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

by Keel, John A.

  “It looked like two balls, one very black and the other brightly illuminated,” Capt. Swart of the Dutch ship JPA wrote of his sighting of March 19, 1887. “The latter fell, and as it seemed that it would strike the vessel, she was hove-to under storm sails… Immediately afterwards, solid lumps of ice fell on the deck, and the decks and rigging became coated with an icy crust… On the side of the vessel where ‘the meteor’ fell into the water, the ship appeared all black, and some of the copper sheathing was blistered.”

  Captain Swart’s experience, and a large percentage of all the known Atlantic sightings, occurred in a section west of Bermuda. Although this particular area has become known as “the Bermuda Triangle,” it is actually oval-shaped, and encompasses thousands of square miles from Bermuda to Florida. Thor Heyerdahl’s Ra 2 was passing into this mysterious region when they sighted their UFO.

  A British sailor named John Fairfax is another visitor to the Bermuda Triangle who had a strange, almost mystical experience in the spring of 1969. Fairfax was sailing across the Atlantic alone, when he reportedly observed two brilliant lights on the horizon. They separated and flew higher into the sky and, as he watched, he claims he entered a motionless trance state. He had the uncomfortable feeling, he said, that someone or something was asking him if he wanted to join them. The lights finally disappeared among the stars. Such “trances” are commonly reported in land-based cases, also. The witnesses are often in automobiles when “flying saucers” approach them and somehow induce a state of paralysis.

  Perhaps Fairfax is one of the lucky few that got away, for the Bermuda Triangle has acquired a sinister reputation. Since 1840, no less than 70 ships and 40 airplanes have vanished without a trace there, along with passengers and crewmen totaling more than 1,100. Massive searches have failed to detect any debris or sign of the missing craft. But, in several instances, the missing ships were later found in perfect condition, without any sign of their crews or any indication of what had happened to them. In June and July of 1969, five abandoned ships were found adrift in the Triangle. One of these was John Crowhurst’s small sailboat, and therein lies another strange saga of the sea.

  Crowhurst was purportedly participating in a round-the-world yachting race from England, but the diaries found aboard his craft told a bizarre story of deliberate fraud. He did not even attempt to circle the globe, but merely circled the Arctic instead. His diary described strange “hallucinations,” sightings of sea monsters, and things in the sky. When his boat was found, it was in perfect order. A dismantled radio was found carefully laid out on the deck where he had apparently been repairing it, so theories of his having been washed overboard during a storm were discounted. The only thing missing among his effects was a movie camera. A board of inquiry concluded that he had suffered pangs of conscience, and could not go through with his scheme for winning fame, and a substantial prize, by claiming to be the winner in the round-the-world race. So, on the last lap of his trip, he decided to drown himself. This, however, does not explain why he decided to take his movie camera with him.

  Students of the paranormal are speculating that, like Fairfax, Crowhurst may have received an “invitation” from a light in the sky. The last entry in his diary indicates that he was drowned or disappeared on June 24th, 1969. June 24th has special significance to mystery-watchers. Private pilot Kenneth Arnold made his historic sighting of nine “flying saucers” on June 24, 1947, and there has been a long chain of important UFO and occult events on that date.

  Ufologists are now becoming aware of specific “flying saucer” routes spread around the world. The objects seem to follow these routes year after year, century after century. One of the most active of these routes originates in the Arctic Circle, looping down over Spitsbergen, Greenland and into the Bermuda Triangle. Sightings along these routes have become so commonplace that you need full-time use of a computer to keep track of them. Dozens of nations are involved. But the historical records show that scholars were aware of these routes thousands of years ago. In ancient China, the mysterious lights in the sky were often regarded as “dragons,” and Chinese historians noted that they followed regular paths across China. In fact, real estate along these “dragon routes” was especially valuable since the early Chinese considered them to be lucky areas. Modern-day researchers have traced these dragon paths across Asia and northern Europe, and have found that they coincide exactly with the routes followed by modern UFOs.

