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

by Keel, John A.

  Two pilots of the X-15 rocket plane also had close brushes with unidentified flying objects in the early 1960s. The late Joe Walker (who was killed in a freak air collision that destroyed the prototype of the A-11 supersonic bomber) saw a formation of cylindrical objects at an altitude of 246,700 feet in the spring of 1962. His onboard cameras photographed the objects. These movies were later shown at a single press conference, and then never heard of again.

  A few months later, on July 17, 1962, Major Robert White was flying the X-15 at 314,750 feet when a gray-white object appeared and paced alongside his plane. He was doing 3,832 miles per hour at the time. The thing moved ahead of him and finally glided out of sight over his canopy. “There are things out there!” he shouted excitedly into his radio. “There absolutely are!”

  Both the U.S. and soviet space efforts have been plagued by a bizarre sequence of coincidences and accidents that appear to be tantamount to sabotage. This is ridiculous, of course, unless we are trying to sabotage each other. Actually, there is a surprising amount of cooperation and exchange of information between the two nations on matters dealing with space.

  Nevertheless, both American and soviet rockets have an eerie habit of disappearing soon after launch. Since these rockets are carefully tracked both visually and by radar from the moment they leave their pads, the disappearances are all the more baffling. They do not explode. They do not crash. They simply vanish.

  For example, a soviet “Molniya” communications satellite was put into orbit early in 1967, and was meant to stay aloft for years. It disappeared without a trace. Other Soviet Satellites in fixed circuits around the Earth have suddenly and mysteriously de-orbited and crashed aimlessly to the Earth. A number of American rockets have disappeared completely, seconds after being launched.

  Another peculiar problem is the malfunction of communications equipment. This may be the most serious problem of all. Between 1962-64, four different U.S. satellites mysteriously stopped transmitting signals back to earth. Then, months later, they just as mysteriously resumed transmissions. In 1967, a satellite that had been silent for almost five years suddenly began broadcasting again.

  What makes this so baffling is the fact that all satellites and space capsules carry multiple transmitters and backup systems. If one fails, the other cuts in automatically. This equipment has been developed to a fine degree and should be almost foolproof. But it isn’t. Ufologists are concerned over these incidents, because it is known that the flying saucers can somehow interfere with electrical apparatus at will. This is called the “EM (Electromagnetic) Effect” and has been reported hundreds of times. Cars have stalled, and radios and TV sets have gone dead, when UFOs were in the vicinity. In a number of well-documented cases, police radios have suddenly emitted strange sounds and voices as weird objects loomed overhead. The voices are usually described as “rapid-fire grunting” – guttural sounds somewhat like a combination of Spanish and German. No one has ever been able to identify the language, although thousands of persons, including ham radio operators, have picked up these voices.

  Astronaut Gordon Cooper has also heard these weird voice transmissions. During his fourth pass over Hawaii on May 15, 1963, Cooper’s signals to ground control were sharply interrupted by an “unintelligible foreign language.” NASA technicians were puzzled. Who could have deliberately cut in on the VHF (Very High Frequency) channel reserved for space flights? Tapes of the broadcast stymied language experts. The source of the strange “grunting” was never determined.

  On the same flight, Gordon Cooper reported that a glowing greenish disk with a red tail was closing in on his spacecraft. He was passing over Australia at the time, and personnel at the Muchea Tracking Station scurried outside to take a look. Over 200 persons clearly saw the object, which was apparently much bigger than Cooper’s little space capsule. His description of it was broadcast worldwide on radio and television but, when he returned to the ground, he refused to discuss it.

  “As far as I am concerned,” Cooper said later, “there have been too many unexplained examples of UFO sightings around this Earth for us to rule out the possibility that some form of life exists out there, beyond our own world.”

