Flying Saucer to the Center of Your Mind: Selected Writings of John A. Keel (16 page)

The most celebrated sample of alleged UFO material – a few slivers of pure magnesium – tore the Condon committee apart. Some anonymous person sent the particles of magnesium to a Brazilian columnist, Ibrahim Sued of Rio de Janeiro, together with a letter describing how he had seen a flying disk explode in midair. The particles were supposed to be the remnants. Sued turned the pieces over to the late Dr. Olavo T. Fontes, then one of the world’s leading UFO authorities. The samples were analyzed by Brazil’s Mineral Production Laboratory. They were found to be unusually pure magnesium. Dr. Fontes sent some of the fragments on to Mr. and Mrs. James Lorenzen at APRO in Tucson, AZ. Further tests verified the original findings. So APRO announced in 1957 this 100 percent pure magnesium could not come from any known manufacturer. Therefore, they hinted, it must have been the product of some superior technology.

Ten years later, these fragments were turned over to Dr. Condon. After running his own tests, Condon concluded, “Since only a few grams of the magnesium are known to exist, and these could easily have been produced prior to 1957 by common earthly technology, the composition and metallographic characteristics of these sample themselves reveal no information about their origin. The mere existence of these samples cannot serve to support an argument that they are fragments from material of extraterrestrial origin.”

One of the scientists on Dr. Condon’s committee, Dr. David R. Saunders, later questioned this in his book
UFOs? Yes!.
Saunders felt that the very high purity of the metal was unique. “I can only say,” Saunders wrote, “that if the Brazilian fishermen did not really collect fragments from a spaceship, then someone perpetrated one of the most sophisticated scientific hoaxes in history.”

There the matter rests. Logically, the samples prove only one thing: that some anonymous person in Brazil in 1957 somehow had access to a small piece of unusually pure magnesium. Instead of sending it to the government or to a Brazilian scientist with a known interest in UFOs, this person chose to mail it to a gossip columnist who had never even written about UFOs.

There are Antonio Pardos everywhere…

Among other famous alleged UFO artifacts is a huge slab of metal found in Canada in the 1950s, probably a chunk of a dismantled bridge, and a number of small metal spheres that have been found all over the world. More of these spheres were found in New Zealand in the summer of 1972. Some are constructed of rare metals, but most are made of plain old aluminum. Dr. Condon came up with an explanation for these, too. He says they are dropped from airplanes to “calibrate radar.” Since even a hollow metal sphere will drop at a speed of about 90 to 120 miles an hour, and since radar sets take several seconds to make one complete 360-degree “sweep,” we can question the usefulness of such objects. Besides, there are laws against dropping such objects over populated areas. An aluminum sphere falling at 90 miles an hour could easily kill someone. And why do they keep falling in areas where there are no radar stations?

Certain facts are now inescapable. There is conclusive proof that three earthly substances (aluminum, magnesium, and silicon) play some enigmatic but important role in the UFO phenomenon. Either the objects are actually made from these materials, or their source has some way of obtaining them from earthly manufacturers. One could argue, of course, that the same metals and chemicals found on Earth might be found on another planet supporting life. But aluminum is manufactured by an electrical process, from materials that are quite rare on this planet. Cryolite, a vital ore used in the process, is found only in Greenland.

It may be that UFOs simply collect these things from dumps in some part of the world and then fiendishly drop them in another part, thus amusing themselves and confounding us.

The most important aspect of all this may be the mysterious men who plague UFO research, harass investigators, and pull off these elaborate and sometimes costly hoaxes.

Although UFOs have been around for a very long time, comparatively few people take a really deep interest in them. It has been quite easy to manipulate those few into believing almost anything. Whoever or whatever is behind the phenomenon seems to want the UFO enthusiasts to believe in visitors from Ummo and Venus. They engineer all kinds of events and false evidence to reinforce that belief. So long as a handful of star-struck amateur ufologists keep wishfully peering through telescopes looking for evidence of a superior technology on some far-off planet, the earthbound UFOs and their occupants are safe.

