JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

http://artedgeek.com/wp-content/export.php As it turns out, Apol was not replaced by Rubin, but remained in contact with Jaye Paro. (Nor was Rubin completely out of the picture; he does show up later.) In August, John started sending Apol/Paro questionnaires, which were duly returned, with answers scrawled in red pencil. John kept his correspondence with Apol in a separate file; I posted about it here. The first of these questionnaires now follows in the Long Island file; John noted Apol’s answers on a carbon, since the originals are very faint.

1967 ufology is now often obscure, so here are some notes: John defined the 3rd Eye that Apol mentions as a group of “hostile or malevolent ultraterrestrials”; “Project B” was one of his pamphlets, reprinting an article from Flying Saucer Review. The list of possible contactees includes confessed contactees (Adamski, Schmidt, Childers, Menger, Renaud, Derenberger, Kiehl, Kittredge) as well as writers (Trevor James Constable, McGraw, Fuller, Michel, Davis) and a number of generals (Eisenhower, Marshall, MacArthur, Vandenburg). Otis T. Carr promoted free energy devices and tried to build a saucer, but didn’t claim contact. “Long John” Nebel had a radio talk show that often featured contactees, but never claimed contact either. Donald Estrella was a friend of John’s; he’s mentioned in The Mothman Prophecies.

Lee Childers lived in Detroit, and called himself Prince Neosom. Joao Freitas de Guimaraes had a UFO experience in Brazil in 1958; it was similar to Menger’s stories. Aimé Michel wrote a book called Flying Saucers and the Straight-Line Mystery. Isabel Davis was a member of Civilian Saucer Intelligence. Gloria Lee was another contactee, who died after a long fast in 1962.

The questionnaire is eight pages; the first four pages follow…

We return to the file… On July 31, John wrote another letter to the supposed aliens, asking them to make their presence known, and including a questionnaire. I haven’t posted the letter here, since it’s long and similar to John’s earlier ones. (Apol later answered the questionnaire; that’s coming up in the file.)

So, here’s the record for August 1-3. Jaye Paro and another contactee, Louise, have a lot to report, including fires, a black Cadillac, orders to buy sunglasses and salt, an armed assailant, and more. John is particularly perplexed by the sound of crying baby, which occurs in other UFO cases, and inspires many Crybaby Bridges throughout the US. Rubin has now replaced Apol, but his bumbling antics soon get him sent back “home.” As John notes, “It was just another average day in the life of Jaye P. and J.K.”

A footnote: Ivan Sanderson didn’t die “soon,” but in 1973.

We’re at the end of July 1967, and John continues to keep detailed notes on the daily strangeness. Or, at least, what Jaye Paro reports as daily strangeness. Apol’s replacement, Rubin, finally appears, and shows a passion for gin rummy; John interviews him (indirectly, as always). Jaye witnesses an alien birth, and John suggests some passwords for her contacts, to prevent bogus messages from the Fourth Group. John particularly noted the salt under the baby’s tongue, in the Catholic/alien baptism, because Jaye had reported that aliens ate large amounts of salt.

A couple of footnotes: Ivan was Ivan Sanderson, writer of many books on animals, forteana, and ufology; Charles Bowen was the editor of the British Flying Saucer Review.

As July 1967 comes to a close, we find John transcribing a message from Apol in a motel in Long Island. He doesn’t say how it was transmitted, but my guess is that Jaye Paro dictated it over the phone. Much of it is the usual vague rambling studded with scripture, but there are a couple of interesting points. One is the request, “What do you suggest regarding our messages? How can we prove we are we,” which John later follows up on with some passwords. I was also struck by the sentence, “We can not let your people all become as a subject controlled by an operator.”

To John, that must have recalled the book Operators and Things, a disturbing memoir of schizophrenia by Barbara O’Brien (probably a pseudonym; I don’t think the author has been identified). The Operators and Things of the title refer to malevolent disembodied entities, and the humans that they control with rays (a classic influencing machine delusion). UFO buffs in the ’60s were intrigued by its similarity to the accounts of Richard Shaver. Its use here may indicate that Jaye was familiar with O’Brien. John was; here’s his definition of “operator” from his unfinished UFO dictionary. And then Apol’s message in that distinctive Keelian manuscript.

“The messenger,” by the way, is Jaye Paro.

I was in upstate New York last week (I gave a concert in Lily Dale, of all places), and took the opportunity to stop off in Perry, where John Keel grew up. Mamie Caton and I had lunch in the Country Kitchen, took a picture of me at the local library (where John was, in his words, “a reading machine”), and admired Silver Lake.

John told the story of A. B. Walker’s Silver Lake Sea Serpent hoax in Chapter 21 of Strange Creatures of Time and Space (Chapter 22 of the revised version, The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings). I posted an old postcard of it here. The sea serpent is still the town mascot: a trailer park by the lake is called Sea Serpent View, and the Perry Fire Department holds an annual Sea Serpent Softball Tournament. What could be more fitting for John’s hometown?

A couple of messages from Apol (or Appel) introduce Jaye Paro’s new contact, Rubin. The first message is in Apol’s usual Biblical mode; I guess it’s paraphrasing Exodus 19. In the second, Denton may refer to William Denton, who promoted psychometry. Rubin, not surprisingly, will turn out to be rather problematic.