Anomaly Newsletter 1969–1976

With an Appendix of Curiosities and Oddities

from Mr. Keel’s Pen, including

Notes, Articles, and Research Tools

E d i t e d b y t h e R e v. D r. R a y m o n d W. B o e c h e

J o h n K e e l’SJo

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1976

B o e c h e

John Keel was one of ufology’s most widely-read and influential authors. Keel became an original and con-troversial research-er, and is credited with coining the term MIB (Men In Black), sinister and threatening enti-ties who assume human form to

confront ufologists and UFO witnesses.Of particular importance was Keel’s analysis of

patterns. His work on “windows” (specific hot spots of combined phenomenal appearances), “waves” (cyclic appearances of the phenomena) and the “Wednesday phenomenon” (the theory that a disproportionate number of UFO events occur on that day of the week) influenced scholars and followers of the genre alike.

In his much-acclaimed book, UFOs: Opera-tion Trojan Horse (1970), Keel suggested that many aspects of modern UFO reports, including human-oid encounters, often paralleled ancient folklore and religious visions, and directly linked UFOs with ele-mental phenomena.

“Ufology is just another name for demonology,” Keel explained, and claimed that he did not consid-er himself a “ufologist” but a “demonologist”; as an early admirer of Charles Fort (1874-1932) he actual-ly preferred to be called a Fortean, which covers a wide range of paranormal subjects.

The Mothman Prophecies, his best-known book, was Keel’s account of his investigation into sightings in West Virginia of a huge, winged creature called the Mothman. Mothman — so named by an excit-able newspaper subeditor — was first encountered in November 1966, and repeatedly, throughout the fol-lowing year. Sightings dwindled following the col-lapse of a nearby bridge during the evening rush-hour in December 1967, in which 45 people were killed.

In 1966, Keel became a full-time investigator of assorted paranormal phenomena, and for the next four years interviewed thousands of people in more than 20 American states. At first he sought to explain UFOs as extraterrestrial visitations. But a year into his investigations, Keel realised that this hypothe-sis was untenable.

“I abandoned the extraterrestrial hypothesis in 1967, when my own field investigations disclosed an astonishing overlap between psychic phenomena and UFOs,” Keel wrote. “The objects and apparitions do not necessarily originate on another planet and may not even exist as permanent constructions of mat-ter. It is more likely that we see what we want to see and interpret such visions according to our contem-porary beliefs.”

After investigating incidents of paranormal tele-phony — spirits supposedly communicating electron-ically — Keel found his phone calls being mysteriously re-routed to another number, one digit different to his own. Oddly, the person answering claimed also to be called John Keel; odder still, the voice of the dop-pelgänger sounded remarkably similar to Keel’s own.

Keel first identified the so-called “Men In Black” in an article for Saga magazine in 1967 headed “UFO Agents of Terror”. He described sinister figures of gaunt, evil aspect, often with oriental or Hispanic features, a phenomenon he noticed again in Janu-ary 1969 during President Nixon’s first inauguration.

“I was very interested to notice three men in black suits looking very much like our classical men-in-black sitting together a few rows from the front, right behind Nixon when be gave his inaugural address,” Keel wrote. “Every time the television cameras shot Nixon from a particular angle, I could see these three men. They seemed out of place. Of course they could have been ambassadors from Vietnam or something.

“I wondered afterward if my imagination had been running away from me. I got a hold of all the maga-zines I could find with pictures of the inauguration; and I went over them with a magnifying glass; but I could not find those three guys. Yet I had seen them very clearly on television.”

In Our Haunted Planet (1971), Keel coined the term “ultraterrestrials” to describe UFO occupants. He discussed the seldom-considered possibility that the alien “visitors” to Earth are not visitors at all, but an advanced terrestrial civilisation, consisting of shape-changing phenomena from another order of exis-tence, which may or may not be human.

Keel (1930–2009), considered a creative and pro-active investigator of UFOs, believed ultraterrestri-als and their minions could manifest themselves as monsters, space people, ghosts or other paranor-mal entities.

