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

by Keel, John A.

  All of this is testable. We now have the technology to deal with this. But very few people are trying to deal with it. Unfortunately, they’re dealing with it only through beliefs. Most of them are trying to prove that there is perpetual life – that we exist after death. That is the wrong approach. We should be studying this field and its affects on all of our apparatus. We should learn how to control it. We have the technology to do this now. It’s very predictable that at sometime in the very near future, somebody will come up with the money, the intelligence, and the training to actually interpret all this and learn how to control it. Then, we can literally control the universe. We could predict the future with a machine.

  Speaking of which, clairvoyants are wrong most of the time. They usually get the time element all screwed up. They’ll say something is going to happen next month, but it happens next year, or doesn’t happen at all. Those of you who’ve read my books know I’ve had some experience with this. I’ve received predictions that did come true, but they came true in an awkward way. I received predictions about Martin Luther King’s assassination before it happened, but they got the dates wrong. And there was nothing I could do about it.

  This is another problem with looking into the future. You can’t really change it. But if we have the machinery to do it, and the technology to do it, we may reach a point where we can control the future by changing it. Then we can change the whole destiny of the human race. Of course, human nature being what it is, once we’ve mastered all this and started controlling the forcefield, we’ll probably end up destroying ourselves.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE UFO NAME GAME – BEYOND REALITY MAGAZINE, JAN. 1976

  On Aug. 7, 1806, a group of settlers around the odd formation called Chimney Rock in North Carolina observed an unusual phenomenon. According to the Rev. George Newtown (who published a letter describing the episode in the Raleigh, NC Register that month), a large group of luminous objects appeared in the air around the high column of rock. Some of these objects assumed the forms of human beings, and their luminosity was blinding. A similar formation of lights reappeared there in 1811. The local Cherokee Indians have legends about the place dating back hundreds of years.

  One of the principle witnesses named in Rev. Newtown’s account was Mrs. Patsy Reeves. One hundred and fifty nine years later, a John Reeves became involved in a sensational, widely publicized “flying saucer” landing in Florida. The following spring, in 1966, a family named Reeves near Salem, Oregon became plagued with strange spheres of light, apparently under intelligent control, which moved about the rooms of their house. Police officers and reporters called to the scene also witnessed the phenomenon. On the surface, these incidents appear to be unconnected coincidences. The witnesses involved were unrelated and were widely separated by space and time.

  In Dec. 1967, the Silver Bridge spanning the Ohio River at Pt. Pleasant, WV collapsed, carrying 46 people to their deaths. Point Pleasant had been very much in the news that year, because of the almost constant UFO sightings. One of the (supposed) bridge victims was an Air Force officer named Alvie Maddox.

  Three months later, a police officer in Texas named Alvis Maddox was mentioned in the press after allegedly seeing and pursuing a flying saucer in an area where another man, Carol Wayne Watts, was claiming repeated visits from UFOs. (Also, a Dallas police officer named Alvin Maddox was in the news, due to renewed investigation of the JFK assassination.)

  Another famous incident revolved around a Californian name Rex Heflin, who took a series of controversial photographs of a flying saucer in 1965. On April 2, 1971, a Morris Heflin reportedly saw a circular, metallic flying machine near Oklahoma City, OK.

  Is the repetition of these names meaningless?

  Over the past 28 years, hundreds of thousands of phenomenal events have been described in newspaper, magazines, and books, and hundreds of thousands of witnesses have been named in print. When dealing with such a large body of evidence (or population demographic), certain laws of probability should surface. We might expect that more Smiths would see more UFOs than anybody else, simply because there are more Smiths around. But in actuality, the name Smith rarely appears in a UFO report.

  We might also expect the witness populations to conform to the national distributions, racially and religiously. Thus, 10% of all witnesses should be black, because 10% of the population is black. Five percent should be Jewish, 20% should be Catholic, and so on. However, it doesn’t work out this way. Sightings of flying saucers and related phenomena appear to occur on a selected basis.

