JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

isotretinoin buy no prescription The next five entries in John’s unfinished dictionary take us from “aura” to “black-out,” with a few interesting points along the way. I haven’t found much about Dr. John E. Jacobs or AURA. The mention of Beelzebub is curious; I haven’t found any mention of it as an ancient name for Venus. (Wikipedia claims Beelzebub is associated with Venus in the apocryphal Testament of Solomon, but that’s not in any of the translations I checked.) It would be an interesting correlation, given the number of contactees who claimed to have met Venusians.

John was born on March 25, 1930. I’m sure he’d be glad to know his fans are still reading him 92 years later.

I thought I’d mark the occasion by posting a letter he wrote home a month before his 19th birthday. He had dropped out of high school and gone to NYC to make a career as a writer. As the letter shows, it wasn’t easy!

The next five definitions in John’s proposed UFO dictionary include some interesting bits, including an unorthodox definition of an angel and the possible ingredients of UFO angel hair. Unfortunately, we’ll never know what he had to say about asteroids.

At some point, John started compiling a dictionary of UFO terms. I don’t know if he planned to publish it, or just to use it for his own reference. At any rate, he left a small box filled with 199 index cards. Not all cards are complete, and there are a few extra blanks at the end, so it’s obviously unfinished.

I’m calling it a “UFO Dictionary,” but, as you’ll see, it also includes pertinent military, scientific and paranormal terms. I posted a few of these several years ago, but now I’ll go through all of them, in batches of five, with notes, if they seem called for.

George Adamski was one of the first contactees; readers unfamiliar with him can hear an interview with Long John Nebel here.

I don’t know which faction of ufology used the term “Alpha Group.” Nor do I understand the reference to Genesis. Perhaps he means the Elohim, who have sometimes been identified as aliens (by the Raelians, for example).

What a pity John didn’t get around to defining “android”!

In 1966, John pitched a few articles to Playboy, including one on science fiction pioneer Hugo Gernsback and one on The Hobo News. Playboy opted instead for an article on UFOs, which they eventually rejected, and which became the basis of the book Operation Trojan Horse.

I assume these notes were intended for the proposed article on The Hobo News. It was one of the first papers he wrote for, back in his teens, and he looked back on it, and on his first years in New York in the ’40s, with some nostalgia. The Waldorf Cafeteria, by the way, was one of his hangouts.

This is the last letter from Carl Allen, and the last item in John’s “Jessup-Allende” file. Allen is upset that John doubted his identity, and outlines all the reasons why he must be the real Carl Allen. He apparently didn’t realize that other people were impersonating him or spreading rumors about him, and saw John’s skepticism as a personal attack. The story of the Philadelphia Experiment and the Varo edition was riddled with the usual ufological confusion, and one can only feel sorry for Allen for getting in over his head. I apologize for the bleed-through; I hope it’s still readable.

Carl Allen/Carlos Allende wrote two more letters to John. Neither is dated; here’s one of them.

It’s intriguing for anyone interested in the Philadelphia Experiment story, since Allen gives his own account of the Varo edition; oddly, he says he burned his copy. He makes some rather dubious claims–that he was a colonel in the Polish Republican Army, and that he’s a “Proffessor” who turned down a Ph. D.–and disparages Brad Steiger (Eugene Olson) and Patrick Huyghe. (I’ve met Patrick Huyghe, by the way, and he didn’t seem noticeably “moonstruck”). Allen also reveals that he sent tapes to Ivan Sanderson in a thick Mexican accent. Again, that may or may not be true. And, as usual, he berates John for being a “know-it-all.”

Carl Allen was obviously annoyed at John’s letter, and answered him with a remarkable 15-page single-spaced tirade. John refers to it in the letter that I linked to before, on Andrew Hochheim’s site. Allen also enclosed the record of his service on the USS Andrew Furuseth, where he claimed he saw the “Philadelphia Experiment.”

I suspect few readers will want to read Allen’s whole letter, so I’ll post just the first and last page, as well as his service record. He veers wildly between jovial friendliness and thundering denunciations, ending with saying he wants nothing more to do with John. But he did write two more (shorter) letters after this.

John answered Allen/Allende’s letter on September 3, 1971. He was, obviously, wary of anyone claiming to be Carlos Allende.

John had just finished writing Our Haunted Planet, which was published by Fawcett later that month. In Chapter 13, he mentions Allende, dismissing him as either a hoax or a myth: “A fantastic array of Allende impostors have turned up over the years to bedevil and bewilder the UFO buffs. He has managed to turn up in several different states at the same time. All kinds of letters and phone calls have been received by buffs in his name. Those who claim to have met him describe him as a swarthy man of Cuban or Spanish extraction. He rides around in a black Cadillac, of course.” He mentions that “a man claiming to be Carlos Allende” gave the Lorenzens a copy of the Varo edition, adding, “The real Allende, if there is a real Allende, would not have had access to a copy.” He equates him with other “mystery men” like Zdeen Alexander, who visited several ufologists in the early ’60s, and Mr. Dixsun, who once called on Edward Condon to announce that he represented the Seventh Universe.

John received, or at any rate saved, four letters from Carl Allen, otherwise known as Carlos Allende. The first of them is undated, and the postmark is illegible, but it seems to have been written in 1971. Allen had visited Jim and Coral Lorenzen, of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), and is responding to a letter from John that they had shown him.

In 1971, Allen was an almost mythical figure, as was the “Varo Edition.” There were rumors that neither really existed, and that various hoaxers were impersonating Allen.

Fred Lee Crisman, whom Allen mentions at one point, was a shadowy figure who, among other things, wrote to Amazing Stories about the Shaver Mystery, cooked up the Maury Island Incident, and was rumored to be one of the three tramps in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated. Apparently John suspected he might have been Carl Allen as well. Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle was a ufologist (and contactee) on the faculty of the University of Wyoming; he died just a couple of months ago, on November 15.

ADDENDUM: Andrew Hochheim maintains a site about the Philadelphia Experiment, and has posted a couple of letters John wrote about Allen and the Varo edition, one to Robert Goerman, one to an unidentified recipient. You can see them here.