Anomaly Newsletter

1969–1976

J o h n K e e l’S

Anomaly Newsletter

1969–1976

With an Appendix

of Curiosities and Oddities

from Mr. Keel’s Pen,

including

Notes, Articles, and Research Tools

Edited by

the Rev. Dr. R. W. Boeche

l u x e t v e r i ta s b o o k s

This material (with the exception of the

various newspaper clippings and magazine ar-

ticles) was never placed under copyright.With

the exeption of Flying Saucer Review, every

magazine in which John Keel published one of

the articles in this collection has passed out of

existence. This material is compiled to provide

an historical record of Keel’s work, and his

thinking, as one of the seminal influences in

the study of anomalous aerial phenomena, as

well as the paranormal in general.

I N T RODUC T ION

A Brief Biography: Alva John Kiehle was born on March 25, 1930, in Hornell, NY. His father was a singer and bandleader; his mother a “lively, pret-ty girl with a strong sense of humor.” The marriage was a brief one; John was raised by his grandpar-ents in the nearby town of Perry.

As a child he read insatiably (he remembered himself as a “reading machine”), especially any-thing about magic, humor, science, travel, and avi-ation. By the time he was 14, he was determined to be a writer: he wrote a column, “Scraping the Keel,” for the Perry Herald; published his own science fic-tion fanzine, The Lunarite; and was routinely send-ing out submissions to magazines.

In 1947, he hitch-hiked to Manhattan — or, more specifically, to Greenwich Village. He became asso-ciate editor of the quarterly magazine Poets of amer-ica (1947-1949), and editor of the weekly newspaper Limelight (1949-1951). At this time, he was also writ-ing for comic books, contributing poetry to various magazines, and turning out scripts for the early TV station WABD. He also wrote scripts for radio shows, including grand Central Station and First Nighter.

When he was 18, he had a strange (but classic) illumination experience in his furnished room off Times Square. He remembered the room “filled with an indescribable light, a pinkish glow”; and his mind “flooded with a torrent of information.”

In 1951, he was drafted. He spent his military years in Frankfurt, working mostly for the Armed Forc-es Network. Some of his programming ideas — a remote broadcast from the Great Pyramid, anoth-er from Frankenstein’s Castle – earned him a great deal of publicity.

In 1954, he was restless, and determined to see more of the world. He spent the next year wander-ing throughout the Middle East, supporting him-self by sending back stories and articles to his agent, who then placed them in men’s adventure maga-zines. In Singapore, he was deported as an “adven-turer,” and moved to Barcelona, where he turned his experiences into a book, Jadoo.

When Jadoo was published in 1957, he moved

back to NYC, and promoted it by performing with cobras in the window of the Midtown Aquarium at Times Square, and with many TV and radio appear-ances. He suffered a bit of writer’s block after this, and turned to editing the magazine Echo. Funk & Wagnall’s also hired him as a science and geogra-phy editor (1959-1960).

In the ’60s, he worked a great deal in television: he was the head writer for the game show Play Your Hunch; and turned out many scripts for such shows as Mack and Myer for Hire, the Chuck McCann Show, the Clay Cole Show, and the animated series Snoop-erscope. He also wrote a couple of novels, under his preferred pseudonym, Harry Gibbs.

In 1966, Playboy commissioned him to write an article on UFOs. The resultant piece was rejected (the assignment was turned over to J. Allen Hynek, and published in the December 1967 issue). But he had become hooked on the subject; and traveled around the country, interviewing witnesses, and writing dozens of articles. The phenomenon, he learned, took its toll on its investigators: he entered a shadowy world where black cars vanished on coun-try roads, meaningless messages turned up in hotel rooms, and his phone and mail suffered strange interceptions. In 1966, he made repeated visits to Point Pleasant, West Virginia, then the site of a par-ticularly lively monster and UFO flap; the result was one of his most popular books, The Mothman Proph-ecies. Along the way, he also put out a lively news-letter, anomaly; wrote a regular column for Saga; and published several classic books on forteana.

He was a technical advisor to the Library of Con-gress (1968-69), and special consultant to the office of Scientific Research and Bureau of Radiology (1968-71), before becoming a consultant to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, for whom he pro-duced a prototype for a magazine, You. He also ful-filled a boyhood dream by earning his pilot’s license.

