JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

nope These next five definitions offer few surprises. I will add that I don’t think psychosis is purely emotional, but can have physical causes too. And that John obviously saw psychic and occult terms as part of ufology.

The next set of definitions includes one that John never completed; he must have thought that “planetoid” should be mentioned, but hadn’t decided what to say about it.

As far as I know, there’s no such thing as a “true paranoid,” but many degrees and kinds of paranoids, who often resist neat human classification. Those who hear voices are generally defined as paranoid schizophrenics. The “plus machine” is new to me; maybe some reader more versed in the ufological literature knows where it came from. And I note that John’s edit in the definition for “pockets” changes it from a belief to a fact. That may be just a stylistic choice, to avoid having to qualify all these definitions, rather than an indication of his own acceptance.

We come to the end of the O entries now. “Overshadow” is a particularly disturbing idea, I think.

The term “operator” comes from the 1958 book Operators and Things, by Barbara O’Brien. The name was a pseudonym; I don’t think her identity was ever revealed. The book is subtitled “The Inner Life of a Schizophrenic,” and describes a six-month schizophrenic episode, in which the author battles her threatening inner voices, who call themselves “operators,” and her a “thing.” It’s a compelling first-person account of the disease, although I suspect it could be at least partially fictional. Ace paperbacks reissued it in its line of books on UFOs and the supernatural, with the requisite spooky cover design, touting it as “strange, amazing, unbelievable yet true.” John apparently saw the operators as UFO occupants.

O’Brien includes a glossary of her own in the back. Her definition of “operator” is: “A human being with a type of head formation which permits him to explore and influence the mentality of others.”

The next batch of definitions is more substantial. He links the Indian mounds to the fairy mounds of Irish folklore (Sidhe being the Irish term for fairies), explains “negative factor,” proposes a “negative universe,” and offers the term “neurot,” which is new to me. He left MPE undefined: it could refer to Maximum Permissible Exposure, or the Max Planck Institute of Extraterrestrial Physics, or something else.

Sorry for the delay in posting. I was having scanner trouble, but it’s fixed now.

This next batch contains several brief and incomplete entries. I can only wonder what John meant to do with “monitor” and “monitoring disk.” And what would he have thought of mongering in the age of the internet?

The next group of definitions takes us from “materialize” to “Menzelform.” One less familiar term here is “Men in Gray,” entities that John associates with the Romani. According to Gray Barker (in They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers), the word “Menzelform” was coined by Richard Hughes, publisher of the Flying Saucer News in the UK. The man credited with the term “Men In Black” should be Albert Bender, not Binder; maybe John’s typo was inspired by his friend Otto Binder.

John died on July 3, 2009. Here’s how he looked if you ran into him on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, checking out the sidewalk book tables. Rest In Peace, John!

Out of curiosity, I tried to find out what book he was holding. On the original photo, you can make out part of the title and the author’s name: it seems to be Say “Cheese!”: Looking at Snapshots in a New Way, by Graham King. I mentioned this to Mamie Caton, who knew John, and she said “That’s exactly the kind of book he would be looking at.”

I don’t recognize the man next to him; he may just be another book shopper.

The next few definitions in John’s unfinished dictionary contain a couple of curious items. I knew “limiting point” as a term in geometry, but hadn’t heard of it applied to the speed of light. And while I’d read descriptions of aliens with long fingers, I wasn’t familiar with it as a “generic term.”

POSTSCRIPT: I’ve just learned that Archives for the Unexplained have posted many of John’s articles for Saga here. A feast for Keel fans!

This next group of definitions contains some terms unfamiliar to me, particularly “invo” and its related words “invof” and “invoh.” Donald Menzel was an early and active UFO debunker, beginning with his 1953 book Flying Saucers. Philip Klass began his debunking career in the late ’60s. And once again, John didn’t finish one of the entries. How did karma fit into the Keelian view?

June 24 is St. John’s Day–a day to celebrate midsummer, Kenneth Arnold’s famous sighting, and everyone named John. Happy St. John’s Day!

Here are five more definitions for you to contemplate, plus one incomplete entry. It’s too bad we don’t have John’s thoughts on hypnotism, which was such an important part of the abductee culture. If you’re interested in inner-earth theories, I recommend Walter Kafton-Minkel’s fine historical survey Subterranean Worlds, published by the late lamented Loompanics in 1989. It’s out of print now, but maybe you’ll get lucky. As I recall, John was impressed with it, and curious about the author, who was unknown in Fortean circles. And John too received letters from the “International Bankers”; see here for an example.