeptic, Phil Klass, was in the audience. He stood up and said in a very loud voice, “That man is a terrible liar!” And he stalked out of the hall.