THE EIGHTH TOWER: On Ultraterrestrials and the Superspectrum

by Keel, John A.

  The animal disappearances and deaths in these areas are too few. They seem to be nothing but token attacks, perhaps to support the belief that they are real animals.

  However, thousands of cows do vanish during each big UFO wave, often leading local police on wild-goose chases thinking they are pursuing cattle rustlers equipped with airplanes or helicopters. The first known UFO cattlenapping case took place during the “dirigible” wave of 1897. A family named Hamilton reportedly watched a cigar-shaped object swoop over their farm near Vernon, Kansas, that April. It was occupied by “six of the strangest beings I ever saw,” Alexander Hamilton said. They jabbered in a foreign language as they lowered a rope, lassoed one of his cows, hauled it aboard, and flew away. This episode has been reprinted in great detail in almost every UIFO book extant so I’m giving it short shrift here. There are many modern cases identical to this.

  There is an ancient religious theory that contends that demons and gods need physical matter from this world to aid their own materializations. And once they have materialized in a physical form, they must replenish themselves frequently to retain that form. This, of course, is found in numerous variations in the vampire lore of middle Europe. The deaths and disappearances of animals and people during these mysterious invasions have always been carefully explained by some kind of phenomenon acceptable to the people of the period. We no longer believe in vampires, but millions of us now believe in flying saucers from outer space, and even in giant red-eyed monsters.

  California’s “Bigfoot” stomped around the redwood forests in the late 1950s, and there was a resurgence of UFO reports worldwide from 1960 on. The biggest monster story of 1958 did not involve Bigfoot or UFOs, however. It happened in Riverside, California, on the night of November 8.

  One Charles Wetzel was driving along North Main Street in Riverside when a fearsome apparition leaped in front of his car. It was at least six feet tall, according to Wetzel, and it attacked his car.

  “It wasn’t human,” he said. “It had a longer arm than anything I’d ever seen. When it saw me in the car, it reached all the way back to the windshield and began clawing at me.

  “It didn’t have any ears. The face was all round. The eyes were shining like something fluorescent, and it had a protuberant mouth. It was scaly, like leaves.”

  Wetzel stomped on the gas, and the critter fell back from the car with a loud gurgle. “I think I hit it,” he told police. “I heard something hit the pan under the car.”

  There were long sweeping scratches on his windshield, but nothing was found at the site. The next night another motorist reported an identical encounter at the same spot.

  Here we have a simple coincidence to ponder. Wetzel is a rather unusual name (how many Wetzels have you known?). But there is a Wetzel County in West Virginia. There have been periodic UFO sightings in Wetzel County since 1897. In 1967 1 saw an unusual aerial light there myself. It was hovering just a few feet above the summit of a high ridge. Perhaps if some investigator could track down Charles Wetzel, they would find he was from West Virginia or had relatives there.

  One of the biggest problems facing investigators is the enormous difficulty in rechecking old cases. The witnesses move or disappear. If their story receives publicity, they are often hounded by wild-eyed enthusiasts, crank phone calls, and nut mail until they finally decide to simply deny the whole thing. Others eventually talk themselves into accepting a rational explanation for an irrational event. They decide they had seen nothing but a meteor or a prankster in a Halloween costume.

  The most chilling problem I found in my own efforts to reexamine some old cases was the disturbing fact that witnesses, particularly monster witnesses, often die within six months to two years. The apparitions seem to be omens. The deaths usually natural—heart attacks, accidents, prolonged illnesses. Ancient folklore linked the appearances of demons with impending death. There may be more truth to this than we can admit.

  In keeping track of the witnesses of more recent events, I have found an unusually high rate of death, suicide, emotional disturbances, divorces, etc. Unfortunately I have never had the time to properly catalog such cases and prepare the necessary statistical breakdowns to confirm or deny this speculation. This is one of the many areas of real research that has been totally neglected by the believers and their organizations.

  If death or tragedy does follow a majority of these events, we have another important link with psychic phenomena.