In the 1980s, he attempted a number of plays and novels, none of which made it to the page or stage. He devoted his time to various mail order projects, and revived the dormant New York Fortean Soci-ety. And he contributed a regular column to Fate magazine, “Beyond the Known.”

In his later years, he was slowed down consid-erably by diabetes and its complications. He had some lean times, particularly when cataracts, and the resultant eye surgery, made writing difficult. His luck turned when The Mothman Prophecies was made into a movie in 2002; he was particular-ly delighted at being portrayed by Richard Gere, whom he referred to as a “John Keel look-alike.” The publicity sparked several new editions of the book, including numerous foreign editions. He bought a car, which he dubbed the Mothmobile, and often disappeared on solo road trips.

With age, his health declined, and he spent sever-al years in and out of hospitals and nursing homes; his friends pitched in to keep him going. He died July 3, 2009, at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.

Despite reports to the contrary, he did not die alone and abandoned. Larry “Ratso” Sloman and Douglas Skinner were his medical proxies; and very active in helping him in his final years. Many friends visited him in his various hospitals and homes. Doug Skinner was at his bedside the day he died, to give the final directives, and to tell him goodbye. Despite other reports, his papers were saved by his friends and family. — Douglas Skinner

Introduction to the Material: From my perspec-tive as a researcher of the paranormal for nearly 50 years, John Keel in his prime (the period covered by the material in this collection) was arguably the finest example of rational yet uninhibited think-ing to be found in the fields of Forteana, Ufology, or the paranormal.

John was one of the first to recognize that more was involved with these kinds of bizarre events than simply visitors from another planet.

He refused to ignore evidence. His concern was not that he find evidence to support his personal theories, but that he allow his personal understand-ing of the phenomena to be shaped by the evidence.

So John paid attention to the contactees; he recorded and catalogued the “psychic fallout” which accompanied many strange events from UFO sight-ings to encounters with monsters. He never ignored the facts, regardless of whether or not those facts fit

neatly into any explanatory ‘box.’In taking this approach, Keel became aware that

in most cases of true paranormal events, mechanis-tic, naturalistic explanations — even those as exotic as extraterrestrial spacecraft, or undiscovered spe-cies of hominids or sauropods — were simply inad-equate to explain the fundamentally bizarre nature of these happenings.

The term Ultraterrestrial was coined by Keel as a catch-all explanation for all paranormal phenom-ena — something of a Unified Field Theory of the Weird. Computer scientist and Ufologist Jacque Val-lee proposed a similar concept, and this was the view held privately by astronomer and physicist Dr. J. Allen Hynek, which hea and I discussed on many occassions.

Most people, including the majority of the modern crop of UFO researchers, have no true understand-ing of the concept Keel was trying to communicate. For example, most references to Ultraterrestrials imply only extraterrestrials, which is incorrect.

So what did Keel have in mind with regards to Ultraterrestrials? Here’s a brief summary:

They may be composed of energy, inhabiting a spectrum (wavelength) of energy which we can neither observe or even presently detect.

They have a long history of interaction on this planet, though they are far older than the human race.

They feed off of humans, though the impli-cation is via the draining of energy and not the consumption of flesh. Keel used the apt phrase, ‘cattle of the gods’ when referenc-ing humans as a psychic food source for Ultraterestrials.

They are telepathic.

They can temporarily take on form or sub-stance which they use to interact with humans.

They are not extraterrestrials. Instead, extra-terrestrials are merely a ‘mask’ they wear.

They are responsible for all paranormal phe-nomena. Everything from Bigfoot sightings, ghosts, UFOs & aliens, Marian apparitions,

poltergeists, fairies, lake monsters and sea serpents such as the Loch Ness monster & sightings of various weird and mysterious creatures, among others, are just the mach-inations of Ultraterrestrials.

The implication is that Ultraterrestrials will appear in such guises as a prelude to feeding off of the emotions and energy of humans. For example, an Ultraterrestrial may stage a Marian apparition to draw in the hordes of believers who subsequently lift their hands to heaven and out pour their hearts and energy to hungry Ultraterrestrials.

They are not Demons, as most religious peo-ple would interpret them as. The reason why is because ‘Demon’ is just another mask they wear, just as ‘angel’ is.

