Operation Trojan Horse: The Classic Breakthrough Study of UFOs

by John A. Keel

  Mrs. Butler’s story may sound bizarre, but I have heard the same things too many times in too many different places to dismiss them lightly. In case after case, I have heard about strange men who paid pointless visits and sometimes posed as Air Force officers. The descriptions are always the same—slight of stature, dark olive skins, sharp pointed features. And most of these scattered witnesses specifically noticed that these men were dressed in clothes that seemed brand-new. Even the soles of their shoes appear to be unwalked on. If they have occasion to pull out a wallet or notebook, that also is brand-new. (Most men, even Air Force officers, carry beat-up old wallets.) I have carefully kept many of these small details to myself and have never published them or discussed them. They provide a yardstick by which I can measure the validity of new stories.

  The sudden, blinding headaches described by Mrs. Butler are also very common among percipients who have been involved in close sightings or actual contacts.

  Finally, there is the curious experience of her friend who was seized by some kind of trance and parroted someone else’s words. This, too, has happened far more frequently than one might imagine. But such stories rarely go very far because they are so weird and unbelievable. The phrase “What is your time cycle?” had special meaning to me. I had heard it before, from other percipients.

  In December 1967, Tom Monteleone, an aspiring young science fiction writer in Adelphi, Maryland, allegedly had a contact with a grounded UFO and conversed with a man in “shiny coveralls” who identified himself as “Vadig.” Because time travel was already a well-established theme in science fiction, Monteleone made up a contactee story about traveling to a distant planet where everyone walked around nude. Asserting that he had been a victim of a time loss, he hit the UFO lecture circuit and appeared on radio talk shows. When he discovered that peddling outer space nudism was a hard way to make a buck, he recanted and spent the next twenty years selling articles about his terrifying brushes with the hardcore UFO buffs, experiences far more chilling than meetings with extraterrestrial nudists.

  Aside from Tom’s ventures into his inner mind, time is one of the most important aspects of the UFO phenomenon. It plays a strange but significant role. Part of the answer to flying saucers may lie not in the stars but in the clock ticking on your mantelpiece.

  Our world exists in three dimensions: height, width, and breadth. We can move in many directions within these dimensions: up, down, sideways, forward, and backward. We measure space in relation to our own size, by inches, feet, yards, miles, light years. If we were 25 feet tall and our planet were the size of Jupiter (many times larger than the earth), we would undoubtedly have adjusted our measurements of space accordingly. Our inch might be equal to an earth foot, our mile might be equal to ten earth miles.

  Space does not exist except when we make it exist. To us, the distance between atoms in matter is so minute that it can only be calculated with hypothetical measurements. Yet, if we lived on an atom and our size was relative to its size, the distance to the next atom would seem awesome and beyond reach. The ant lives in a world of giants where even a blade of grass is a gigantic structure and a tree is a whole universe. If ants had measurements, their inch might be the size of the point of a pin, and their mile would be less than a foot.

  How dare we try to reduce the universe to our own terms? We can’t even see or sense a large part of the world around us. Man is not the final, perfect end product of evolution.

  He is the beginning.

  There is another man-made measurement called time. Unlike the other three dimensions, time has us trapped. We can move in only one direction through it—forward. This forward motion is governed by physical laws. We cannot leap ahead fifteen years any more than we can slide back to 1848. We are all trapped in this moment of time. This instant.

  The only way we can bridge time is to create something that will endure beyond the immediate moment. We construct buildings, pyramids, works of art, and even laws that become material and lasting things. Our moments become seconds, minutes, hours, days, years. Our lives revolve around clocks and calendars. Time becomes very real to us, and it is almost inconceivable that we could live without it.

  Yet time doesn’t really exist at all.

  This moment exists to us. The same moment is being shared by other planets and other stars. Or is it?

  The light from a distant star may take 30 years to cross space and reach us. We can see a nova (exploding star) 1,000 years after it has actually burst and vanished. With strong telescopes, we can peer into the past. We could see that event 1,000 years after it had happened. Perhaps we could see a planet near that star, see a whole population panic and go mad as their sun started to expand and pour heat and radiation onto them. Perhaps long after our own planet is a dead cinder some dispassionate astronomer in some remote part of the universe will collect the light from this moment and watch us groveling about in this year.

  We have learned to measure time by observing the special characteristics of our environment. Our days and nights are measured by the length of time it takes the earth to rotate on its axis. Our years are the number of days it takes to make one complete circuit around the sun. Our lives are scaled by the number of years our delicate organisms can survive. If the earth did not rotate, there would be no days. If it did not circuit the sun, there would be no years. If we were larger or smaller and lived on Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s moons, our whole measurement of time would be different.

  Assume that a planet exists trapped in a binary (two-star) system. Its orbit is such that all sides of the planet are constantly bathed in light. No day/night cycle exists there. The inhabitants have no way of measuring time—even years—by our standards. They would be living in a timeless void. The Pleiades actually contain more than 200 stars, although only seven are visible to the naked eye, many of them forming binary systems. As close as our astronomers can tell, those stars seem to be dying. In another few million years of our time, the Pleiades will be no more.