  The Scandinavian countries have been besieged by UFOs for years. The chilly waters around Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark have produced a fascinating stream of reports describing gigantic submarines of unknown origin, huge unmarked airplanes (in 1934!), and a wide variety of puzzling lights. One such report came from the crew of the Russian ship Izhevsk as it was crossing the Norwegian Sea on August 2, 1967.

  “There were three of us in the cabin – Capt. Markov, Senior Engineer Ivanov, and myself,” First Mate Bazhazhin told Dr. Felix Zigel, Assistant Professor of Moscow Aviation Institute.

  The navigator on duty reported a strange phenomenon in the sky. We ran to the bridge and saw a sphere-like whitish spot moving southward. It was 11:30 p.m. Moscow time. A few minutes later, a bright spot flared up high in the sky. For a couple of seconds, it rushed headlong from west to east at an angle of 45 degrees to the Earth, getting much larger. Suddenly it came to a stop and, with a play of bright rainbow colors (yellow predominating), began throwing off sparks and became enveloped in a white shroud.

  Once again the sphere-like white nebula began moving south. The procedure was repeated four times. On the fifth and last time, the spot’s behavior changed. It stopped midway, turned over, and assumed the shape of an egg with the thicker end up. Then a powerful white jet squirted from the lower end, after which the “egg” grew pale, became enveloped in white mist and, with its white tail, began to head southward. All of this was visible for an hour and then vanished into thin air.

  “Vanished into thin air…” This phrase appears again and again in the UFO reports of the past 100 years.

  The crew of the fishing boat Fram described the sudden disappearance of a strange giant airplane off the coast of Norway on Feb. 11, 1937. The Fram was circling a cape near Kvalsvik, Norway at 9 p.m. when they sighted the plane resting on the water. Thinking the craft might be in trouble, the captain changed his course and headed for it. Red and green lights were visible on the machine but, as the boat approached, the lights suddenly went out, and the object was enveloped in a cloud of smoke. It disappeared, almost magically.

  In more recent years, there has been an epidemic of disappearing submarines all over the world. They do not seem to belong to the Soviet Union or the United States. Reliable, trained observers such as pilots and sea captains have described these objects maneuvering in shallow waters (where no sensible submarine would dare venture). The navies of New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, and Venezuela have turned out in force, thinking they had trapped the mystery subs within their territorial waters. But the objects always manage to elude their pursuers.

  One such submarine turned up north of Stockholm on Sept. 13, 1969. It was first sighted by a Finnish ferryboat near Norrtalje. Then a boatman on the island of Hamtan spotted it. Swedish authorities became upset, because the unidentified submarine was obviously headed into “the prohibited military sector of Bjorko-Arholma.” Planes, ships, and troops were rushed to the area, and an extensive search was held. No trace of the object was ever found.

  Two months later, the trawler Silvero collided with an unknown underwater object near Halsingland, shortly after the helmsman observed a mysterious light on the water. Again, a search failed to discover the source of the collision. The trawler went into dry dock for repairs and was found to be badly damaged below the waterline. Another ship, the Insulanur, collided with an underwater object near Sydosbrotten on Nov. 19, 1969, the day before the Silvero incident. That collision was equally mysterious.

  In the past two years, six submarines belonging to I
srael, France, England, and the U.S. have all disappeared without a trace. Three of these vanished in the Mediterranean Sea. Very thorough searches by air and sea have failed to reveal their fate. No oil slicks or debris have been found.

  The French submarine Eurydice and its crew of 57 was the latest to vanish on March 4, 1970. A Tunisian tanker, Tabarka, collided with an underwater object around the same time, but authorities discounted that it could have been the Eurydice. In February 1970, the Angelino Lauro, an Italian liner, was damaged when it ran into something in the Mediterranean.

  Again, the metallic objects involved in these collisions have never been identified. Modern submarines are well equipped, with Sonar and other detection devices, and are not likely to crash into surface ships so frequently. If they did, they would suffer extensive damage themselves, spewing out great quantities of oil and debris, and would have to surface.

