JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

Bormujos This letter of John’s was published in the Spring 1968 issue of Saucer News, at that time edited by Gray Barker. John is, understandably, exasperated at all of the rumors circulating about him. The books he mentions deserve a few footnotes.

Gardner Soule wrote on many subjects, including Columbus, Eisenhower, the West, and cryptozoology, for both adults and children. Trail of the Abominable Snowman was published by Putnam in 1966; I haven’t read it.

J. Mortimer Sheppard had met John in Baghdad; as usual, John kept his business card. Sheppard wrote for a number of magazines, including Fate. He had a particular interest in the Sahara, and at one point crossed part of it in a land yacht. The original title for the proposed book was Sailing Sahara’s Sands, but it was eventually published as Sahara Adventure (Adventurer’s Club, 1959), since his wind-sailing exploits only filled a few chapters.

Alex Jackinson was a literary agent, whose clients included both Sheppard and John. Cocktail Party for the Author (Challenge Press, 1964) is a memoir of his career. I took the trouble to find a copy (it’s not rare) and read it. He devotes a chapter to John, since Jackinson coached him on writing for the men’s adventure market, placed the stories that John sent from his travels, and found a publisher for Jadoo. He has some interesting things to say about that phase of John’s career, so I’ll post some excerpts nest week.

John interviewed the Brazilian ufologist Dr. Olavo T. Fontes for the North American Newspaper Alliance in November, 1966. Dr. Fontes was the Brazilian correspondent for the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (Here is Coral Lorenzen’s letter to John about his upcoming visit), and is perhaps best remembered for his investigation of Antônio Villas Boas, who reported a sexual encounter with an alien (although that’s not mentioned here). An online search found that this interview was reprinted in Daniel Fry’s magazine Understanding, January 1967, where it was credited to the Maywood, NY Record, Nov. 16, 1966. The version there is much shorter, so it must have been cut down by NANA, the Record, Daniel Fry, or perhaps all three.

John reviewed John Fuller’s book The Interrupted Journey for the Spring 1967 issue of Saucer News, edited by James Moseley. The fifth paragraph (“While his wife…”) and tenth paragraph (“Certainly, we have now had…”) were cut, I assume for space rather than content. It was followed by a review of Coral Lorenzen’s book Flying Saucers: The Startling Evidence of the Invasion from Outer Space. Here it is as printed, since John apparently didn’t keep a carbon of it.

John wrote this letter home when he was 20. He describes working around the clock to finish his first film script, an adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Marble Faun. He doesn’t mention the title in the letter, but here’s a clipping about it; I don’t think it was ever filmed. He also reflects on his past three years in NYC, after he had left home and hitch-hiked to Greenwich Village to make it as a writer. He didn’t have an easy time of it!

Here is the last part of John’s talk for a MENSA convention in NYC, 10/29/72. Charles Fort’s statement “I think we are property,” which John quotes at the end, can be found in Chapter 12 of The Book of the Damned (p. 163 in the old Henry Holt omnibus).

Here we have the second part of John’s 1970 speech to a MENSA convention. A few notes: The man at Giant Rock was George Van Tassel, who did eventually finish his “crazy structure,” the Integratron. Truman Bethurum wrote about meeting Aura Rhanes in Aboard a Flying Saucer (De Vorss & Co., 1954). The Englishman who met “Yamski” was Ernest Arthur Bryant, who claimed a UFO experience in Scoriton, Devonshire on April 24, 1965. The case was described in Eileen Buckle’s 1967 book The Scoriton Mystery. Norman Oliver, of the British UFO Research Association, later said that Bryant’s widow said the story was fiction. I think Itkonen was Veikko Itkonen, a Finnish director who was working on a UFO documentary in 1969; I haven’t been able to find more about it.

Here, to follow up on John’s 1970 speech to the Humanist Society, is one for a MENSA convention in NYC in 1972. He touches on some of the same subjects, but is more concerned with the connections between paranormal and religious experiences. A few corrections about Charles Fort: he was not a “little man,” but six feet tall and stocky; he died in 1932, not 1931; the quotation “If there is a universal mind, must it be sane?” (with which John closes The Mothman Prophecies) was written by Damon Knight, in his biography of Fort; it was Aaron Sussman who proposed the title God Is an Idiot, which Fort rejected, preferring Tiffany Thayer’s suggestion Lo!

I’ll post the speech in three installments.

Today is John Keel’s birthday; he would have been 91. He would, no doubt, be glad to know his fans are still reading him, and would still be asking, “Yeah, but where’s the money?” Here he is doing magic tricks when he was much younger. Happy birthday, John!

Here are the final pages of John’s 1970 speech for the Humanist Society. There are still many reasons to be pessimistic, but we can only hope there are indeed “unknown psychic forces at work,” and that more people will be saying “Lollipop” in the future.

Here’s the third part (of four) of John’s speech for the Humanist Society, 7/22/70. And what a speech it is!