  West Virginia’s Tucker County hosted a tall, red-eyed, hairy monster throughout 1960. It was seen several times that summer around the villages of Davis and Parsons. One group of campers described it as being at least eight feet tall with shaggy hair all over its body and two huge eyes that “shone like two big balls of fire.” It didn’t smell very good, either, and it left behind some giant footprints just to prove it had been there.

  Sightings in two other counties were more important, however. The most significant one was, of course, the one most neglected by the newspapers. It was a rare instance in which an electromagnetic effect occurred simultaneously with the appearance of the monster. In fact, the witness, W. C. “Doc” Priestley, claimed the critter ruined the ignition system of his car.

  In October 1960, Priestley was driving through the Monongahela National Forest about three miles north of Marlington, West Virginia. Marlington is about 60 miles south of Parsons. Both are on Highway 219. A group of his friends were riding ahead of him in a bus. Suddenly his car, which had been “purring like a kitten,” sputtered and the engine quit. As he coasted to an unexpected stop, he saw a huge beast standing beside the road staring at him with two big eyes “like two balls of fire.” It was eight feet tall, he estimated, and was covered with shaggy hair that stood straight up, bristling like a porcupine.

  Man and monster stared at each other for a long time. Priestley couldn’t judge just how long. The men in the bus ahead noticed he was no longer behind them, so they turned around and went back.

  “I don’t know how long I sat there,” he said, “until the boys missed me and came back to where I was. It seemed this monster was very much afraid of the bus and dropped his hair, and 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.”

  But Priestley’s nightmare wasn’t over. As he was following the bus, his car began to falter again. Sparks flew from under the hood, he claimed, as if it had a bad short. Again, he glided to an unexpected stop. And again he saw the strange animal standing by the road staring at him with huge, luminous eyes. The bus backed up once more and the thing disappeared into the forest.

  “The points were completely burned out of my car,” Priestley complained afterwards.

  If I had been around in 1960, I would have tried to ascertain just how long the two had stared at each other (the time element is extremely important in these cases). I would have examined Priestley’s eyes for signs of conjunctivitis, and I would have collected his entire life history. Often people who see these things have a history of psychic experiences—prophetic dreams, hearing strange sounds in the night, seeing gnome-like figures when they were small children.

  Our directory of furry freaks is almost unlimited, and the pattern is always the same. Reliable witnesses report seeing the elusive Big Hairy Monsters (BHM). Massive searches are launched. Footprints are found. But the creatures themselves have seemingly vanished into thin air.

  Canton, Alabama, 1960: Several witnesses observed a giant hairy creature prowling the local woods. It left huge tracks.

  Madison, Indiana, 1962: Several farmers glimpsed another hairy humanoid. Footprints were found. Posses were formed. No results.

  Lost Gap, Mississippi, 1962: Many reports of a giant nine-foot-tall being with glowing green eyes. Local police were convinced it existed. Helicopters and bloodhounds were used in a massive search. It got away.

  In 1964, another nine-foot something was seen by many witnesses near Sister
Lakes, Michigan. Mobs of hunters tried in vain to track it down. It came back the next year, appearing in the vicinity of Monroe, Michigan. Mrs. Rose Owen and her daughter, Christine Van Archer, said that a seven-foot-tall hairy monster that “grunted and growled like a mad dog,” jumped on the side of their car and grabbed Christine by the hair. The girl suffered a black eye from the incident. Another girl, Shirley Morrirn, 18, of Temprance, Michigan, said that a similar beast had leaped at her car, broke her windshield, and scratched her arm. As usual, huge posses covered every square inch of the ground in the area. All of these incidents took place near the controversial Enrico Fermi Atomic Power Plant. Flying-saucer sightings are commonplace in the region, and the famous UFO wave of March 1966 occurred nearby. UFOs have shown a decided interest in atomic installations all over the world. The Fermi plant suffered some “impossible” sabotage in the 1960s. Foreign objects were somehow introduced into the atomic pile despite the fact that the plant was heavily guarded (it has since been shut down).