  Among the names most frequently noted in UFO reports are Hill, Allen, and Clark. Naturally, a great many other names also appear. Statistically, if 1,000 random events are reported this year, the names and backgrounds of the witnesses should balance out roughly to the distribution of the national population.

  What are the odds for someone named Reeves seeing a UFO (or a ghost, for that matter) this year? They are approximately 400 million to one.

  The ten most common surnames (Smith, Johnson, Williams(on), Brown, Jones, Miller, Davis, Martin(ez), Anderson, and Wilson, according to the Social Security Administration) should dominate the massive sighting data of the past 28 years. They don’t... Jones, for example, rarely appears in UFO reports. The most outstanding case was the low-level sighting of a metallic sphere made by Tad Jones over a highway near Charleston, West Virginia in January 1967.

  The New York (Manhattan) telephone directory lists approximately 900,000 people. Of these, only 13 are named Reeve(s), and 10 others spell it “Reaves” – 23 out of 900,000. (There are 9 pages of Smiths.) If a flying saucer should appear in New York City, and if it should be seen by only 3 people, the odds are far greater that one of those people would be named Smith rather than Reeves.

  Heflin is an even rarer name. Only four are listed in the NYC phone book; yet two Heflins have not only been involved in important UFO incidents, but have experienced follow-up events as well. Rex Heflin allegedly received visits from bogus Air Force officers after the existence of his photos was revealed. Morris Heflin saw his mysterious UFO a second time, on May 8, 1971. This is like lightning striking in the same place twice.

  Another rare name is Kiehl (or Kiehle, the original spelling of my name). Only three are listed in the Manhattan directory. Shortly after the author’s interest in the UFO phenomenon became publicly known in 1966, one William J. Kiehl surfaced on the West Coast and revealed an incredible sighting that had taken place 50 years earlier in Canada.

  As a boy, he had seen a saucer-shaped object hover over a lake, he said, and little men were visible. His story, remarkably detailed after such a long lapse of time, appears in the opening chapter of Coral Lorenzen’s book The UFO Occupants. So far as is known, no other Kiehl/Kiehle/Keels have been witnesses to any reported phenomena. This makes William J. Kiehl’s account all the more remarkable.

  The name Clark is number 18 on the Social Security Administration’s list. There are at least 385, 206 Clarks in the U.S. A number of Clarks are prominent in ufology. Over the years, several Clarks have been named in sighting reports.

  Hill is another name that seems to pop up frequently, the most famous being the late Barney Hill, who supposedly underwent an extraordinary contact experience. Incidentally, he was also one of the few blacks to become publicly identified with the phenomenon. Hill ranks as number 32 on the SSA list (there are 289,655 of them, 480 of whom are listed in the Manhattan directory). Another famous contactee, George Adamski, bore an even scarier name. A mere three are listed in Manhattan.

  In a long line of controversial contact reports, the ufonauts have identified themselves with variations of the name Allen. Radio personality “Long John” Nebel has frequently commented on this Allen correlation. The surname Allen is number 26 on the list, and about 960 Allens are listed in the NYC phone book. Like Clark, Allen has appeared frequently in sighting reports, and a number of Allens are important in UFO lore: Carlos Allende, Dr. Gordon Allen, the Alyn men
tioned by assorted contactees, etc.

  If UFO sightings were completely sporadic and accidental, as most UFO enthusiasts believe, then many of these coincidences would have been next to impossible. Apparently there is a hidden factor here – a factor of selectivity. Either the phenomenon itself selects certain witnesses because of some obscure genealogical factor (this was, incidentally, one of Adamski’s claims), or, if we care to be more pragmatic, certain strains in certain families suffer inherited traits that make them prone to hallucinations or psychic experiences. There is, in fact, interesting evidence that psychic ability is inherited.

