JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

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Christine Burgin and Andrew Lampert publish a series of beautiful little books called the Further Reading Library. They’re dedicated to “forgotten ideas, overlooked accomplishments, and idiosyncratic world views,” including the work of Loïe Fuller, Thomas Wilfred, Richard Shaver, Richard Foreman, Margaret Watts Hughes, Tony Schwartz, and Charles Fort (full disclosure: I wrote the introduction to the book on Thomas Wilfred). One recent entry is Jackie Gleason: Library of the Paranormal, containing interviews with Gleason about his interest in paranormal subjects and selections from his library. I’m posting it here because one of those books was Our Haunted Planet:

So, just in case you were wondering, now you know: Jackie Gleason read John Keel. I was amused to see John’s book next to one by Ingo Swann. After one of John’s hospital stays, he needed someone to escort him home. He asked both Ingo and me, either because he wanted two people or thought one of us might not show up. John was loaded with painkillers, and when we got him home, he thought his door was covered with graffiti; we had to reassure him that drugs were to blame, not his neighbors. Ingo had never seen John’s epically cluttered and filthy apartment, and his immediate reaction was to throw back his head and guffaw.

Keel fans might be particularly interested in the book on Shaver, which reproduces many of his rock images, and the one on Fort, which reproduces his notes, clippings, and letters. Good work, Further Reading Library!

We continue with the coverage of the Silver Bridge disaster in the Athens Messenger. John didn’t save the paper from Dec. 23, so we pick up the story on Dec. 24. There’s news about an attempt to reconstruct the bridge to find out why it collapsed, and Mary Hyre writes about people who escaped the tragedy and about the ongoing disaster assistance.

As you saw in the last post, John wrote the Canadian ufologist, linguist, and musician Prior Maximilian Hemsley Edwards, asking for information about winged cats. Edwards responded with a warm and chatty letter about various strange creature sightings, as well as his own colorful and busy  life. Following that is another of his letters. I’m afraid I haven’t found John’s answer to the first one. And I certainly hope Edwards got his clippings back from Charles Bowen!

The folder containing the winged cat article that I posted two weeks ago includes some other documents. Jim Lorenzen of APRO sent John some clippings about winged cats (now unfortunately too faded to post here) and the relevant part of a letter from Prior Maximilian Hemsley Edwards. Edwards was an interesting character–he was a professor of linguistics at the University of Victoria, where he specialized in Rumanian, and he also contributed to the Flying Saucer Review. John promptly wrote him a letter. More next week!

John was born March 25, 1930. Happy Birthday, John! He’s seen here with his long-time partner Arlene Stadd, from a calendar that she made for him in 1994.

Keep reading those Keel books!

John wrote this amusing account of a winged cat in January, 1968. I don’t know if it was published in this form, but John incorporated it into Chapter Four, “Flying Felines,” of Strange Creatures From Time and Space, later reissued as The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings.

We continue with the local coverage of the Silver Bridge disaster. The search continues for those lost in the collapse; Mary Hyre devotes her column to the recovery and to a memorial service for two of the victims.

John wrote this letter to Col. George P. Freeman, a spokesman for Project Blue Book, on Jan. 30, 1967. I don’t know what Col. Freeman thought of it, but I think it likely that John’s warning about “the actual physical fate of the planet itself” was not taken seriously.

I assume the “rather hysterical newspaper piece” John mentions is this one.

The next day’s coverage of the Silver Bridge disaster includes a report on the continuing search for bodies and Mary Hyre’s account of the funeral of Paul and Lillian Wedge, who died in the collapse. There’s also a UFO report from Shade, Ohio, 33.6 miles from Point Pleasant.

As a writer specializing in strangeness, John naturally received many strange letters. Here, for example, is a letter sent to Saga in October, 1968, from someone claiming to represent a group called VOK, “which is an acronym.” The subject of UFOs was then, as always, filled with hoaxes, pranks, and misinformation. I don’t know who was behind VOK, or if the story went further than this letter.