JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

Bormujos June Larson, an industrious UFO researcher, writes to John to fix a price for the material she’s sending him. She’s optimistic about the state of ufology, and hopes that John, Mort Young, and Major Keyhoe can encourage “serious research.”

John writes Jim and Coral Lorenzen, acknowledging a packet of photos they sent on the 12th. He’s intrigued by the Villas Boas story, but notes discrepancies between the report in Flying Saucer Review and the original interview with João Martins and APRO member Dr. Olavo Fontes. He also comments on Ms. Lorenzen’s article “The Reason?” in the November 1963 APRO Bulletin, which speculated that the military wanted to keep its knowledge of UFOs secret from the aliens, not from the public. (You can read the article here.)

ADDENDUM: By mistake, I originally identified Ms. Larson’s letter as one from Ms. Lorenzen. They were both sending John material for his proposed Playboy article at the time. My apologies!

We continue with a brief exchange of letters between John and Coral Lorenzen, concerned mostly with photos and the problems of documenting sources. Noteworthy here is John’s first response to the account of Antônio Villas Boas (whom he calls Bolas, for some reason). Villas Boas was a Brazilian farmer who reported a sexual encounter with an alien; John and Coral discuss the case in more detail in later letters. Also to be noted is John’s mention of “Fuller’s second book.” That would be John Fuller’s book on Betty and Barney Hill, The Interrupted Journey, which would be summarized in Look, October 4 and 18, 1966, and published later that year.

John writes to Mort Young, a reporter for the now defunct New York Journal-American, whose book UFO: Top Secret was to come out the next year. John hopes the “triumvirate” of the two of them and John Fuller “can succeed in breaking this case wide open.” The Mrs. Larson he mentions is June Larson, who sent him many UFO clippings.

I started this blog ten years ago; the first post was on September 6, 2009, a few months after John died. As a postscript, here’s a note he sent me in 1991, not long after we met, after seeing me perform a set at Caroline’s Comedy Club in NYC. Keep reading his books, Keel fans!

In this next exchange with Coral Lorenzen, John acknowledges receipt of her packages, and worries that his mail is being opened. He mentions upcoming UFO books by John Fuller and Mort Young (The Interrupted Journey and UFO: Top Secret), and says he hopes they can “make UFOs as popular as the Beatles.” He discusses some new photos, and dismisses the ones that James McDivitt took on Gemini 4.

Lorenzen replies by advising John not to be paranoid about his mail. She reports that she and Jim watched “the CBS Schmear last night and were laughing ourselves sick afterwards.” That must have been UFO: Friend, Foe, or Fantasy?, narrated by Walter Cronkite, which aired on May 10. She speculates about the aliens’ intentions, and recommends that UFO reporting concentrate on “the water-electricity reconnaissance,” also cautioning that “one sighting does not constitute evidence.”

John continues his correspondence with Jim and Coral Lorenzen; Carol seems to be the one writing the letters. John stresses the need for sources, asks for a photo of the Lorenzens, an explanatory brochure, and a UFO witness form. He plans to list all the sightings for one date, and to stress APRO, NICAP, and The Flying Saucer Review, and to ignore Ray Palmer (who published Flying Saucers) and Jim Moseley (of Saucer News). The “Bolas story” refers to Antônio Villas Boas, who reported a sexual encounter with an alien. I’m puzzled by John’s use of “the Geniac system.” The only Geniac I could find was a computer toy from the ’50s. Does anyone know of a “manual system” by that name?

Coral Lorenzen replies, promising to send material on Villas Boas, and to take a picture of herself and Jim. She defends not citing sources in the bulletins, mentions a report from Peter Norris on a flap in Australia, and recommends the “IGY” photos: UFO photos taken by Almirs Barauna in Trindade, Brazil, in January, 1958, during the International Geophysical Year. She also adds, rather ominously, “it is in the interest of the people of this world to begin to accept the reality of these things as soon as possible. I doubt there is much time left.”

John follows up on a visit to NASA, with a letter to Les Gaver, in the Public Information Division. He asks permission to keep some photos longer, for his projected Playboy article, and asks if NASA analyzed the photo Mariner 4 took of Mars. Gaver gives permission, and encloses independent analyses of the Mariner 4 images (“the television experiment”), which John didn’t keep in this file. I’m curious which astronomers claimed to have found the canals in the photos. Mariner 4 is usually cited as ending the speculations about the canals, which were even shown on NASA’s maps until then.

I’m continuing with John’s “official correspondence” for 1966. Here. by the way, is a look at the file folder…

As he entered ufology, and worked on his ill-fated Playboy article, he contacted other researchers with his usual thoroughness. In April, he visited the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, and met with Major Keyhoe and Richard Hall. He apparently spent more time with Hall than with Keyhoe. There are no replies in the folder, so these letters may have gone unanswered. The book for Fawcett that he mentions was his Batman spoof, The Fickle Finger of Fate.

Coral Lorenzen responds to John’s letter, and he is officially enrolled in APRO. He had quite a correspondence with the Lorenzens that year. Most of it is more interesting than this simple business letter, but this is how it began, and I didn’t want to leave it out. One of the hallmarks of early UFO researchers was their desire for respectability; in this letter, Lorenzen mentions her “heavy emphasis on College Professor types” and “the various professions, including Doctors and lawyers,” and cites A. E. Brown and Richard C. Gerdes. John, it should be mentioned, didn’t fit this category; he was a high school dropout who wrote for men’s magazines and TV, and whose latest work was a Batman spoof. He was apparently not what APRO was looking for!

John writes a letter to A. M. Rosenthal, then managing editor of the New York Times. He reminds Rosenthal of an earlier acquaintance, offers a brief update of his career, and requests a statement on the paper’s possible censorship of UFO stories. Rosenthal apparently never wrote back. I suspect letters about UFO censorship may have not been appreciated at the Times.

I also note, sadly, the passing of two of John’s friends, Rosemary Ellen Guiley and Paul Krassner.

Ms. Guiley was a prolific writer of books on the paranormal, and most recently the executive editor of Fate. I posted pictures of her and John here.

Paul Krassner had a long career as a satirist, and for many years published that exemplary magazine The Realist. I posted a note on my chance discovery of John’s back issues here. Krassner also appears as a minor character in The Fickle Finger of Fate, which John mentions in his letter to Rosenthal. “Klaw Krassner” is cast as the “token atheist” on a boat piloted by Captain Bartolo, that is, Mad writer Dick DeBartolo; here are his two appearances.

On May 1, 1966, John wrote to Jim Templeton, who had taken a photo of his daughter that seemed to show a spaceman in the background. The photo was much discussed among UFO buffs at the time; the most popular explanation is that the spaceman is an overexposed image of Templeton’s wife. If you don’t know the story, Wikipedia is one place to start. John ordered copies of the photo; Templeton replied with some details, and, in a homey touch, asked if John could send him some stamps for his collection.