immodestly As the summer of 1967 continues, John receives more bizarre stories from Jaye Paro, including more about the pregnant Lia and some information about a missing psychiatrist. He also hears that another contactee, Gladys Fusaro (whose stories he found even more dubious) passed along a nonsensical message he had given her. (I’m not sure what that is; possibly a verse from Revelation he gave her on June 18). To further confuse matters, he got a call from a “Mrs. Gray Baker.” As he notes, his fellow ufologist was Gray Barker, not Baker, and was unmarried.
“Dr. Alan Holden, a psychiatrist who was co-chief of the prison ward at Bellevue Medical Center, disappeared in 1967 from his Park Avenue office-apartment and has never been found.”
New York Times, 1983
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/06/14/science/acts-of-violence-against-therapists-pose-lurking-threat.html?pagewanted=all
Comment by Tim — March 1, 2017 @ 2:11 pm
Mysterious Phone Calls
Keel wrote in Mothman that, three weeks after the “congress,”
At 1 a.m. on the morning of Friday, July 14, 1967, I received a call from a man who identified himself as Gray Barker from West Virginia. The voice sounded exactly like Gray’s softly accented mellifluous own, but he addressed me as if I were a total stranger and carefully called me “Mr. Keel.” . . . [H]e had just heard about a case which he thought I should look into. It was, he said, similar to the Derenstein case. Gray and I had visited Woodrow Derenberger together so I knew this was not the kind of mistake he would make. …
I had received a number of reports from people in the New York area who had been receiving nuisance calls from a woman who identified herself as “Mrs. Gray Barker.” I knew that Gray was not married but when I mentioned these calls to this “Gray Barker” he paused for a moment and then said, “No, Mrs. Barker hasn’t been calling anybody up there.” . . .
“Gray” sounded like a man under duress . . . as though someone was holding a gun to his head. I tricked him several times with different meaningless references and by the time I hung up I was definitely convinced that this man was not the real Gray Barker. . . . The next day I called Gray long distance and he denied having placed the call, naturally (Keel 1975).
In April 2001, Moseley insisted he’d had no prior knowledge of the call, but added, “Knowing Gray, he was probably drunk” (Moseley 2001).
Perhaps trying to provoke a confession, Keel told Moseley three days after the call that “these calls are part of a pattern which has been carefully planned by an individual or a group of individuals. Their eventual aim is to discredit my research or to involve me in some kind of a ‘frame up.’ . . . Extensive and detailed records of my current research, giving names, dates, etc., have been stored in a safe place and trusted friends have access to those records. Should I be arrested, murdered, or disappear, these records should immediately be examined and placed in the hands of a competent lawyer.”
Gray Barker in one of his favored poses, from the 1950s. Reproduced with permission from Clarksburg – Harrison Public Library.
[James W. Moseley (left) with David Houchin, historian in charge of the Barker Collection and other materials relating to West Virginian authors. Photo by John C. Sherwood.]
Keel added: “Please file the attached material in a safe place. If anything should happen to me, then print it. When you see Gray, give him the whole story and try to determine if he is involved in any way. I don’t think he is. . . . If, by any chance, any of your cronies are planting occasional hoax calls . . . get them to stop it. They will be needlessly involving themselves in a situation that could cost them their sanity or even their lives (Keel 1967).”
This letter is still in Barker’s files, indicating Moseley had shared it. The “attached material” was a four-page account of the July 14 call. In this version, the “wife” was “Mrs. Gray Baker” in every reference. Why she became “Barker” eight years later in Mothman is unknown-despite attempts to obtain clarification from Keel.
Keel asked Barker August 18: “Gray, can you account for where you were and what you were doing at the time I received that odd phone call. . . ? Do you suppose that there’s any chance that you could have made that call without conscious knowledge of doing so?” (Keel 1967)
Barker told Keel September 23 he’d been in his apartment July 14: “The weird thing, is, though, that my telephone bill does show a dialed call to you on the 14th (See [photo]stat of phone bill). A local hoaxter [sic] could very easily call up person to person and give my number to the operator, but this would be difficult or impossible to dial. This has me almost believing that I did make the call! I just don’t get drunk enough to not remember having made calls. . . . Maybe you can figure this one out. I can’t” (Barker 1967).
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/gray_barkers_book_of_bunk_mothman_saucers_and_mib
Comment by Zombienomicon Eisegesis — March 1, 2017 @ 10:14 pm
John’s notes on what he called “The Gray Barker Hoax” are coming up soon. It was a busy month!
Comment by Doug — March 2, 2017 @ 9:40 am
Thank you again Doug.
Comment by Sandro — March 5, 2017 @ 10:37 am