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

by Keel, John A.

  Since 1947, there has been a small but very vocal group of crackpots and publicity seekers who claim to be in almost constant touch with the “Brothers From Outer Space.” These people have founded mystical cults and published absurd books expounding sophomoric philosophies (supposedly passed on to them by the flying saucer operators), bringing ridicule to what is already, in the eyes of many skeptics, a pretty ridiculous subject anyway. The odious reputation of these groups makes many an apparently sincere “contactee” reluctant to step forward with his story and thus inadvertently join their ranks.

  But a few courageous souls have taken the plunge. Consider the alleged experience of a prominent Brazilian lawyer, Prof. Joao de Freitas Guimaraes, a sober, middle-aged military advocate in Sao Sebastiao. He says that he went joyriding in a flying saucer on a cool evening in June of 1956. For a long time afterward, he kept his experience to himself, sharing it with only a few friends. On a dull, overcast evening, he recalls, he was walking alone along a beach on an island off the coast of Brazil, when he saw a jet of water rise up. A “potbellied” machine surfaced and moved towards shore. To his astonishment, two men, both over 5’10” with fair hair and wearing tight green coveralls, clambered out. They approached him directly and silently indicated that they would like him to step aboard. He spoke to them in French, English, Italian, and Portuguese, but they didn’t seem to understand any of these languages. Since they didn’t seem hostile, and since he was overcome with curiosity, he accepted their unspoken invitation, climbed up a long ladder mounted outside the craft, and, with the help of the two men, stepped inside.

  The ladder was retracted and the door eased shut. The professor remained in a small compartment next to a window. He could not say later how many compartments there were in the craft. As the machine lifted into the air, he was surprised to see water splashing against the portholes. “Is it raining?” he asked.

  For the next forty minutes or so (he says his watch stopped during the flight), the flying object flitted about in the starlit upper atmosphere. During the trip, he noted that he felt pain and cold in his extremities. He tried to ask the men where they were from, but they did not answer. One of them showed him a chart, something like a Zodiac, and he had the feeling that they were trying to explain when they would return. They wanted him to meet them again. Finally, they delivered him to the spot where they had picked him up. Six months later, he told the story to a friend, Dr. Lincoln Feliciano, who contacted a Brazilian journalist. Prof. Guimaraes quickly became a celebrity of sorts in Brazil and was, he confessed, amazed by the grave respect his story was accorded.

  A more recent contactee is a California TV repairman named Sidney Padrick. Padrick, who is 46 years old, was strolling along Manresa Beach, CA at 2 a.m. on the morning of Jan. 30, 1965, when he says he heard a loud humming sound and saw a strange machine land nearby. It was, he said, about 50 feet long and 30 feet high. He has refused to describe it further, claiming that an Air Force major has instructed him not to discuss the details of his experience. In early newspaper accounts of the incident, he said a voice spoke to him from the craft and invited him aboard, assuring him that he would not be harmed. He says he entered through a square door and saw nine normal-looking men inside. One of them spoke to him in English. They all wore bluish-white, tight-fitting uniforms and had dark hair. He noted that they seemed to communicate to each other silently, through gestures and facial expressions. Although he insists he spent two hours aboard the machine, Padrick has not divulged much of what he saw or was told.

  A gifted linguist who once served as the British Consul in Brazil, Mr. Gordon Creighton, has been quietly compiling documentation on the many incidents in South America and the Soviet Union. He has turned up some astounding accounts. On the night of June 5, 1964, for example, a 42-yr. old doctor and his wife (they asked to remain anonymous, as many witnesses do) were driving from Cordoba to Rio Ceballos, Argentina, when suddenly, a huge brilliantly lighted object came out of the sky and landed directly in front of them on the highway.

  “I flashed my lights,” the doctor said, “as a signal for the other to dip his, for the light was so powerful that it was impossible to see the road at all.” But the light remained undimmed and continued to approach. The doctor pulled off the road and his engine stalled. The object came to within one yard of his car and halted there, the bright light slowly fading to violet. Now the two alarmed witnesses could see that it was an elongated, cigar-shaped object. They sat motionless in confusion for 20 minutes. There was no movement in the object as it blocked their path. Finally, the doctor tried to start his car again, but it wouldn’t respond. He was carrying a revolver, so he decided to get out and investigate. But just as he was about to open the door, he saw somebody – a very human somebody – coming up to the car.