  In July 1966, a giant hairy monster reportedly prowled the streets of Jessore, East Pakistan, killing four people. Witnesses swore it was not a tiger or other known animal. The army was called out to search for it. It was never caught.

  That same month, on the 31st, five people in a car stuck in the sand on a beach on Presque Isle in Erie, Pennsylvania, reportedly saw a brilliantly illuminated flying saucer land. They were terrified when a tall figure shuffled up to their car in the dark. Large animal-like footprints were later found at the site. A few days later, a tall hairy entity appeared near a small lake in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, 18 miles from Erie, and a posse of college students went hunting for it. Although they claimed to have glimpsed the creature, it got away as usual.

  South America has not been excluded. Between 1952 and 1965, there were no less than 18 well-documented instances in which people in Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil were attacked and injured by unidentified hairy animals in human form. In several of these cases, the witnesses insisted the creatures had come from grounded flying saucers.

  In May 1964 a truck driver named Alberto Kalbermatter was driving along a deserted road late at night near Resistencia, Argentina, when a nine-foot-tall thing stepped in front of his vehicle and uttered a loud, terrifying cry. He said it was covered with long black hair. Local police told the press that a strange luminous object had been seen in the trees at that very same spot only a few days before.

  Spain had a monster wave in January-February 1968. A tall ape-like animal with long arms was seen by many near Gerona, outside Barcelona. It left behind footprints that were neither apelike nor human. Again, mobs of police and soldiers swarmed over the area. “This region is in a state of panic,” the Madrid newspaper Arriba reported.

  Believers in monsters—and there are growing numbers who are convinced these things are real animals—try to explain the simultaneous appearances of UFOs as mere coincidence. The UFO believers, for the most part, prefer to believe flying saucers have nothing to do with hairy monsters. Yet both monster witnesses and UFO sighters often suffer from the same aftereffects: conjunctivitis, thirst, headaches, and muscular soreness. In many cases motorists had been inspecting their motors after their engine had stalled when the monsters sprang at them from the trees or bushes. Obviously there is a relationship between these manifestations and the superspectrum.

  Both flying-saucer buffs and monster believers were nonplussed when a 69-year-old dairy farmer in Wisconsin reported encountering a UFO with a hairy pilot in December 1974. William Bosak was driving home to his farm outside Frederic, Wisconsin, around 10:30 p.m. when he saw something parked in the middle of the road. As he slowed down, he could see it was some kind of circular object with a curved front made of glass.

  “Inside I could see a figure with its arms raised above its head,” Bosak reported. “The figure had a square face with hair sticking straight out from the sides of its head. Its ears were long and narrow and stuck straight out. Its arms were brown and furry, and there was fur or hair on the top part of its body.”

  The creature seemed to be taller than a tall man and it had very large protruding eyes. Mr. Bosak stepped on the gas and sped around the object. “When I passed the thing,” he said, “the inside of the car got dark, like a shadow being cast, and I could hear a kind of soft whooshing sound, like a branch brushing against the side of the car.”

  When he got home, he did not tell his wife or son about the experience immediately. “I was so god-darned scared I was afraid to go out at night for a few days,” he admitted. “I’m over the shock now, but I was pretty shook up for a couple of weeks.”

  In similar incidents in Sweden and South America witnesses have actually grappled with the furry spacemen and claimed the creatures were incredibly strong and so solid a knife deflected from their bodies. In the 1950s Venezuela had an epidemic of furry little men accompanied by flying saucers. In the Soviet Union and China the tall hairy critters have been observed frequently over the past one hundred years and, like the North American Sasquatch and Bigfoot, none have ever been captured and examined. Ireland has a long tradition of “wildmen” who live in the woods.

  These hairy humanoids are probably no more real than the little glowing green men. In 1966, there were reports from Malaysia of a real King Kong—a hair-covered “ape” no less than 25 feet tall. People in Nova Scotia saw one 18 feet high in 1969. Any animal of that size would certainly consume a vast quantity of food daily and should leave all kinds of evidence in its wake, but these fellows don’t even leave any deposits of fecal matter for us to study.