  As with UFOs, our mysterious submarines have a history going back more than forty years. A group of fisherman in Morecambe Bay, England reported one such oddity in March 1938. “I saw a sudden scurry of seabirds rise off the water,” witness William Baxter told the Liverpool Echo (March 29, 1938), “and I looked at a spot nearly a mile away. Out of the water there rose something large and black, like a big post. It was at least eight or nine feet high, and it rose and fell three times, then disappeared. I’ve been all over the world, but I have never seen anything like this!”

  There were more than 40 reports of non-existent airplanes crashing into the sea in 1938, mostly in the northern latitudes around England and Scandinavia. As usual, searches failed to locate debris or survivors, and no planes were reported missing. First Mate Robert Wake of the collier Birtley described one such “airplane crash” in April 1938.

  “When it struck the water, there was a sudden burst of flame that lit up the whole sky. The mass of flames rapidly dwindled to three small patches of light, and in another minute there was complete darkness. We steamed ahead with all possible speed, but there was no sign of wreckage,” Wake said (Daily Telegraph, April 7, 1938).

  Meteors do not explode into flames when they hit the water. What was it? We’ll never know.

  These “crashing airplane” reports continue to come in at a steady rate. Many are now accompanied by mysterious radio signals that clearly indicate that an intelligent technology is involved in these incidents. Radio signals also accompanied the “ghost fliers” over Scandinavia in 1934. Many people picked the signals up on their home receivers.

  In the past year, divers operating off the coast of England have been puzzled by the strange sounds they have been hearing underwater (water is an excellent conductor of sound). They have reported hearing voices and even music, and have been unable to determine the source. Fish in the same areas have been meeting untimely ends, some appearing to have been burned!

  The evidence is mounting, and it becomes more and more perplexing. Our world is not only haunted by all kinds of bizarre aerial objects (many of which have demonstrated their ability to dive into the water and apparently turn into submarines), but we are also plagued by a wide variety of ocean-based mysteries. Somebody or something seems to be collecting people in the Bermuda Triangle. Now it looks as if they – or it – may be collecting conventional submarines as well. All of these incredible events refute the popular belief that flying saucers represent friendly visitors from outer space.

  Instead, the history of the phenomenon and its multifarious activities point to an even more illogical conclusion. The phenomenon seems to be terrestrial, and it seems based, in large part, under our oceans and seas. Are we dealing with some phantom navy from some secret underwater world? Is this why the U.S. Navy has spent more money on UFOs than the U.S. Air Force?

  In 1967, the Navy reportedly spent $5 million on a project to “search the Bermuda Triangle” with planes and special research submarines.

  In 1969, we quietly launched the NR-1, a nuclear submarine that carries a 7-man crew and cost $100 million. This sub is cloaked in secrecy, but the Navy says it is designed “to explore commercial and military possibilities of the ocean floor.”

  Have all the UFO enthusiasts been looking in the wrong direction?

  CHAPTER 21

  WAS PHILIP K. DICK A FLAKE? – NEW FRONTIERS MAGAZINE, 1987

  Some readers might complain that the following article is written in the manner of a New York Times Book Review piece. That is, the book reviewer usually devotes eight thousand words to telling what he knows about the subject at hand, thus proving that his knowledge is vastly superior to anyone else’s. Then, if the book author is lucky, the reviewer devotes the last paragraph of the review to the book (usually sniggering, sneering, and dismissing it altogether).

  In my book The Eighth Tower, I quote the following story:

  It was after midnight in the spring of 1872, and a hansom carriage moved slowly through the fog of Sherlock Holmes’ London. Young Richard Maurice Bucke sat erect in a quiet, meditative mood, his shoulders rocking with the uneven movements of the carriage wheels over the worn cobble-stones. Suddenly, as he would recall later, a flame-colored cloud seemed to sweep over him. At first, he thought the city was on fire. Then the luminous cloud seemed to enter his body, and lightning bolts crackled in his brain. For a brief moment, he felt he was one with the universe, and all knowledge – past, present and future – ricocheted in the corners of his mind, and he felt different. Changed somehow.

