by John A. Keel
Captain Edward Ruppelt, head of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book in the early 1950s, wrote a book, Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, in which he freely discussed all of this. That book, published in 1956, still stands as the best standard reference on the subject.
The explosion of public interest in the UFO phenomenon in 1947 attracted many highly qualified professional scientists, researchers, and authors. Working independently, they quietly assessed the incoming evidence and slowly evolved complex theories that accounted for the paraphysicality of the objects. Unfortunately for them, the idea of extraterrestrial visitants had very strong emotional appeal, and the many amateur enthusiasts who were drawn to the subject quickly accepted the ET hypothesis on the strength of superficial, circumstantial evidence and pseudoscientific speculation. Their growing beliefs were augmented by the appearance of the “contactees”—people who professed that they had actually met the UFO pilots and had even flown to other planets aboard the objects.
Ironically, the UFO enthusiasts divided into factions over the contactee issue. Some accepted the contactees totally, while others rejected such stories and concentrated on trying to prove the reliability of witnesses and on the search for some kind of solid physical evidence that the UFOs were machines representing “a superior intelligence with an advanced technology.” Friction between these factions increased over the years and added to the burgeoning controversy.
In the early years the Air Force was relatively free with UFO information, and Captain Ruppelt lent considerable support to Donald E. Keyhoe, a retired Marine Corps major-turned-author, providing him with many official reports for his books and magazine articles. The Pentagon spokesman for Project Blue Book, Albert M. Chop, even went so far as to write the cover blurb for a Keyhoe book in 1953, stating:
“We in the Air Force recognize Major Keyhoe as a responsible, accurate reporter. His long association and cooperation with the Air Force, in our study of unidentified flying objects, qualifies him as a leading civilian authority on this investigation.
“All the sighting reports and other information he has listed have been cleared and made available to Major Keyhoe from Air Technical Intelligence records, at his request.
“The Air Force, and its investigating agency, Project Blue Book, is aware of Major Keyhoe’s conclusion that the “flying saucers” are from another planet. The Air Force has never denied that this possibility exists. Some of the personnel believe that there may be some strange natural phenomena completely unknown to us, but that if the apparently controlled maneuvers reported by competent observers are correct, then the only remaining explanation is the interplanetary answer.”
The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers
Ruppelt’s book describes how the Air Force investigators made a strenuous effort to fit their evidence into an extraterrestrial framework. In January 1953, a panel of top scientists and CIA officials reviewed this evidence and rejected it. Instead of grandly announcing that flying saucers from another planet were visiting us, the panel suggested that the public be re-educated to believe that the sightings were inspired by natural phenomena, misinterpretations of known objects, and so on. The Air Force files were buttoned up, and an order was issued to forbid Air Force personnel from discussing UFO data. The move inspired the cry of “UFO censorship!” that persists to this day.
There was even division within the government on the true nature of the phenomenon!
On the West Coast, a brilliant man named Dr. Meade Layne had launched his own UFO study in 1947, and he was soon exploring the then little-known contactee aspects. By 1950, he was issuing privately published books explaining and defining the paraphysical nature of the objects and the parapsychological elements of the contactee syndrome. The ET believers rejected his theories and continued their fruitless search for physical evidence.
In England, the RAF had established a wartime UFO study project in 1943 under the direction of Lieutenant General Massey, but the results of that effort were never released. In 1944, a Chicago editor named Ray Palmer started to publish UFO-oriented fiction in his magazine Amazing Stories, and he was quickly inundated with thousands of letters from people who claimed to have seen the objects or had some kind of close experience with them. Palmer was later the cofounder of Fate magazine and devoted his life to the subject.
Other thoroughgoing researchers started to move toward the paraphysical concept in the early 1950s. The British science writer Gerald Heard published Is Another World Watching? in 1950, in which he examined the extraterrestrial theory pro and con and postulated his “bee” concept, suggesting that the objects might represent a mindless order organized by some larger intelligence. Another famous English science writer, Arthur C. Clarke, turned his attention to UFOs in 1953 and wrote articles pointing out that the general data suggested the objects were paraphysical and not too likely to be extraterrestrial.
If there was an actual turning point in ufology, it occurred in 1955. That year the “secret” was widely and repeatedly published by many superbly qualified investigators. Many UFO students reviewed this well documented material and quietly abandoned the subject, feeling that the mystery had been competently solved. A few held on until they were able to confirm the published evidence to their own satisfaction. Then they dropped out, leaving a vacuum in the field that was erratically filled by cultists and the emotionally disturbed types who were attracted more by the cloak-and-dagger aspects and the anarchistic possibilities of the allegations of official censorship.
A new UFO wave over England in 1950 inspired a new RAF investigation that was continued behind the scenes for five years. On April 24, 1955, an RAF spokesman told the press that the UFO study was completed but that the findings would be withheld from the public because they would only create more controversy and could not be adequately explained without revealing “certain top secrets.” This enigmatic statement hardly satisfied anyone, but soon afterward RAF Air Marshal Lord Dowding, the man who had directed the Battle of Britain in 1940, gave a public lecture in which he openly discussed the paraphysical aspects of the phenomenon and declared the UFO occupants were immortal, could render themselves invisible to human eyes, and could even take on human form and walk and work among us unnoticed. This was very strong stuff in 1955, and the UFO enthusiasts didn’t quite know what to make of it. The cultists still circulate his earlier pro-extraterrestrial statements made before he reached the paraphysical stage.