  A few (very few) photographs have been taken, and one short strip of movie film. But there are also thousands of photos of ghosts and quite a few pictures of the elusive Nessie, the 90-foot sea serpent of Loch Ness in Scotland.

  That ace Nessie chaser, F. W. “Ted” Holiday, has turned from a believer into a skeptic after spending years pursuing the lake monsters of Great Britain. There were many reliable reports of a giant sea serpent in the lakes of Ireland a few years back, and when Mr. Holiday investigated, he found the lakes where the creature had appeared were very shallow, about six feet deep, and filled with fish. A sea serpent would undoubtedly upset the ecological balance of a small lake in a single afternoon by gobbling up all the resident fish.

  We also get occasional reports of dinosaurs that terrify unprepared campers and motorists in Italy, France, and the U.S. Midwest. They leave appropriate dinosaur tracks, but, as usual, when armies of police and hunters turn out to track them down, they simply vanish into thin air.

  Where does a dinosaur hide? Or a 90-foot sea serpent? Or an 18-foot-tall, hairy humanoid? Do they creep into a hidden network of deep caverns, as some of the believers claim?

  It is more probable that these are not actual animals but are distortions of our reality, inserted into our space-time continuum by the mischievous forces of the superspectrum. The reported density of some of these creatures indicates they are not flesh and blood but are composed of highly condensed atoms comparable with plutonium. And like plutonium, a man-made radioactive metal, they deteriorate at a very rapid rate. Plutonium is very heavy, and it only takes eleven pounds to make an atom bomb.

  Since energy masses in the superspectrum can alter their frequencies and move up and down the electromagnetic spectrum, we can assume they can also manipulate atomic structure and enter our plane of reality by creating atoms compatible with our atomic structure. The ancients called this process transmogrification. Heavier, tightly compacted atoms with a dense field of orbiting electrons dissipate their energy quickly. Plutonium is a very unstable element, prone to spontaneous combustion. Let’s imagine that when energies of the superspectrum vibrate down into our reality, they change into very short-lived atoms of unusual density. In the early stages of creation, the transmogrified entities are relatively harmless to us, but when deterioration begins to occur, they throw off electrons and radiation that can harm humans and animals in the same way that flying saucer
s harm us.

  Another byproduct of atomic deterioration is its curious effect upon electrical apparatus. One of the first devices invented to test radioactive materials was the electroscope. This was simply two pieces of gold leaf hanging from a metal rod in a bottle. The gold conductors were charged with static electricity and repelled each other, spreading apart. When a radioactive substance was held over the rod, the gold leaves fell together, their charges having been instantly dissipated. This same effect can stall electrical ignitions and disrupt power lines and telephone communications, not because of any electromagnetic effect but because the energy field of the radioactive monster or UFO interferes with the atomic qualities of the wire temporarily. Electricity cannot pass through the affected wiring until the energy field is removed.

  Some of our funny monsters remain in an area for several days and are seen by many people before they finally disappear. Token attacks on domestic animals occur throughout the period, because the monster is somehow replenishing its diminishing energies with earthly animal matter. But it is a losing battle, and the monster must ultimately melt away leaving nothing but a terrible stench behind.

  In several instances, UFO lights have appeared above the monsters and cast a powerful beam of light onto them. The monsters vanished, leaving only a residue of silicon carbide (SiC), a very hard crystalline compound, which has been found at hundreds of UFO and monster sites all over the world. Often it is mistaken for common furnace slag. It is logically the only remains of the transmogrification process.

  The fact that UFOs have been seen “attacking” entities with light beams has inspired theories that the flying saucers are policing earth and protecting us from monsters. At the Presque Isle sighting mentioned earlier, a tall hairy monster approached a group of witnesses in a car. A luminous aerial object appeared, firing beams of light in all directions and the monster vanished. Its footprints were found on the sandy beach, and a small quantity of silicon and silicon carbide was found at the spot where the tracks stopped abruptly.