  From what we know about the Pleiades, the stars there seem to be swirling among great clouds of radiant gases. If they harbor any planetary systems, we wonder what effect those gases might have. An early contactee, Albert K. Bender, wrote a book containing so many far-out details that few ufologists took it seriously. He claimed that UFO entities told him that they lived underground on their home planet because periodically they passed through masses of deadly clouds which destroyed life and created a great blackness.[9] When Bender’s account, Flying Saucers and the Three Men, was first published in 1962, it read like the fantasies of a madman. But now many of the things he described have repeatedly occurred all over the world, and the book deserves a careful rereading.

  If flying saucers actually exist as extraterrestrial spaceships, then the Pleiades might deserve a place high on the list of possible origins. It is possible that the ancients were so enthralled with the magical number of seven that they placed undue emphasis upon the “Seven Sisters.” But it is equally possible that they might have had access to some particular bit of knowledge which has since been lost.

  Anthropologists have been amazed to discover that the completely isolated tribes of South America and the aborigines of Australia have much folklore about the Pleiades and even call the cluster the Seven Sisters, just as the ancient Middle Eastern and European cultures did. Much of this independent folklore contends that the Pleiades was the home of the “Sky People.” North American Indian tribes have similar legends about the Pleiades, and of all the stars and constellations named and known by the ancient peoples it is interesting to note that even the Bible singles out the Seven Sisters repeatedly. In the Book of Job, 38:31, we find this enigmatic statement: “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?”

  In modern UFO-contactee lore, beginning in the early 1950s, the constellation of Orion is frequently cited as the home of “evil spacemen” who are planning to take over the earth. A famous British contactee, Arthur Bryant
, claimed that on April 24, 1965, a UFO occupant informed him that “forces from Epsilon are already here in the form of poltergeists.” Epsilon Orionis is the central star in the belt of Orion. The Bible and many other ancient works seem to imply that Orion harbors a malevolent force, while the Pleiades is the home of the “good guys.”

  Stretching Time

  Much has been written about the fact that astronauts whizzing through space at 25,000 mph return to earth a fraction of a second younger than the rest of us, because as Einstein discovered, the faster a particle moves through space, the slower it moves through time. Time becomes a hypothetical field. Trapped here on earth, we all move through that field at the same rate. Science-fiction writers have always made a big deal out of this, and there are endless tales of astronauts dashing off to other planets and, upon returning to earth, finding that hundreds of years have actually passed, even though they are only months or years older.

  Physicists following Einstein’s concepts assert that nothing can exceed the speed of light without becoming infinite mass and being reduced to energy. However, if we want to blow our minds altogether, we can speculate that an energy particle might hit such a high frequency and move so fast that it doesn’t move at all. Energies beyond the cosmic rays on our spectrum scale would have such a very high frequency that they would appear to be motionless. A small group of American physicists are now actually trying to build the equipment necessary to test this possibility.

  These super-high frequencies would be far outside our time field, yet they could coexist all around us, and we have no way of detecting or defining them. We could only guess at their existence, just as men guessed for hundreds of years about atomic structure before we developed the technology needed to confirm the theories.

  To repeat this another way: If an astronaut can move more slowly through the time field by accelerating through three dimensional space, then it might be possible for a super-high-frequency particle moving at super-high speeds to escape or be uninfluenced by our time field altogether.

  What I’m trying to do here is reduce the complex Einstein theory to the simplest of terms.

  Now then, how can all of this be applied to the UFO phenomenon?

  Throughout this book I have tried to explain that UFOs seem to be transmogrifications: seemingly material apparitions that might actually be composed of energies from the high reaches of the electromagnetic spectrum. If this is so, then one additional factor is necessary: order or intelligence.

  The UFO phenomenon does seem to be controlled. It does follow intelligent patterns. If the objects themselves are manifestations of higher energies, then something has to manipulate those energies somehow and reduce them to the visible frequencies. Not only do they enter the visible frequencies, but they take forms that seem physical and real to us, and they carry out actions which seem intelligent.

  Thus we arrive at the source. The source has to be a form of intelligent energy operating at the very highest possible point of the frequency spectrum. If such an energy exists at all, it might permeate the universe and maintain equal control over each component part. Because of its very high frequency, so high that the energy particles are virtually standing still, the source has no need to replenish itself in any way that would be acceptable to our environmental sciences. It could actually create and destroy matter by manipulating the lower energies. It would be timeless, because it exists beyond all time fields. It would be infinite because it is not confined by three-dimensional space.

  Within this energy structure there could be other masses of intelligent energy existing on slightly lower frequencies. While these masses would be ultimately under the control of the highest intelligence, they might maintain a certain amount of independence and be able to manipulate the lower energies on their own. But no matter what activities they might engage in, they would be obliged to fit their actions into the plan of the overall intelligence.