  In June 1966, a whole chain of strange events surrounded the successful attempt to rendezvous a manned capsule and a target vehicle in space. Originally, astronauts Thomas P. Stafford and Eugene A. Cernan were supposed to be launched immediately after the ATDA target vehicle was sent aloft. But their liftoff was suddenly postponed. NASA hastily explained that there was some “interference” with the radio relays to and from the ground. NBC’s Huntley and Brinkley were at the Cape doing a live broadcast of the space launches. That afternoon, June 1st, they set astonishing precedent and entered into a discussion of flying saucers – the only time this was ever done on a rocket launch program. They read a carefully prepared statement from the U.S. Air Force that admitted that UFOs had been seen by astronauts, but that “flying saucers were reported more frequently in other parts of the world, such as South America, than in the United States.” This eight-minute discussion really came out of left field. It seemed to indicate that everyone at the Cape knew there was “something up there” besides the ATDA vehicle.

  That night, at about 10:30 p.m., a news flash was aired by all of the radio and TV networks declaring, “The Defense Department has announced that three UFOs are in orbit with the target vehicle.”

  These UFOs had been picked up by the radar net tracking the ATDA craft. The next day, there were varying reports of from 4 to 12 unidentified objects in orbit with the vehicle. The Air Force lamely explained that these objects were probably part of the plastic shroud that covered the rendezvous device at launch.

  Stafford and Cernan were kept on the ground for two days until those problems of “interference” were resolved. When they were finally launched on June 3rd, they found that the plastic covering of the ATDA vehicle had failed to jettison and was still in place. In any case, the plastic would not have given a radar return. There was no further comment from NASA, the Air Force, or the Defense Department about those UFOs.

  A month later, on July 19, 1966, the command pilot of Gemini-10, John W. Young, radioed to ground control and reported: “We have two bright objects up here in our orbital path. I don’t think they’re stars. They look like we are going right along with them.”

  The newsmen in the ground control center perked up their ears, but the loudspeaker suddenly went dead. NASA officials were apparently “censoring” Young’s descriptions of the objects. When the speakers cut in again, Young was saying, “They just disappeared. I guess they were satellites of some kind.”

  Four hours later, a spokesman for the Dept. of Defense told reporters that a check had been made of all the known objects in space – 1,091 artificial satellites and pieces of rocket debris – and that one of them could have been the “two bright objects.”

  “We have been unable to identify the two satellites,” the spokesman said.

  The problem of unidentified flying objects is much more complex and worrisome than most UFO buffs would like to believe. The Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization (APRO) has been studying the mystery for 16 years, and L.J. Lorenzen, the electronics engineer who heads the organization, has expressed concern that the objects may ultimately prove to be hostile to us. If this is the case, then the government secrecy is understandable. It would be standard military procedure to study and try to understand any potential threat as quietly as possible. Premature disclosure of the nature and intent of the mysterious objects might very well lead to public panic.

  A “false target,” in the form of the Air Force’s “Project Blue Book,” was established in 1952 to absorb the brunt of the UFO buffs’ anger and confusion. It is very probable that NASA and other organizations outside the Air Force are far more concerned with the problem and Know a great deal about it. Some well-informed observers, such as Frank Edwards, have suggested that somehow the UFOs may actually be trying to impede our s
pace efforts and keep us bound to this pitiful little planet.

  The evidence to support this uncomfortable theory mounts daily. Since 1964, there have been innumerable cases in which UFOs have not only jammed radios and stalled cars, but have also caused telephone systems to fail. There were over 1,000 unexplained “blackouts” in the U.S. last year. Most of these occurred in areas where UFO sightings had become commonplace. Another weird factor is the frequent outbreak of unexplained fires in such areas, and the discovery of abandoned, completely burned out automobiles. Some of these autos have been found in inaccessible places such as wooded hilltops, where they could not possibly have been driven or towed. How did they get there? No one knows.

  Cape Kennedy and the Space Center in Houston, TX have not escaped these eerie problems. On Jan. 27, 1967, astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee were going through a dry run in an Apollo Command Module atop a rocket at Cape Kennedy. A telephone wire ran from the ground control center to the capsule. Grissom was talking to the center by wire, not by radio, yet unnatural static and weird noises were drowning out his voice.