  “Que le pasa, amigo?” (What’s the matter, friend?”) The person asked in a soft voice.

  “My car won’t start,” the doctor answered in Portuguese, taken aback.

  “Why don’t you try it again?” the man directed. The doctor turned the key and this time, to his surprise, the motor caught. Then he turned on his headlights. They spilled onto a “fantastic object,” a metal craft unlike anything he had ever seen before.

  “Don’t be frightened,” the mystery man continued. “I’m a terrestrial. I have a mission to complete here on Earth.” Then he walked off slowly toward two other human-looking beings, both dressed entirely in gray, who were apparently waiting for him beside the machine. All three got into it, and it took off quickly and disappeared into the night sky. The doctor and his wife reported that they began “to tremble and shake like leaves” and it was several minutes before they could pull themselves together and continue their journey.

  Another, even more incredible incident, is supposed to have occurred at almost the same spot seven years earlier. The witness, a young man from Cordoba, Argentina, swears that he was taken aboard a UFO there in April of 1957. He claims that he was headed toward Rio Ceballos on his motorcycle early one morning, when his engine suddenly stalled. As he dismounted to look for the trouble, he was stunned to see a gigantic disc-shaped object some 60 feet in diameter, hovering directly above him. In a state of terror, he leaped into a ditch and tried vainly to hide himself as the mysterious craft landed on the road nearby. A “lift device” descended from the machine, and a humanlike being appeared. The young man described this being as 5’8” tall, wearing “clothing like a diver’s suit – fitting the body closely – and appearing to be made of plastic rather than cloth.”

  This being walked over to the ditch where the youth was cowering and gently offered his hand, helping the Cordoban up and leading him into the craft. They entered the lift and rose into the saucer. Several other ufonauts were inside the machine, he said, seated before a series of intricate-looking control panels. None of them paid any attention to their visitor. He was surprised to notice a series of large square windows above the panels, because no windows had been visible at all from the outside. After a few minutes, his silent guide gestured towards the lift and took him back to the ground. The young man mentioned hearing a sound like the hissing of escaping air. The ufonaut put his hand on the youth’s shoulder in a gesture of farewell, and then returned to the craft. The witness reported that his motorcycle would not start until the strange flying machine had risen into the air.

  Not all ufonaut reports concern human-type beings. Some of them are described as “little men.” When police officer Lonnie Zamora reported seeing an egg-shaped UFO standing on four legs in Socorro, NM on April 24, 1964, he said that he had also seen “two children or small adults in white coveralls” walking around it. They leaped into the craft and flew off with a roar in front of his disbelieving eyes. Astronomer J. Allen Hynek, an official UFO consultant to the U.S. Air Force, investigated this case and termed it “one of the most puzzling,” without ever attempting to explain it.

  In 1949, two prospectors in Death Valley, CA told reporters that they had seen a flyin
g disc crash. They claimed they had chased two tiny pilots across the sand dunes until they disappeared. When the prospectors returned to the crash site, the craft had also disappeared.

  Radio announcer James Townsend of station KEYL, in Long Prairie, MN, claimed he saw three “animated tin cans,” six inches high, around a rocket-shaped device in the center of Hwy. 27 on Oct. 23, 1965. Townsend says he watched the object take off with a bright glow and a loud humming sound. He led the local police to the site and they observed a large, glowing sphere in the sky over the area.

  “Little men” have perhaps gotten more publicity than any other type, but there are other varieties of ufonauts as well. One of the most common is a stiff-walking character with a “melon-shaped” head. A recent adventure with this type of being was related by Ricardo Mieres, a 17-yr. old Argentinean. Mieres insists that he encountered some kind of “robot” while motorcycling down a road outside of Parana at 8:30 p.m. on July 26, 1962. He nearly ran off of the road, he told investigators later, when he came upon a tall creature with a melon-shaped head and large round eyes that stared at him fixedly. The creature grabbed the boy’s scarf and turned abruptly away in a manner Mieres described as “scarcely human.” Badly frightened, the boy sped back to the city and gathered some friends. They returned to the spot in time to see a large, white light rise into the sky. The area was covered with strange footprints and deep tracks.