  In my Flying Saucer Review special, Beyond Condon, and in my books, I have pointed out that the names adopted by the entities usually have roots in ancient mythology. But I have always been baffled by Woodrow Derenberger’s alleged contact (West Virginia, 1966) with an entity who called himself “Cold.” This might be explained by John Mitchell’s research into ancient leys (The View Over Atlantis, Ballantine Books). He points out (on p. 10) that the names “Red, White, and Black are common [along ley routes]: so are Cold or Cole, Dod, Merry, and Ley.”

  During my wanderings in West Virginia, I found traces of leys. It may be that Derenberger’s first encounter took place at a point along an erased ley. UFO events, like religious events, are often allegorical and contain, subtle, hidden clues.

  It would take a computer project to sift and correlate the many thousands of names mentioned in the reports of the past 28 years. Statistically, as we have already stated, these reports should be dominated by Smith, Johnsons, Williams, Browns, and so on. In actual fact, less widely distributed names tend to dominate the reports. Those who have investigated and reported phenomenal occurrences in their own areas might list the names of all the people involved, and try to determine their inter-relationship, if any.

  It is always important to also collect the racial and religious backgrounds of the witnesses. An extraordinary number of American witnesses are either full-blooded Indians or have some Native blood in their background. In a recent case now being investigated in Indiana, the only Indian within a 200-mile area has been undergoing a series of repeated experiences with low-flying UFOs.

  Flying saucers are not only defying the laws of gravity and inertia, they are also defying the laws of probability in their uncanny selection of witnesses. If UFOs are genuine ultraterrestrial (interdimensional) or extraterrestrial phenomena, then all this is an indication that they know far more about us as individuals than we can suspect or rationalize.

  The big question confronting the psychiatrists and psychologists now immersed in UFO studies is: Do the UFOs select their witnesses, or do specific people tend to create UFO experiences from within themselves by some unknown mental process? Why do the Allens, Hills, Reeves, and Heflins see more of these things than the Smiths, Johnsons, and Browns?

  Ralph Blum, the New York writer who authored Beyond Earth: Man’s Contact With UFOs, told me that he, too, is concerned with the strange coincidences involving names. Many of the place names and surnames in UFO reports, he points out, refer to water in various ways. The name Reeves is similar to a French word meaning “river bank.” In English, “reeve” is a nautical term meaning “to pass a rope through a hole.”

  The seeming importance of this obscure nautical symbolism can be seen in the following story from the pages of the Houston Daily Post (April 28, 1897):

  Merkel, Texas, April 26 - Some parties returning from church last night noticed a heavy object dragging along with a rope attached. They followed it until it caught on a rail crossing the railroad. On looking up, they saw what they supposed was the airship. It was not near enough to get an idea of the dimensions. A light could be seen protruding from several windows; one bright light was in front, like the headlight of a locomotive. After some ten minutes, a man was seen descending the rope. He came near enough to be plainly seen. He wore a light-blue sailor suit, small in size. He stopped when he discovered parties at the anchor. He cut the rope below him and sailed off in a northeast direction. The anchor is now on exhibition at the blacksmith shop of Elliot and Miller, and is attracting the attention of hundreds of people.

  A small man in a blue sailor suit climbing down a rope from the sky... Rather silly, isn’t it? Sillier still, researchers have discovered two identical stories in very obscure historical texts. An ancient Irish manuscript, the Speculum Regali, gives us this account from A.D. 956:

  A marvel happened in the borough of Cloera, one Sunday while people were at mass. In this town, there is a church to the memory of St. Kinarus. It befell that a metal anchor was dropped from the sky, with a rope attached to it, and one of the sharp flukes caught in the wooden arch above the church door. The people rushed out of the church and saw, in the sky, a ship with men on board, floating at the end of the anchor cable. They saw a man leap overboard and pull himself down the cable to the anchor, as if to unhook it. He appeared as if he were swimming in water. The folk rushed up and tried to seize him, but the bishop forbade the people to hold the man, for fear it might kill him. The man was freed and hurried up the cable to the ship, where the crew cut the rope and the ship rose and sailed away out of sight. The anchor is in the church as a testimony to this singular occurrence.