  “If I can’t talk to you from here,” Grissom complained, “how do you expect to hear me from the moon?”

  Virgil Grissom never made it to the moon. A few minutes later, a sudden fire engulfed the interior of the module, and all three men died instantly.

  Is somebody somewhere trying to tell us something?

  CHAPTER 18

  UFOS AND ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN: A NOTED AUTHORITY’S WEIRDEST CASES – MALE MAGAZINE, OCT. 1969

  You are driving down a lonely country road late at night, with lively music from your radio helping to keep you alert. You haven’t been drinking. You just want to get home to bed. Suddenly, your headlights seem to go dim, and you fiddle with the switch to no avail. Then, heavy static drowns out the music on the radio. You feel an eerie, tingling sensation, and an indefinable fear tickles the back of your head and dries your throat. Then, a tall figure shambles out of the bushes alongside the road, and steps in front of your fading headlights. It is at least seven feet tall, maybe more, and it seems to be covered with long hair from head to foot. It opens its mouth and screams – a bloodcurdling cry. The face is demon-like, the eyes a fiery red. You are gripped with terror; you jam the accelerator to the floorboards, and speed off without looking back.

  Later, when you try to tell your friends about it, they laugh out loud and kid you. So, you don’t dare mention it again.

  In the past few years, hundreds of people in California, Michigan, Florida, New York, India, Brazil, Argentina, and dozens of other places have had identical experiences with these monsters and freaks, which appear out of nowhere and then disappear again into limbo. Posses using dogs and helicopters have searched in vain for these mysterious creatures. Zoologists and biologists have collected plaster casts of the gigantic footprints they often leave behind. Early in 1969, two world-famous scientists finally discovered what might have been the actual body of one of these half-human beasts. They examined it and photographed it. And then someone stole the corpse. It hasn’t been seen since.

  Strangest of all, these hairy monsters have a disturbing habit of turning up in areas where flying saucers have been seen. Their brief appearances are often accompanied by manifestations that have long been associated with UFOs, such as the dimming of headlights, radio static, and the stalling of motor vehicles. Ufologists have labeled such phenomena “the electromagnetic (EM) effect,” assuming that flying saucers are sometimes surrounded by powerful magnetic fields that wreak havoc with electrical systems. There are thousands of cases of this. In 1966-68, a team of scientists at Colorado University studied the EM effect carefully as part of an overall UFO investigation financed by the U.S. Air Force. They were completely baffled.

  “Of all the physical effects claimed to be due to the presence of UFOS,” the Colorado scientists stated in their final report, “the alleged malfunction of automobile motors is perhaps the most puzzling. This claim is frequently made in reports involving multiple, independent witnesses. Witnesses seem certain that the function of their cars was affected by the unidentified object, which sometimes reportedly was not seen until after the malfunction was noted. No satisfactory explanation for such effects, if indeed they occurred, is apparent.”

  On Sunday evening, May 18, 1969, the lights went out in a small area outside rising sun, Indiana (in Ohio County). The home of Mr. and Mrs. Lester Kaiser was without power for about two hours. They thought nothing of the incident at the time, although strange lights and weird flying objects had occasionally been sighted along a nearby ridge.

  At 7:30 p.m. on the following evening, May 19th, young George Kaiser was walking towards a tractor on the farm, when his dog began to growl and bark. He looked up and saw a grotesque figure standing about 25 feet away. Whatever it was, it was the size of a man, and was covered with black fur.

  “I watched it for about two minutes before it saw me,” young Kaiser told investigators later. “It stood in a fairly upright position, although it was bent over in the middle of its back, with arms about the same height as a normal human being, I’d say it was about 5’8” or so, and had a very muscular structure. The head sat directly on the shoulders and the face was black, with hair that stuck out on the back of its head. It had eyes set close together and a very short forehead. It was covered with hair, except for the back of the hands and the face. The hands looked like normal hands, not claws.”