  It would, of course, be easy to discount the excited testimony of a 17-yr. old boy but, less than a month later, a medical doctor and his wife came face-to-face with the same kind of beings in the same locale. Dr. and Mrs. J. Gazcue were driving near Parana on Aug. 21, 1962 when they observed two “strange persons” walking towards the road and making signals for him and his wife to stop. The two approached from a “halo of light” near the roadside. They were over six feet tall and had light hair and huge, widely separated eyes. The doctor ignored their signals and stepped on the gas. Local newspapers reported that Mrs. Gazcue suffered a “nervous attack” over the incident and required several days to recover.

  A retired longshoreman, John F. Reeves, 66, of Brooksville, Florida, swears he met this kind of being on the afternoon of March 2, 1963. He says that he was taking a long, solitary walk, as was his habit when, about 1:30 p.m., out on the dunes a mile-and-a-half from his home, he saw a circular craft standing on four legs in the sand. Later, he described it as being about 30 feet in diameter and eight feet thick. There was a small dome on top, and the whole thing was a reddish-purple color, “like a soap bubble,” glistening in the sun. Curious, he started to walk toward it when he was stunned to see a “space-suited being” step out of the bushes and turn stiffly toward him in a slow, mechanical manner. The creature was, he told reporters later, about five feet tall and appeared to be wearing a tight, grayish-silver garment with a transparent globe over its head. Its face, he noted, appeared normal, except that the eyes were unusually large and set wide apart, and its chin seemed to come to a point. It was wearing mittens of some pliable material.

  As he stood paralyzed with fear, he saw the creature reach to its side and produce a small black box, which it raised to its face. There was a blinding flash, “like lightning in the night,” Reeves said. He turned and started to run, but stumbled and fell, knocking his glasses off in the process. A second flash of light went off behind him and, when he looked up, he saw the creature mounting a ladder on the craft. The ladder retracted, and the machine lifted with a high-pitched whine, shooting off at high speed. Holes were found in the sand where the object’s legs had supposedly stood, and there were several odd dumbbell-shaped footprints in the area. Reeves also found two pieces of thin paper, “like Kleenex” containing some strange hieroglyphics, which he turned over to Air Force investigators. The Air Force later classified the incident as a hoax, even though Reeves was given a series of lie-detector tests and passed them all.

  Many other witnesses have reported the robotlike beings with melon-shaped heads and large, widely spaced eyes. On Aug. 3, 1966, at 5:30 in the morning, a 50-yr. old woman in Erie, PA was awakened by the sound of barking dogs. She looked out of her bedroom window, she says, and saw a very strange being. It was walking up the street away from the United Oil Storage tanks on W. 3rd St. She describes it as about 5’6” tall, with very broad shoulders and a slender build. It was dressed in a bright yellow garment with no visible pockets or seams. Its head was large, “moon-shaped,” and seemed to be covered with “straggly, muddy-colored hair.”

  “He moved,” she said, “like a mechanical windup toy. The legs did not bend at the knees, and it held its arms tight against its sides.” Whatever it was, it frightened her enough so that she woke up her husband, and they decided to call the police. The police just laughed. But a few days later, another woman in the same area reported seeing an identical creature. She was driving down the street in the early morning when the being stepped into her path. She stopped her car and the thing “pounded on the hood.” Then it shuffled stiffly off into the darkness.

  There have also been reports of small, black monsters. A luminous sphere blocked a street in Caracas, Venezuela early on the morning of Nov. 28, 1954, forcing two truck drivers to stop. When they got out of their cab to take a look, they were attacked by three dwarfs covered with bristly hair. One of the drivers, Gustavo Gonzales, pulled a knife and tried to stab one of the creatures. He later reported that his knife glanced off “as if it were hitting steel.” The truck drivers managed to escape. A local doctor, out on a late call, witnessed the whole episode and confirmed their story.