Still another excellent British researcher and reputable author, Harold T. Wilkins, stressed the paraphysical aspects in his 1955 book, Flying Saucers Uncensored. In the earlier stages of his research he had concluded that much of the evidence pointed to hostile intent, but later, as he developed a better understanding of the paraphysical factors, he modified this conclusion.
An astrophysicist, Morris K. Jessup, published a series of books from 1954 to 1957, filled with historical correlations and mind-bending theories about the paraphysical side of the phenomenon. R. De Witt Miller, a columnist for Coronet magazine, also spent years studying the subject and drawing upon the testimony submitted by thousands of his readers. He produced a well-documented summary of his paraphysical conclusions in a 1955 book called You Do Take It with You. An unfortunate title, perhaps, but the book is a fine examination of the implications of the main phenomenon.
The U.S. Air Force made its major contribution to the subject in 1955 with the publication of Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14. This was undoubtedly the most important single contribution to the UFO problem. It was a statistical survey and computer study prepared for the Air Force by the Battelle Memorial Institute, containing 240 charts and graphs detailing the geographical distribution of sightings and other vital data. It was the only quantitative study ever produced by anyone. Many dismissed Special Report No. 14 as “another whitewash,” because the basic conclusion of the study was that there was no evidence of extraterrestrial origin and no suggestion that an advanced technology was involved. When I carried ou
t my own statistical studies using thousands of reports from the 1960s, I was startled to discover that my findings merely verified the material in Special Report No. 14. It was embarrassing, at first, to realize that an objective examination of the evidence proved that the UFO enthusiasts were wrong and the Air Force was right.
Sensible research must be dictated by this basic precept: Any acceptable theory must offer an explanation for all the data. The paraphysical hypothesis meets this criterion. The extraterrestrial hypothesis does not. The UFO enthusiasts have solved this problem by selecting only those sightings and events that seem to fit the extraterrestrial thesis. They have rejected a major portion of the real evidence for this reason and, in many cases, have actually suppressed (by ignoring and not publishing) events that point to some other conclusion. Once this process of selection began, the problem became more confusing and the mystery more mysterious. The UFO publications were filled with selected sightings, and professional writers preparing books and magazine articles sifted out the best of those sightings, unaware that a major part of the real data was being deliberately ignored.
After the 1955 explosion of paraphysical information, ufology slipped into a Dark Age of confusion and bewildering misrepresentation. The Air Force paid only token attention to the phenomenon, explaining it away successfully for years as natural phenomena. The UFO enthusiasts became convinced of “Air Force suppression of the truth,” and a considerable part of the UFO literature published after 1955 was devoted to wild-eyed speculations about why the government was trying to keep UFOs a secret from the public. Because the professional writers and researchers had deserted the subject, the general quality of UFO literature hit a new low, most of it filled with pseudoscience and amateurish speculation. The factions within the UFO camp spent most of their efforts on feuding and fussing with the Air Force and with one another. There was very little actual research into UFO matters at all between 1955 and 1966.
As part of the hype for Ruppelt’s 1956 book, the Intelligence Community in Washington, D.C. held a well-publicized symposium for four days in June 1956. Everybody attended: most of the top CIA officials, the German rocket scientists who would later achieve great fame with our NASA program, and leading aviation industrialists such as William Lear of Lear Jets. They decided to establish a civilian UFO organization to be called the National Investigation Committees on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). A physicist named Townsend Brown was named to head it. Charter memberships cost $100, a great deal of money in 1956. It seemed as if something was finally going to be done.
There are other examples of sensible researchers who tried to penetrate the thunder of the UFO enthusiasts and reach the lightning. In 1954, Wilbert B. Smith, superintendent of Radio Regulations Engineering, Department of Transport, Ottawa, Canada, became the head of a semiofficial Canadian UFO study dubbed Project Magnet. Smith had fine credentials, and the UFO enthusiasts were thrilled with the announcement. But as the years passed, Smith began to realize that the quickest way to the source of the problem was through a study of the contactees. In some cases the UFO “entities” had actually passed on scientific information that Smith was able to check and confirm in his laboratory. Toward the end of his life (he died of cancer on December 27, 1962), he gave lectures and wrote papers about what he had learned.
“I began for the first time in my life to realize the basic oneness of the universe-science, philosophy, and all that is in it,” he remarked in 1958. “Substance and energy are all facets of the same jewel, and before any one facet can be appreciated, the form of the jewel itself must be perceived.”
As usual, the extraterrestrial believers thought their scientist had gone crackers. They didn’t want to hear about philosophy and energy. They wanted to discuss Venusians and the Air Force plot to hide the truth. It is unfortunate that a large part of Smith’s papers and findings are still unpublished and undiscussed.