While I would agree with Keel on his basic premise, I challenge his view regarding angels and demons. As a Christian theologian who affirms the authority and truth of the Holy Bible, it is obvious that angels, and their fallen counterparts (demons) are real, multi-dimensional beings created by God. We have accounts throughout the Scriptural record of human interaction with these beings, and I would ascribe much if not all ultraterrestrial interaction with humans to the work of demons, in pursuit of their goal of deceiving mankind in regard to spir-itual truth.

John Keel raised questions that all readers should ponder with regard to paranormal phenomena. The Ultraterrestrial Hypothesis addresses many of these issues in a more coherent fashion than any other, yet such an hypothesis can never be proven.

John wondered:

Why are there no naked ghosts? (Do clothes have souls too?)

Why does the Virgin Mary always appear beautiful and just like her statues? (The Real Mary lived in a time where there was practi-cally no hygiene, no sunscreen, and let’s face it, no dental care.)

Why is a sulphurous smell associated with many UFO / monster / ghost / poltergeist encounters?

If Bigfoot is merely an undiscovered animal, then why are there so many reports of this creature having glowing, self-luminescent eyes, vanishing into thin air and of leaving behind a sulphur smell?

angelic encounters are a much beloved and cherished aspect of so-called New age thought, yet why do no contemporary angel percipients ever realize that the ‘beings’ they are reporting do not meet the Biblical criteria for angels?

The same thing goes with Jesus. There are many reports of visions or apparitions of Jesus, and they all tend to represent the Jesus we know through art. The problem is that nobody alive today, nor any artist who has ever depicted Jesus, has seen him. are these people being deceived?

Why is it that aliens are reported to be able to walk through walls like ghosts?

These are all fascinating questions which lend some credence to the Ultraterrestrial Hypothesis. But as with any subject, unless a hypothesis can be tested and proven, it is ultimately conjecture.

At any rate, this small collection of John Keel’s work from his seminal period has been gathered together as a tribute to a man who had a profound influence on my investigative techniques, research methods, and thinking. I am fortunate to have been able to count John Keel as a friend and colleague, and his wit, insight and wry sense of humor is great-ly missed.

This work is dedicated to the memory of a fear-less explorer of the unknown, a man who plunged into the thick of monsters, flying saucers, Men in Black, and psychic vampires with wit, style, and an ever-curious mind — John A. Keel.

— Rev. Dr. R. W. Boeche

FLYING SAUCERS. This is the first and last time you will see those two words in this publication. We ho~e to est­ablish AN~~Y as an irregular newsletter devoted entIre­ly to the statistical and scientific analysis of all the many neglected ~cological, parapsychological and psychia­tric aspects surrounding the study of aArial anomalies (~\). We are primarily ooncernp.d with collecting Rnd oorrelating all known AA events in 8, systematic ma~ner so that we .ay eventually ~roduce a valid body of . statistical and corroborated evidence. This projeot will in no way compete with existing organizations. It is not 8 "club". No membership cards.will ever be issued. we do not seek or desire publicity. OUr only , ~urpose is to

. assemble the available facts and present them to the press and the public In a loglcal, unb1a.sed. manner. ile have no ax to grind, no "cause" to prove.

A large ~ro~ortlon of all the a.vailable UFO llterature Is based u~on hearsay and speculation, and many of the real and important problems have been suppressed a.t the source by the witnesses themselves, or have been ignored by' superficial investlgations whlch were concentrated on obtalning de.criptlons of the objects rather than study­ing .11 of the events and factors surrounding 'the sight­lngs. A massive body of sighting data has now been pub­lished'but has gone uncorrelated. The practice of con­centratIng on the objects alone has produced a very low yleld of "hard" facts. The failure of this method-or laok of method- demands that we develop and utilize a new system for collectIng and analysing the data.

ThIs issue presents some concrete suggestions for invest­igating the phenomena and it explalns briefly some of " those findIngs which appear to contradict the popular speculations. We hope that you will begir. to apply these methods in your own imsedlate a.rea and that you will particlpate in our study by submltting new reports (and

HAY 0 1 198Q