by John A. Keel
The Lady was accompanied by two angels on this occasion. The angels were dressed alike “as if they were twins.” The Lady had long, thin hands, a long angular face “with a fine nose,” and lips that were “a bit thin.” She seemed to be “rather tall.” Her hair was a deep nut brown, parted in the center. This is, of course, an almost classic description of the “long finger” UFO entities described by many contactees. Even more startling, on the Lady’s right the girls said they could see “a square of red fire framing a triangle with an eye and some writing. The lettering was in an old Oriental script!”
The angels in all of these cases sound suspiciously like our celebrated “little men.” The Lady who has been so glorified by the religionists may merely be a variation of Aura Rhanes.
Conchita and the other children of Garabandal have now experienced more than 1,000 visions, and they have been frequently photographed during their ecstasies. A number of times all four children have awakened simultaneously in their four separate homes and gone dashing into the night to the sacred place as if they were all somehow called by an unseen force. They have been examined by doctors, high government and Church officials, parapsychologists, psychiatrists, by everyone except ufologists (I know of only one ufologist who had ever even heard of this case). The many messages conveyed by the Lady have conformed precisely to Catholic dogma, using phrases and references that are significant to trained theologists but would be meaningless to the children. The message of October 18, 1961, as dictated by the children, read: “We must make many sacrifices, do much penance. We must visit the Blessed Sacrament frequently; but first, we must be good, and unless we do this, a punishment will befall us. The cup is already filling and unless we change, a very great punishment will befall us.”
October 18, 1961, fell on a Wednesday.
On Friday, June 18, 1965, Conchita entered a trance and was purportedly given the following statement by the Lady: “As my message of the eighteenth of October has not been complied with, and as it has not been made known to the world, I am telling you that this is the last one. Previously, the cup was filling; now it is brimming over… You are now being given the last warnings.”
There is a wealth of evidence and testimony which leaves little doubt that these children of Garabandal were being possessed by some outside influence and were undergoing a supernormal experience.
The messages of Garabandal followed the pattern of all the others received by UFO contactees and religious visionaries alike: stern warnings that the activities of the human race displeased the ultraterrestrials. The religious messages ambiguously threaten worldwide punishment, while the UFO messages are more specific; i.e., stop meddling with atom bombs or “we” will paralyze your whole world.
Can we really afford to ignore these warnings?
The Nation of the Third Eye
There is no reason to think that the four children of Garabandal had ever seen, or even knew about, the eye symbol on the Great Seal of the United States. Nor is it remotely possible that the children, or any of the elders of Garabandal, could have known of the importance that this symbol plays in the silent contactee situation. In fact, very few ufologists are aware of it.
Those mysterious “men in black” who travel around in unlicensed Cadillacs have reportedly been seen wearing lapel pins bearing the symbol. They have also identified themselves directly as being from “the Nation of the Third Eye.” So we call the symbol the Third Eye. It would be interesting to find out why some cultures regarded it as evil, while others used it to symbolize the Deity.
Why did the Third Eye appear beside the vision at Garabandal? Was it a symbol of identification? Or was it a warning? The Vatican has been most cautious in the handling of the Garabandal case. The children have promised that a major miracle will take place there sometime in the near future. This miracle is supposed to occur above a grove of pine trees near the sacred place, and it is said that it will somehow leave a permanent mark in the sky. A mark that will endure for the ages.
In the meantime, there have been other miracles around the world. Most of them are greeted by silence from the Vatican. Two occurred within a few days of each other toward the end of March 1968. One was in the Philippines; the other took place half a world away in Cairo, Egypt.
Eight young girls on the island of Cabra in the Philippines began to suffer visions in the early part of the year, and the feminine voice of “the Virgin” promised a miracle. During the last week of March about 3,000 persons poured onto the island and waited. Some, including a university professor, a prominent obstetrician, and an army major, reported seeing a circular object over the island. It whirled and changed through all the colors of the spectrum, they said. Others claimed that a brilliant glowing cross hovered over the island chapel.[13]
A luminous female figure appeared on the roof of the Church of the Virgin in the Zeitoun District of Cairo in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, April 2, 1968. Thousands of people quickly gathered to view this entity. She has allegedly returned several times since and has been seen by many clergymen of the Coptic Orthodox Church, including Bishop Athanasius of Beni Suef. The Copts have even issued a formal declaration affirming their acceptance of this miracle.
Is the news of these miracles being suppressed? Hardly. Newsweek reviewed the Philippine case on April 8, 1968, and the New York Times carried a dispatch from Cairo on the events there in its issue of May 5, 1968.
Six young Canadian girls, ranging from seven to thirteen years old, allegedly saw the Virgin Mary on the evening of Monday, July 22, 1968. They reported that a luminous entity appeared before them, hovering in the sky near St. Bruno, Quebec. Four of the girls saw the figure, but only two, Manon Saint-Jean and Line Grise, heard a voice which they described as “soft and slow.” It advised them to pray and promised to return again on Monday, October 7. Others in the area reported seeing unusual things in the sky that evening. One boy in neighboring St. Basile is supposed to have called out to his father, “Look, Daddy, there’s a man walking in the sky.”