  At 4 a.m. on the morning of Aug. 16, 1955, another truck driver, Ernest Sudard, 35, encountered a UFO on a street in Bradford, England and briefly glimpsed a small being, about four feet tall, wearing skintight black clothes with a silver disc on his chest. This one moved with a peculiar, jerky motion, holding its arms tightly against its sides.

  The strangest being of all is probably the one sighted in Malvern, Arkansas, last summer. Fabar Mills, a local merchant who saw it, called it an “unidentified walking object.” He described the creature as being luminous, about eight feet tall, and changing in color from red to orange to yellow.

  Unfortunately, each new ufonaut sighting only adds to the mystery, a mystery that the U.S government has now assigned scientists at the Univ. of Colorado to solve. Any immediate solution, however, seems improbable. The origins and motivations of these creatures, if they are real, can only be speculated about. But millions of people throughout the world are now convinced that something is going on, and that there is “somebody out there.” More and more respected scientists, too, are beginning to take the matter seriously as they delve into the question of life on other worlds.

  In the spring of 1966, some 300 physicists, astronomers, and exobiologists met in California to discuss the possibility of extraterrestrial life. At that meeting, Dr. Lee A. DuBridge, president of the California Institute of Technology, said, “Sometimes I think we are alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, it’s a staggering thought.”

  CHAPTER 9

  WEST VIRGINIA: A PLETHORA OF PARANORMAL - 1994 LECTURE

  I made Point Pleasant, West Virginia my headquarters in 1966. I then fanned out to the rest of West Virginia investigating all these various things. It’s now gotten very expensive to do these kinds of trips. It was my procedure in those days to go up to the police station first and introduce myself. because I’m a Yankee. In those days, I carried a pile of press credentials. I would introduce myself to the police so that they knew I was just another harmless nut. My second step was to go up to the local newspaper and introduce myself there. They always – large and small – wanted to interview me, and I always turned them down. I didn’t want anything in the papers about me. I just wanted to know what was happening there. My third step would be to find the local historian. Every town – even a town of 500 people – has somebody who fancies themselves the local historian of the town. Sometimes it’s the local
doctor; most often it’s the local librarian. Those are the three contacts I would make first, before I would go out and talk to witnesses and such.

  I would always ask the police my usual list of peculiar questions. I still do this, and they always act astonished. One of my questions was, “Has anyone been killed by lightning here lately?” This doesn’t normally happen very often. It happens only 800 times a year, worldwide. But whenever I asked this to police where they were having a lot of UFO sightings, their mouths would drop and they’d say, “My God, how’d you know? Just last week somebody got killed by a lightning bolt.” It’s a very unusual occurrence. In one town in Ohio, I arrived at the police station just as they were bringing in a body that had been killed by a lightning bolt. This apparent link was odd. There was something electrical going on in these towns with UFO sightings.

  Thirty years ago, somebody was cruising around West Virginia and Ohio in an old automobile, harassing young ladies in their cars, trying to drive them off the road and so on. This is not uncommon today, but it was uncommon then. Witnesses described this man (probably a man in his 30s) as wearing a “frightwig.” He was always driving what looked like a car that was 10 or 15 years old, but kept in very good condition. It didn’t take me long to figure out that there was some serial rapist on the loose in that area. I would approach my friends at the different police departments and say, “Hey, I’ve heard these stories. There’s a maniac on the loose here.” They would always pooh-pooh it. They’d say, “Oh no, Keel , these women are making things up,” and they would ignore these stories. I warned them that there was something out of the ordinary going on, and that there was one person in that area who should probably be arrested.

  Gray Barker, who lived in West Virginia, also came across some of these stories on his own. In Braxton County, young people were disappearing in large numbers. These were mostly young men below the age of 20. They would be hitchhiking to, say, a local cinema or something, and just disappear off the face of the earth. Again, I told the police that there were too many of these disappearances – that they had a maniac on the loose. The police always assured me that I was wrong. I was an out-of-towner. What did I know?