  Dr. Bucke went on to become one of Canada’s most distinguished psychiatrists. And he was the first to attempt a study of the strange phenomenon that had engulfed him in that London fog. Then, in 1901, he slipped on the ice and bashed in his head. But not before he produced the classic book, Cosmic Consciousness, which is still in print.

  Now we skip ahead to the year 1948. An l8-year-old boy, fresh from a farm, is living in a cheap furnished room a couple of blocks from Times Square in New York City. In the middle of the night, he is awakened by a weird feeling. His room is filled with an indescribable light – a pinkish glow that leads him to think the building is on fire. Before he can move, his mind is flooded with a torrent of information. Miraculously, he understands everything. All that has happened, all that will happen and the total meaning of it all! Excited though he is, he falls asleep again. The next morning he remembers the event vividly. It is seared into his mind. But the information is all lost. He can’t remember any of it. As the years pass he will realize that it was entered into his subconscious mind and small portions will bubble to the surface from time to time.

  I was that 18-year old boy. For many years, I never mentioned the incident to anyone, although the incident was so resplendent that I thought of it often. It wasn’t until the 1960s that I discovered other people had shared the same experience. In fact, it is probable that it happens to millions of people in each generation. It is known under many different names: enlightenment, mystical illumination, cosmic illumination, etc. Many modern percipients are misled into thinking it is about being “born again.” Others think of it as “the call,” and they join priesthoods.

  Still others, often people of humble station, quit their jobs, dump their families, and adopt a whole new way of life, becoming famous leaders in the arts, politics, and religion. The one thing that becomes clear when you study this process is that a fairly large percentage of the human race is overtly manipulated by this “Illumination,” and that they lead the rest of humanity into future events – often calamitous in nature – that seem pre-planned.

  Religion makes a feeble effort to explain this manipulation. Men have been aware of it since they sat in caves and whittled calendars on bones. Whole civilizations have risen and collapsed because of this awareness. The source of this manipulation seems to be unknowable and indefinable. So, mankind has devised a long series of anthropomorphic demons and gods to share the blame. Since earliest times, we have chopped out living hearts and waged horribly brutal wars as part of this manipulation. At this very moment, several religious wars are ra
ging on this pathetic mudball of ours.

  Victims of Illumination often suffer “static,” and the whole process misfires. Those who deliberately seek to communicate with “the Force,” as George Lucas dubbed it, usually end up as suicides, or they get hit by a truck. Those who draw circles on the floor, light black candles and wave swords around always come to a tragic end. The lamas in the Himalayas discovered that it takes many years of effort to attain Illumination. The successful adept becomes a zombie in much the same way religious fanatics everywhere become totally consumed. They sacrifice their individuality for a state of happy mindlessness.

  Science-fiction writers have dabbled with all this for many years, grinding out half-baked books loosely based on scholarly misinterpretations of phenomenological literature. The sword and sorcery stories form a complete genre. Modern fantasy pays grudging acknowledgement to a very real period in early history, when men understood the magical forces surrounding them – a time when magic was the true science of its day.

  Even some science-fiction writers have been zapped by that big searchlight in the sky. The late Philip K. Dick (PKD) wrote extensively and obsessively about a mind-widening experience. His cult novel VALIS, one of his last works, published by Bantam in 1981, described how a rather unlikable hero named Fat wandered through the Twilight Zone.

  I tell you these things for what they are worth. They are true things; they happened.

  In fat’s opinion, his apartment had been saturated with high levels of radiation of some kind. In fact, he had seen it: blue light dancing like St. Elmo’s fire.

  And what was more, the aurora that sizzled around the apartment behaved as if it were sentient and alive. When it entered objects, it interfered with their causal processes. And when it reached Fat’s head, it transferred not just information to him, but also a personality – a personality that wasn’t Fat’s, with different memories, customs, tastes, and habits. (VALIS, p. 94)