JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

Balanga The first of the Reeves pages turned out to be a simple substitution cipher. Naturally, John analyzed the second sheet to see if it was also a cipher (he couldn’t find one). Here are some of his worksheets.

Included in John’s file on the Reeves symbols is a letter from Timothy Green Beckley, who reports another sighting by John Reeves; this one took place on December 4, 1966, and apparently involved a robot. Beckley also discusses another UFO case in Oregon, involving a different Reeves family. It must have been a bad year to be a Reeves.

John included in the file several pictures that he didn’t refer to in the text: a photo of some alien writing credited to George Adamski, another page of Bliss symbols, comparisons of “ancient pictorial signs,” and another page of symbols with an interpretation of the Socorro insignia. Next, we’ll have John’s attempts to analyze and decipher the second Reeves sheet.

“The Reeves Papers: A Modern Rosetta Stone?” concludes with some speculations on the purpose of the two sheets, particularly given that the first seems to be a simple substitution cipher, and the second doesn’t. John also guesses at the meaning of a few of the symbols, using the Bliss system.

The article seems to end here, but the file contains other pages of drawings not mentioned in the text, some incomplete earlier drafts, and a number of valiant (although unsuccessful) attempts to decipher the second sheet. So, we’ll continue with those next.

Below are the next two pages of John’s article “The Reeves Papers: A Modern Rosetta Stone?”, his analysis of the supposed alien writing reported by John Reeves in i965, followed by the illustrations indicated in the text. Here he considers the possibility of a hoax and the universality of simple signs. He then reports corroboration from one his “silent contactees.”

We continue with John’s article, “The Reeves Papers: A Modern Rosetta Stone?” As I said before, I don’t know if this was published. I don’t know what the red numerals indicate; I assume they refer to illustrations, but they don’t correspond to the supplementary pages of drawings.

John links the symbols reported by UFO witnesses to the “Unified Symbolism for World Understanding in Science” developed by C. K. Bliss and Oliver L. Reiser in the early 1950s. Here are the next two pages, followed by the relevant illustrations. The Socorro insignia was reported by Lonnie Zamorra in two sightings in Socorro, NM in 1964. There’s more to come!

We continue with John’s article on the “Reeves Papers,” two sheets of supposedly alien writing reported by contactee John Reeves. I don’t know if the article was published; it may be unfinished. The red numbers may indicate footnotes, but there are no footnotes in the folder. The article is ten pages; I’m posting two pages at a time.

John’s birthday was yesterday, the 25th. Happy belated and posthumous birthday, John!

John kept a file on the “Reeves papers,” the two sheets of supposedly alien writing found by John Reeves after a 1965 UFO sighting in Florida. John (Keel, that is) made an attempt to decipher them, and to relate them to other reports of alien symbols. He was also intrigued by their similarities to the “Unified Symbolism” system developed by C. K. Bliss and  Oliver R. Reiser in the 1950s.

We’ll start with the first two pages of a 10-page article. I don’t know if he ever published it, but he probably sent copies to other researchers. The red numbers seem to indicate footnotes; they don’t correspond to the six pages of drawings mentioned at the top, which are referred to later in the text. Following this are photocopies of the two Reeves sheets.

In a sort of postscript to his last letter, John tracks down Alex Theoharous and his wife (whom he doesn’t name), and convinces them not to pirate Bowen’s book The Humanoids. Bowen was grateful, as you can see here. As we can see from John’s letter, Bowen’s remark about Frank Edwards was prompted by Alex Theoharous’s defense that he and his wife were only doing what Edwards had done.

This is the last letter I’ve found from John’s correspondence with Charles Bowen. After this, I plan to post John’s notes on the “Reeves code,” and then some material about his experimental films, and then some of his correspondence from the 60s with Jim and Coral Lorenzen, Ivan Sanderson, and Lynn Catoe. There’s more to come!