The extraterrestrial belief has another value. It is utterly ridiculous and unacceptable to science, and to a large part of the public. So when UFO enthusiasts appear on radio and television advocating their belief in spacemen, they succeed not only in making fools of themselves, but they also heap more ridicule on a subject already discredited by the Air Force, Dr. Condon, and a large segment of the press. They make it easier to laugh off the whole thing and ignore the empirical evidence. The UFO phenomenon has created the perfect cover by exploiting and misleading the believers.

Millions of people on every continent have now seen these fantastic flying spheres, discoids, and cigar-shaped things, yet the psychological warfare tactics employed by the phenomenon have been so effective that only a few hardy scientists and a scattering of housewives and teenagers pay any attention. If flying saucers really are invaders from outer space, then we have already lost.

On the other hand, if something else is involved, then the UFO problem doesn’t belong in the hands of the Air Force, but falls into the shady province of the National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA is merely one branch of our intelligence establishment. The NSA is a monolithic organization with an annual budget nearly three times that of the space program during its peak years. Unlike NASA, the NSA produces no visible hardware or results. Congress has virtually no control over its activities or spending.

There were Men in Black incidents in 1947 before the CIA or NSA were really functioning. The original Central Intelligence Group (CIG), forerunner of the CIA, was staffed with
naval
intelligence personnel. But Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg of the
Air Force
was one of the first directors of the CIG. Later, when he was Air Force Chief of Staff, it was Vandenberg who ordered Air Force intelligence to
reverse
their position. The Air Technical Intelligence Command (ATIC) had submitted a “Top Secret Estimate of the Situation” to Vandenberg, outlining their reasons for believing UFOs were from outer space. After Vandenberg threw the estimate back at them, they came up with the
Project Grudge Report,
which explained flying saucers away as meteors and mistakes.

The National Security Agency is headed by mathematicians, physicists, and radar experts. Yet the officially stated function of the NSA is to create codes, and to break enemy codes! It is just possible that all that money is being spent on something more than code machines.

Did General Vandenberg know something the men at ATIC did not even suspect? Are we waging a secret worldwide war with the characters who created the planet Ummo and all the other eccentric beliefs of ufology?

While Dr. Condon’s findings can be seriously questioned on several levels, and have been questioned by men like Dr. James McDonald and Dr. J. Allen Hynek, his conclusion seems impossible to discredit. There is
no
evidence to support the notion of extraterrestrial visitations. There is, however, a mountain of evidence indicating that the force behind the UFO phenomenon is solidly based on this planet. And it has been conning us for years, in order to keep us from discovering that fact.

CHAPTER 7

THE MOTHMAN MONSTER –
SAGA
MAGAZINE, OCT. 1968

What is battleship gray, five to seven feet tall, has a pair of red eyes two inches in diameter (which blaze like two laser beams), wings that extend to 10 feet when spread, and loves to chase automobiles? Give up? If it is any consolation, nobody else seems to know what it is, either. But over
100
people in Ohio and West Virginia swear they have seen such a creature since November 1966. Included among the witnesses are schoolteachers, businessmen, pilots, and members of the National Guard. They call it “The Bird,” but newspapers from coast to coast have dubbed it “Mothman.”

I have visited Mothman country five times since Dec. 1966, and have interviewed many of the witnesses in depth. While I have seen quite a few of the strange lights that bob at treetop level almost nightly throughout the area, Mothman has chosen to elude me. But he, or it, has reportedly turned up twice in my immediate vicinity. And those weird lights seem to have followed me from one end of West Virginia to the other.

West Virginia is a long-established haven for assorted monsters. In Sept. 1952 (a very good year for UFO stories), six glowing objects hurtled across the secluded hills of West Virginia. One of them reportedly smashed into a hilltop at a little hamlet called Flatwoods, in Braxton County. A group of residents headed by Mrs. Kathleen May and Eugene Lemon grabbed flashlights and climbed the hill to investigate. On the summit, they came face to face with a strange specter. It was an enormous gray-green figure with no visible arms or legs, but it did have a head (or helmet) shaped like the ace of spades. Two intense, pale blue beams of light represented its eyes, and it was surrounded by a very unpleasant odor. Lemon passed out on the spot, and the others decided not to linger. They grabbed up their fallen comrade and hurried back down the hill. All were violently ill, apparently from the unknown but toxic gas, for several hours. A dog that accompanied the group ran around the apparition, then staggered down the hill, vomited, and
died on the spot
. This became a “classic” in the annals of ufology, and is known as “The Flatwoods Monster” case.