  A computer relies upon systems that store and direct the course of electrical impulses. A complex system of switches, or transistors that act like switches, form the circuitry, which breaks down information into simple negative and positive pulses. Cyberneticians work with a system of numbers, 0 for negative and 1 for positive. A problem is fed into the computer, and the answer comes back in these numbers; 1010, for example, means 10. These are known as binary numbers.

  The human brain functions in much the same way. Billions of tiny switches known as synapses are built into a complex circuitry of nerves. If you handle and smell a rose and prick your finger on one of its thorns, the memory of this event is stored in your brain circuitry by the opening and closing of billions of these synapses. The memory of the odor takes millions, as does the memory of the pain of the thorn and the millions of points of light which were fed from your eyes to your brain and which registered the beauty of the rose. Other circuits form a kind of index so that you can instantly tune into this one particular memory bank and remember the rose clearly.

  The brains of small children are filled largely with sensual information. As we grow older, our minds become cluttered with millions of impressions and experiences and with fragments of all that we read, see, and hear. The child’s mind, especially before the so-called age of reason when the logic circuits begin to form, is therefore a clear instrument, open and uninfluenced by opinions and conclusions. This is an important point in our UFO mystery.

  Our computers and brains are complicated devices developed to cope with the barrage of sensual data from the material world around us. Perhaps if we were in a pure energy state, each particle of energy could serve as a synapse, and information could be stored by a slight alteration in frequency. Thus all of the memory fragments of that rose would be recorded at one frequency, and the whole energy form could tune into that memory at will by adjusting frequencies as we adjust a radio receiver. In other words, no complex circuitry would be required. No body would be necessary. The energy patterns would not need a material form to augment it, circulate food, etc.

  If the energy form were infinite, timeless, and permeated the entire universe, it would have total knowledge and total awareness. It would not need eyes and ears and nerve endings for perception. Like Mount Everest, it would be there and would be unaffected by whatever was happening lower on the energy spectrum.

  It could surround you completely at this very moment and be totally aware of all the feeble pulses of low energy passing through your brain. If it so desired, it could control those pulses and thus control your thoughts.

  Man has always been aware of this intelligent energy or force. He has always worshiped it.

  The Modus Operandi of Prophecy

  Our first conclusion is that the UFOs originate from beyond our own time frame or time cycle. Our second conclusion is that the source has total foreknowledge of human events and even of individual lives. Because time and space are not absolutes, although they seem to be to us, these two conclusions are compatible.

  Visualize a teenaged boy with a microscope. He is studying a tiny microbe with a total life-span of sixty seconds. He takes a fine needle and pokes it into the liquid environment of the microbe—a drop of water on a slide that seems limitless to the minute creature. Suppose that the microbe has some sort of visual or sensory apparatus. The point of the needle would suddenly appear enigmatically before it, a totally foreign object beyond the microbe’s experience and frame of reference. The bewildered microbe swims around the object, studies it, then sits down and writes a microbe report on the unexplained object that he saw. When the boy withdraws the needle, the “object” suddenly disappears in front of the microbe because it is no longer part of his environment or his time cycle.

  Five minutes later, by the boy’s clock, he reinserts the needle into that same drop of water. Now many generations of microbes have passed. A new microbe glimpses this wonder and hurries to the microbe library and uncovers the old report. Strange foreign objects made out of an unknown material and behaving in a most peculiar way had be
en seen in ancient times, the microbe learns. To the boy, the two events spanned a mere five minutes. To the microbes, many generations had passed. By our time cycle, the two events were almost simultaneous.

  Switch things around a bit. Now we are the microbes. Could it be possible that all UFO events are interrelated, and although they are widely separated according to our time cycle, they might really be almost simultaneous events to the ufonauts?

  I don’t mean to imply that some giant is poking needles at us. The microbe’s world is a tiny, almost insignificant part of the boy’s world, although the microbe had absolutely no knowledge of it. The microbe was not only unaware of the boy’s existence, but it could not have possibly comprehended his existence.

  It may be that all human events occur simultaneously when viewed by a greater intelligence. The boy peering through the microscope can plainly see a microscopic obstacle looming up in front of the microbe seconds before it even becomes aware of the obstacle. He can thus predict in a limited way the microbe’s future. In a single minute of earth time he can watch the birth, growth, reproduction, and death of the microbe. The event is interesting to the boy but not especially important. He can watch a larger predatory microbe swim toward his specimen and consume it. If he wished, he could poke his needle into the drop again and maybe force the predator out of the way, thus saving the microbe’s life. He can manipulate the microbe in many ways. But he cannot communicate with it.

  If a gigantic superintelligence wants—or needs—to communicate with a much lower form, all kinds of problems are presented. The communication must be conducted in a manner that will be meaningful and understandable to the lower life form. An acceptable frame of reference must be found and utilized. The superintelligence may wish to convey information of a very complex nature—so complex that it is beyond the comprehension of the lower form. The only way to accomplish this is to pass the information on in very small fragments over many generations, using many modes of communication. All of this might take only a few seconds of the superintelligence’s time but would cover thousands of years of the lower form’s time cycle.