  George was transfixed with shock and fright for a moment. Then he made a move to get into the family automobile nearby. The creature made a “strange grunting sound,” turned, jumped over a ditch, and ran down the road at high speed, quickly disappearing out of sight. Footprints were found in the dirt by the ditch. They showed three toes plus a big toe. Plaster casts were later made of these prints.

  A neighbor, Mr. Charles Rolfing, reportedly watched an unidentified flying object for about eight minutes, shortly after 10:15 p.m. on May 20th, as it moved about the area. He studied it through binoculars and described it as being a glowing, greenish white.

  So here we have a sequence of interesting coincidences: a local power failure on May 18th; a creature sighting on May 19th; and a UFO sighting on May 20th. As Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger remarked, “Once is happen stance; twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action.”

  Most of the modern ABSM (Abominable Snowman) sightings in the U.S. have been made by witnesses in automobiles on isolated backroads. It is rare for the creatures to openly approach a house or farm as one apparently did in Indiana. Canada has a long history of ABSM sightings dating back to the middle of the 19th Century. California’s “Bigfoot” has been a local legend for decades. The mountainous, heavily forested state of West Virginia has produced a fascinating catalog of hairy bogeymen.

  A West Virginian named W.C. “Doc” Priestley claimed that a hairy humanoid ruined the electrical system of his automobile in 1960. That summer, numerous people around Parsons, WV allegedly saw a gruesome eight-foot-tall thing covered with shaggy hair and graced with two huge eyes that “shone like big balls of fire.” In October 1960, “Doc” Priestley was driving through the Monongahela National Forest about three miles north of Marlinton, WV, when his car, which had been “purring like a kitten,” suddenly sputtered and stopped.

  “Then I saw it,” Priestley said. “To my left, beside the road, stood this monster with long hair pointing straight up.”

  A group of Priestley’s friends were driving on ahead in a bus. When they noticed that he was no longer directly behind them, they turned around and drove back.

  “I don’t know how long I sat there,” Priestley continued, “until the boys missed me and backed up the bus to where I was. It seemed the monster was very much afraid of the bus and dropped his hair,” (which had been standing on end). “To my surprise, as soon as he did this, my car started to run again. I didn’t tell the boys what I had seen. The thing took off when the bus stopped.”

  Priest
ley again started to follow along behind the bus, but his car started to act up a second time. “I could see the sparks flying from under the hood of my car as if it had a very bad short,” he noted. “And sure enough, there beside the road stood the monster again. The points were completely burned out of my car.”

  The bus backed up again and, as soon as it appeared, the monster melted into the forest.

  Two months later, on Dec. 31, 1960, Charles Stover, 25, was driving a bakery truck along a backwoods road near Hickory Flats, WV, when he rounded a curve and came face-to-face with a 6-foot tall creature “standing erect, with hair all over his body.” It was shaped like a man, he said, and he almost collided with it. He stopped a short distance away and took a brief second look at the thing. That was more than enough. He sped to the nearest filling station and a group of men formed a posse and went back to the spot. They found upturned rocks and strange marks on the ground, but the monster was gone.

  Armed posses have been chasing these things without success for years. Back in 1940-41, scores of people saw a huge, hair-covered humanoid outside of Mt. Vernon, IL. It was said to be able to leap 20-foot wide ditches with apparent ease, and was reported to have killed at least one dog. Large posses of armed men searched the entire area repeatedly, but all they found were gigantic footprints.

  Bears and other known animals simply don’t fit the descriptions of these mystery monsters. Nor do bears make a habit of attacking people in moving vehicles. The monsters do.

  The pattern is always the same. Reliable witnesses report seeing the elusive ABSM. Massive searches are launched. Footprints are found. But the creatures themselves have seemingly vanished into thin air.

  In Clanton, Alabama, in 1960, several witnesses observed a giant hairy creature prowling the local woods. It left behind huge tracks.