The next West Virginian monster was allegedly a giant creature in the shape of a man, covered with black hair. It leaped in front of a bakery truck driven by Charles Stover, 25, on the edge of the Braxton County line in December of 1960. Others also reported seeing this same “Braxton County Monster,” and an armed posse searched the area in vain. It left behind giant, humanlike footprints that led nowhere. Another witness, one Hannibal Harper, said it was over six feet tall, covered with glossy black hair, and walked with a slow, awkward shuffle.

Hairy monsters have become rather routine in recent years, with sightings being reported annually in California, Michigan, Washington and, most recently, even in Florida and New York State. But giant birds are another matter altogether.

“A winged human being” was seen and reported to
The New York Sun
back in September of 1877. They claimed it was cavorting in the skies over Brooklyn, NY.

Nebraska was reportedly visited next, in 1922, when two different witnesses in different locales described essentially the same thing. One, a hunter named William C. Lamb, said he observed the landing of a strange circular flying craft, and hid behind a tree. A giant 8-foot tall creature with wings disembarked, and flew off. (There were thousands of UFO sightings throughout the world in 1922, although the newspapers of the period usually referred to them as “mystery aircraft” and “ghost ships.”)

At 2:30 a.m. on a hot morning in June 1953, Mrs. Hilda Walker, 23, Howard Phillips, 33, and Judy Meyers, 14, were sitting on their porch on E. 3
^rd
St. in Houston, TX when, as Mrs. Walker told it, “I saw a huge shadow across the lawn. I thought at first that it was a magnified reflection of a big moth caught in the nearby streetlight. Then the shadow seemed to bound upward into a pecan tree. We all looked up.”

According to
The Houston Chronicle,
they saw a 6 to 7-ft. tall man in gray, fitted with wings like a bat. He was surrounded by a dim gray light. Judy Meyers screamed, and the light died out.

“Immediately afterwards,” Mrs. Walker said, “we heard a loud ‘swoosh’ over the housetops across the street. It was like a white flash of a torpedo-shaped object.”

Almost ten years passed before the unearthly “Bird” was reported again, back in West Virginia (in 1962, in South Charleston and Pt. Pleasant – both uninvestigated at the time).

Then, late on the evening of Nov. 21, 1963, four teenagers were walking home from a dance when they saw what they described as an oval of bright light descend from the sky and land in a thicket close to their path. “It seemed like we were being watched,” John Flaxton, 17, told authorities later. “I felt cold all over. Then suddenly we saw a huge, dark figure shambling out of the bushes toward us.”

The four youngsters didn’t wait another second. They fled. Under close interrogation, they all told the same story. And they all agreed that the creature had wings like a bat, and no visible head. Giant footprints were found in the area later. They were an inch deep, two feet long, and nine inches across.

That incident occurred near Sandling Park, Hythe, Kent, in
England.

It’s a long ways from Kent, England, to Scott, Mississippi, a little town of 300 just north of Greenville. But at 2 p.m. on Sept. 1, 1966, Mrs. James Ikart of Scott phoned the Delta
Democrat Times
in Greenville and reported “a man with wings” was circling over the town. Photographers and reporters rushed to the scene, but the odd aerial object was gone. There were, however, a number of people who admitted having seen it.

“It got down pretty low, and then would go up,” Mrs. Ikart said. “I had never seen anything like it.”

A local meteorologist, John Hursh, suggested that it was just “somebody’s research balloon that got away.”

A few weeks later that “research balloon” turned up hundreds of miles northeast of Scott, Mississippi. This time the “balloon” landed within short driving distance from monster-ridden Braxton County in West Virginia. Five gravediggers near Clendenin, WV were among the first to glimpse “The Bird.” Kenneth Duncan of Blue Creek, WV, claimed that he and the others were baffled when something that “looked like a brown human being” performed an aerial reconnaissance of the grave site in broad daylight on Saturday, Nov. 12, 1966. “It was gliding through the trees and was in sight for about a minute,” Duncan stated.