Among the many other correlations, you will note that the month of March has often played an important part in these events, just as March and April have always produced many of our principal UFO sightings. These religious manifestations are clearly a variation on the UFO manifestations (or vice versa). The same methods of communication are being employed in both phenomena, and the UFO entities bear a marked resemblance to the religious entities.
Our awareness of these correlations presents us with a small dilemma. Are the religious miracles really a manifestation of some extraterrestrial intelligence? Or are the UFOs really some manifestation of God?
The Methods of Miracles
Early in January 1969, a seven-year-old girl named Maria de Carmen Ocampo was walking in a wooded area outside of Uruapan, Mexico, when she reportedly saw a female apparition materialize in front of a large cedar tree. It identified itself as the Virgin of Guadalupe and asked that flowers and candles be placed at the foot of the tree.
After the apparition vanished, an airplane mechanic named Homero Martinez came upon the frightened little girl on his way home.
“She was very nervous,” he said. “She told me what had happened and what the vision had said to her. Frankly, I didn’t believe her, and I went on my way. A few steps later I heard a rare kind of music—very beautiful—and I turned around and couldn’t see anything. I learned later the girl was very sick for a day or two and couldn’t talk.”
All of the miracles we have discussed here have centered around trees or bushes: a trifling but perhaps significant detail. All have involved children in isolated areas. Information on the Mexican incident is still scanty at this writing, but if the girl really did become sick and voiceless after her encounter, we have another interesting factor to consider. A Wanaque, New Jersey, police officer, Sergeant Benjamin Thompson, was not only temporarily blinded by a UFO in 1966, but he said, “It took away my voice, and I was hoarse for two weeks after that.”
; Contactees complain that they suffer from nausea, headaches, and general illnesses after their initial meetings with the entities. But after a series of such meetings their bodies seem to adjust, and they are no longer adversely affected. Normal emotional reactions of nervousness and fear can account for some of these sudden ailments, but not all can be dismissed as mere psychosomatic responses. Some contactee illnesses are suggestive of radiation poisoning, while others seem to be induced by the odors that frequently surround the entities.
Usually the entities connected with these miracles are reluctant to identify themselves. After several contacts they offer vague labels for themselves that can be interpreted in many ways. The Lady at Lourdes finally told Bernadette, “I am the Immaculate Conception,” a phrase that had no meaning to the young girl but which greatly excited the theologists. The Lady at Fatima finally declared herself to be the Lady of the Rosary.
By the same token, the UFO entities seem to adopt names such as Xeno (Greek for “stranger”) or use variations on ancient Greek and Indian names from mythology. The long-haired Venusians and the long-haired angels are unquestionably part of the same package, coming from the same source but utilizing different frames of reference to approach human beings. It is also highly probable that they do not actually have individual identities but are manifestations of a greater force which is able to manipulate the human mind. This mental (and also emotional) manipulation is the key to our mystery. Possession occurs in both good and evil forms. Possession is part of the overall manifestation. Many contactees display the classic symptoms of possession. Arthur Ford, the medium, was possessed on one level; Dr. Newbrough, author of Oahspe, on another; contactees on still another. All are subjects of the same phenomenon—a phenomenon that is not bred in the reaches of outer space but which has always existed with us here in our own immediate environment.
The well-investigated miracles are proof that the human mind can be exposed to induced hallucinations and that information can somehow be inserted into the mind by some unknown mechanism. In most contactee events, the percipient is alone or with a small group when the UFO contact occurs. Such percipients suffer medical effects which indicate that the “contact” was actually hallucinatory, just as the episodes involving children and religious entities have proven to be wholly or partially hallucinatory. The event or vision takes place only in the mind, not in reality. The exterior manifestations are merely part of that mechanism, a byproduct rather than a cause. It is likely that an outsider trespassing on the scene of a UFO contact would see the contactee standing in a rigid trance, just as the witnesses to miracles see only the children in a blind trance state. The contactee’s real experience is in his or her mind as some powerful beam of electromagnetic energy is broadcasting to that mind, bypassing the biological sensory channels.
The remembered nonevents are therefore of little or no importance. This process of broadcasting to the mind has always been known as possession or mystical illumination. The modern hippie, under the influence of LSD, often undergoes the same kind of experience and believes that he has tuned in to the cosmic consciousness.
We have made the very human mistake of isolating all of these manifestations into separate categories and studies. The demonologists, angelologists, theologians, and ufologists have all been examining the same phenomenon from slightly different points of view. Aretalogists study the ancient writings describing man’s contacts with supernatural or extraterrestrial or ultraterrestrial beings. Spiritualists have been concerned with convincing manifestations indicating that the human soul endures after death and populates some other plane or super-reality beyond human perception. Phenomenologists have endeavored to study larger parts of all this and link them together with abstract philosophical concepts.
For the past twenty years, one group of UFO cultists has been whispering about the approaching “New Age.” Now astrologers and hippies are expecting the Age of Aquarius: a new age when the old values and concepts will be tossed aside as mankind somehow merges with the “cosmic consciousness” and our awareness of the supercosmos leads us further along some predestined path.