Another engineer, a graduate of Yale and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, became interested in flying saucers in 1953. Upon his retirement in 1954, he and his wife toured the country interviewing UFO witnesses and, inevitably, contactee claimants. His name is Bryant Reeve. Like the rest of us, he began with the hope and expectation of finding evidence for the extraterrestrial hypothesis. He thought in the same physical terms of all engineers and scientists. But as he plunged deeper and deeper into this complex subject, he reached into philosophy and metaphysics just as Smith had. Finally, in 1965, he published a book called The Advent of the Cosmic Viewpoint. After long and careful investigation, he had concluded that the UFO sightings themselves were actually irrelevant and were merely part of the larger paraphysical phenomenon.
Kenneth Arnold, the private pilot whose sighting on June 24, 1947, set off the first modern flying saucer scare, quietly investigated UFOs in depth for years, and then in 1955 he, too, issued public statements expressing his belief that the objects were actually some form of living energy and were not necessarily marvelous spaceships.
In 1957, Ray Palmer started a new magazine called Flying Saucers. In the early issues he titillated his readers by hinting that he knew the secret. Then, in 1958, he published his conclusion that UFOs were not from some other planet, offering as an alternative a complex theory about secret civilizations with paraphysical or psychic ties to the human race. (As early as 1949, he had editorialized that saucers were extra-dimensional not extra-terrestrial.) He stubbornly stuck to his guns and published a number of small magazines devoted largely to the psychical aspects of the phenomenon. After a twelve-year struggle, his Flying Saucers had managed to build up a meager readership of only 4,000 paid subscribers and 6,000 newsstand sales despite nationwide distribution.
Palmer’s anti-extraterrestrial stand isolated him from the ufological mainstream, and he was widely criticized and ostracized by the ET believers.
Dr. Leon Davidson, a physicist who worked on the atomic bomb project, became interested in UFOs in the early 1950s. Because of his status, the Air Force permitted him to view official UFO photos and movies. Eventually he turned to investigating the bewildering contactee cases, and his trained mind soon detected a hoax. Like other objective researchers, he conceded that the controversial contactees were telling the truth as they knew it. He recognized that these people were being tricked through some hypnotic process, but he was unable to accept any paraphysical explanation. Instead, he finally evolved a theory pointing the finger of guilt at the CIA. He speculated that the CIA was deliberately creating these events as a diversionary tactic in the Cold War. A very small proportion of the data did seem to fit this conclusion, but ultimately it proved to be insupportable.
For many years Al Chop, an Air Force information officer, lent his name to the board of governors of Major’s Keyhoe’s organization, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). But in 1966, he withdrew his name, and in personal correspondence and in appearances on radio programs he declared that he no longer accepted the idea that flying saucers were real, physical machines. He explained the turn of mind with the wry statement, “I used to believe in Santa Claus, too.”
Many other early UFO investigators, most of them far above average in education and intellectual capacity, arrived at similar negative conclusions after long and careful independent study. Some, such as Dr. Donald Menzel, a Harvard astronomer, recognized that people were seeing something and had tried to explain the phenomenon within the restrictions of their own scientific disciplines. Dr. Menzel argued convincingly for a mirage and air-inversion theory.
Two authorities well known to the UFO field, Ivan T. Sanderson, a noted biologist and anthropologist, and Dr. Jacques Vallee, a NASA astronomer and computer expert, studied the extraterrestrial theory for years and finally turned toward the paraphysical hypothesis.
What exactly is the paraphysical hypothesis? It is the central theme of this book. It can best be summarized by the remarks of RAF Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard, KCB, CBE, MA, a very high-ranking member of the British gover
nment. On May 3, 1969, he gave a public lecture at Caxton Hall in London, in which he cited these main points:
“That while it may be that some operators of UFO are normally the paraphysical denizens of a planet other than Earth, there is no logical need for this to be so. For, if the materiality of UFO is paraphysical (and consequently normally invisible), UFO could more plausibly be creations of an invisible world coincident with the space of our physical Earth planet than creations in the paraphysical realms of any other physical planet in the solar system… Given that real UFO are paraphysical, capable of reflecting light like ghosts; and given also that (according to many observers) they remain visible as they change position at ultrahigh speeds from one point to another, it follows that those that remain visible in transition do not dematerialize for that swift transition, and therefore, their mass must be of a diaphanous (very diffuse) nature, and their substance relatively etheric… The observed validity of this supports the paraphysical assertion and makes the likelihood of UFO being Earth-created greater than the likelihood of their creation on another planet… The astral world of illusion, which (on psychical evidence) is greatly inhabited by illusion-prone spirits, is well known for its multifarious imaginative activities and exhortations. Seemingly some of its denizens are eager to exemplify principalities and powers. Others pronounce upon morality, spirituality, Deity, etc. All of these astral exponents who invoke human consciousness may be sincere, but many of their theses may be framed to propagate some special phantasm, perhaps of an earlier incarnation, or to indulge an inveterate and continuing technological urge toward materialistic progress, or simply to astonish and disturb the gullible for the devil of it.”