  For many years, a church in Bristol, England, is said to have had a very unique grille on its doors: a grille made from another anchor that allegedly came from the sky. Around A.D. 1200, during the observance of a feast day, the anchor came plummeting out of the sky trailing a rope. It got caught in a mound of stones, according to the story. As a mob of churchgoers gathered around to watch, a “sailor” came down the rope, hand over hand, to free it. This crowd succeeded in grabbing him. They pushed him back and forth until, according to the Gervase of Tilbury’s account in the rare manuscript Otia Imperialia, “He suffocated by the mist of our moist atmosphere, and expired.” His unseen comrades overhead wisely cut the rope and took off. The anchor remained behind, as in the other stories, and was installed on the church doors…

  Reviewing the similarities of these reports, one is almost tempted to speculate that someone merely updated the ancient accounts. Yet, as researcher Lucius Farish recently remarked, “a citizen of Merkel, Texas, possessing a copy of a rare manuscript like the Speculum Regali in 1897 would be fully as fantastic as the reports themselves.”

  A farmer fifteen miles north of Sioux City, Iowa, Robert Hibbard, claimed a distressing experience with an anchor-dragging UFO early in April of 1897. A dispatch that appeared in the April 5th edition of Michigan’s Saginaw Evening News stated that “Hibbard’s reputation for truth has never been bad, and the general opinion is that either he ‘had them’ or dreamed his remarkable experience.” The article continues:

  On the night in question, he says he was tramping about his farm in the moonlight when suddenly, a dark body, lighted on each side, with a row of what looked like incandescent lamps, loomed up some distance to the south of him, at a height of perhaps a mile from the ground. He watched it intently until it was directly over his head.

  At this point, the craft evidently decided to turn around. In accomplishing this maneuver, the machine sank considerably. Hibbard did not notice a drag rope with a grapnel attached, which dangled from the rear of the boat-like object. Suddenly, as the machine rose again from the ground, it hooked itself firmly in his trousers and shot away again to the south. Had it risen to any considerable height, the result, Hibbard thinks, would have been disastrous. Either his weight was sufficient to keep it near terra firma, or the operator did not care to ascend to a higher level.

  On the bank of the dry run, where the farmer finally made his escape, grows a small sapling. Hibbard passed near this obstruction in his flight and, as a last resort, grabbed it with both hands. Instantly there was a sound of tearing cloth, and the machine went on with a section of Hibbard’s unmentionables. Hibbard himself fell precipitately into the run. He related his experience to neighbors and, despite their grins of incredulity, firmly maintain
s the truth of the story.

  We have only two choices: We can either dismiss all four of these stories as being somehow derivative of one another and pure poppycock; or, we can assume that mysterious airships, all dragging anchors, appeared in 956, 1200, and 1897. There are, in fact, a number of other reports in which UFOs were said to be dragging something along the ground. That still doesn’t prove that anchors are standard equipment on some of the objects. If they were using anchors, what could the purpose have been? Could some of the early UFOs have been so primitive that the only way they could hover was by being anchored to the ground?

  Would spaceships from another world require anchors? Would they need to chase after people whose names seem to refer to anchors (like “Reeves”)?

  CHAPTER 11

  THE SUBJECT OF SAUCERS – ANOMALY MAGAZINE #1, MAY 1969

  A large proportion of the available UFO literature is based upon hearsay and speculation. Many of the real and important problems have been suppressed, at the source, by the witnesses themselves, or have been ignored by superficial investigations that were concentrated on obtaining descriptions of the objects, rather than studying all of the events and factors surrounding the sightings. 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 yield of “hard” facts. The failure of this method – or lack of method – demands that we develop and utilize a new system for collecting and analyzing the data.