If the UFOs exist at all, they exist as a minor part of this great explosion. They are the blackboard upon which man’s future is being written. To understand the message, we must first develop a pantology which can bring together all of these assorted beliefs and studies to form the whole. All of the assorted literature I have touched upon thus far merely serves as a beginning. We cannot close our minds to some aspects of the fantastic while we happily embrace other equally fantastic parts. The ufologists sneer at the occultists and vice versa. The theologians and religionists frown upon both. Orthodox science laughs at the entire scene.
Open communication with the phenomenon is not something far in our future. It is here. It is happening now.
14
Breakthrough!
Within a year after I had launched my full-time UFO investigating effort in 1966, the phenomenon had zeroed in on me, just as it had done with the British newspaper editor Arthur Shuttlewood and so many others. My telephone ran amok first, with mysterious strangers calling day and night to deliver bizarre messages “from the space people.” Then I was catapulted into the dreamlike fantasy world of demonology. I kept rendezvous with black Cadillacs on Long Island, and when I tried to pursue them, they would disappear impossibly on dead-end roads. Throughout 1967, I was called out in the middle of the night to go on silly wild-goose chases and try to affect “rescues” of troubled contactees. Luminous aerial objects seemed to follow me around like faithful dogs. The objects seemed to know where I was going and where I had been. I would check into a motel chosen at random only to find that someone had made a reservation in my name and had even left a string of nonsensical telephone messages for me. I was plagued by impossible coincidences, and some of my closest friends in New York, none of whom was conversant with the phenomenon, began to report strange experiences of their own—poltergeists erupted in their apartments, ugly smells of hydrogen sulfide haunted them. One girl of my acquaintance suffered an inexplicable two-hour mental blackout while she was sitting under a hair dryer alone in her own apartment. More than once I woke up in the middle of the night to find myself unable to move, with a huge dark apparition standing over me.
For a time I questioned my own sanity. I kept profuse notes—a daily journal which now reads like something from the pen of Edgar Allen Poe or H. P. Lovecraft.
Previous to all this I was a typical hard-boiled skeptic. I sneered at the occult. I had once published a book, Jadoo, which denigrated the mystical legends of the Orient. I tried to adopt a very scientific approach to ufology, and this meant that I scoffed at the many contactee reports. But as my experiences mounted and investigations broadened, I rapidly changed my views.
While traveling through some twenty states to check firsthand the innumerable UFO reports, I was astonished to find many silent contactees, and while the physical descriptions they offered were varied, it quickly became obvious that they were all suffering the same physiological and psychological symptoms. Through these silent contactees (people whose stories have never been published) I actually entered into communication with the entities themselves. When a UFO would land on an isolated farm and the ufonaut would visit a contactee, he or she would call me immediately and I would actually converse with the entity by telephone, sometimes for hours. It all sounds ridiculous now, but it happened. My notes, tapes, and other materials testify to the fact.
I developed an elaborate system of checks and balances to preclude hoaxes. Unrelated people in several states became a part of my secret network to that mysterious “other world.” I wasted months playing the mischievous games of the elementals, searching for nonexistent UFO bases, trying to find ways to protect witnesses from the “men in black.” Poltergeist manifestations seemed to break out wherever I went. It was difficult to judge whether I was unwittingly creating these situations in some manner, or whether they were entirely independent of m
y mind.
Now, in retrospect, I can see what was actually taking place. The phenomenon was slowly introducing me to aspects I had never even considered before. I was being led step by step from skepticism to belief to—incredibly—disbelief. When my thinking went awry and my concepts were wrong, the phenomenon actually led me back onto the right path. It was all an educational process, and my teachers were very, very patient. Other people who have become involved in this situation have not been so lucky. They settled upon and accepted a single frame of reference and were quickly engulfed in disaster. Several examples will be cited in this chapter.
But let’s review some of the game playing first. In May 1967, the entities promised the silent contactees that a big power failure could be expected. On June 4, 1967, the Arab-Israeli six-day war broke out in the Middle East. Early the next morning, June 5, a massive power failure occurred in four states in the northeastern United States. Throughout that month the contactees were warned that an even bigger power failure was due. It would be nationwide in scope and would last for three days, the entities promised, and would be followed by natural catastrophes in July. New York City was scheduled to slide into the ocean on July 2. The contactees did not broadcast these dire predictions, yet the rumors snowballed. By mid-June nearly all of the hardware stores in the flap areas had sold out their supplies of candles and flashlights. Late that May, the UFO entities had also declared that Pope Paul would visit Turkey in the coming months and would be bloodily assassinated and that this would precipitate the blackout and the disasters. Weeks later the Vatican suddenly announced that the Pope was, indeed, planning to visit Turkey in July. Panic prevailed in the secret contactee circles.
I was astonished when I discovered that these same rumors were also sweeping New York’s hippie community. People began phoning me late in June to ask me where I was going on July 2. I was not going anywhere. I refused to join the exodus, and Manhattan did not sink into the sea.