John Keel, Witness to the Birth of the UFO Subculture

In the UFO and paranormal field, we'd have nothing without the witness. No matter what you think of the work of John A. Keel, he was there to witness to the birth of the UFO phenomenon, including the subculture that sprung up around it. In a 1992 interview with Andy Roberts, Keel said, 

I read Charles Fort when I was very young, when I was about 14 or 15 years old. I was reading Amazing Stories in those days too, and they were getting letters to Amazing Stories about thing people had seen in the sky – this is before 1947 – and I was writing a newspaper column at that time for my home town newspaper and I did a couple of columns on that kind of thing, lights in the sky and people who saw contrails high over head and thought that that was some kind of spaceship or something... Anyway, I was around when the whole UFO thing broke...

Doug Skinner has a great site, "a tribute to that unique writer and character,  John Keel, Not An Authority On Anything. He talks about Keel's early work:

John published a science fiction fanzine, The Lunarite, in 1946... The first issue appeared on a postcard; the second was a single sheet on light pink paper... Keel fans may be intrigued by his early mention of the “Shaver Mystery” in that first issue. A BEM was a “Bug Eyed Monster,” a cliche scorned by true stfans.

Keel pans the Shaver Mystery in 1946

John Keel was aware of how the pages of Amazing Stories discussed things like mysticism, psychic phenomena, Forteana and science fiction notions of extraterrestrial space visitors as both fiction and fact. Amazing's editor Ray Palmer went on to co-found Fate Magazine in 1948, taking those concepts and presenting them exclusively as fact. The cover story for the famous first issue was Kenneth Arnold's "The Truth About The Flying Saucers." Ray Palmer had been an active part of the subculture of science fiction fandom, and developed similar, overlapping subcultures for the Shaver Mystery and later, UFOs.

John Keel saw this all develop, and in 1973, he wrote an article, "The Flying Saucer Subculture." Doug Skinner description of it from his Keel site:

John Keel published several booklets in the ’90s, under the imprint of the New York Fortean Society...One of these was The Flying Saucer Subculture, from 1994. It contained an article John had written in 1973 for The Journal of Popular Culture (published in 1975)... a thorough history of ufology, detailing its literature, personalities, and theories. John took delight in adding 105 footnotes, as well as a three-page bibliography. His assessment was, as is to be expected, negative: he dismissed most of the literature as “almost totally paranoid and insane,” and a “sea of trash.” He did, however, single out many researchers for approval...I drew the cover for this booklet; John and I had great fun with all the ufological in-jokes."

It's a great piece, and it documents some pivotal moments of history willfully ignored by other UFO authors. The original article: The Flying Saucer Subculture - John Keel on Scribd



A related piece was written by Keel in 1983, an article on Ray Palmer, “The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers,” originally published in the Fortean Times. Although Keel's ideas, observations and opinions were controversial, his role as a witness to the birth of the UFO phenomenon should be recognized and remembered.

Extraterrestrial Evidence and Disclosure by Richard Shaver

Long before Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Devil's Tower had a connection with extraterrestrial life. An ancient connection.

April 1947, two months before the report of flying saucers by Kenneth Arnold, "The Shaver Mystery" was the sole focus of editor Ray Palmer's June 1947 issue of Amazing Stories. The Shaver Mystery was about how we humans are the offspring of god-like ancient aliens, the reality behind all our myths and legends. After abandoning Earth, some of those they left behind were transformed into nasty little degenerate "deros." We came to call their space ships UFOs, and from their cavernous secret underground bases, their dero offspring are responsible for abductions, mutilations and other  of mankind's woes. Ray Palmer's editorial explained:

With the aid of such machines as the telaug (telepathic augmentor) and disintegrating rays, plus various instruments such as the "stim" which enhanced physical and emotional pleasures, these dero took to tormenting surface people and thereby being the basis for all of our legends of cavern wights, little people, demons, ghosts and — during the war — gremlins. They cause many unexplained accidents, such as those train wrecks, plane crashes, cerebral hemmorhages, etc. which are otherwise unexplainable. 

Further, Mr. Shaver declared that the Titans, living far away in space, or other people like them, still visit earth in space ships, kidnap people, raid the caves for valuable equipment, and, in general, supply the basis for all the weird stories that are so numerous (see Charles Fort's books) of space ships, beings in the sky, etc.

So, before the first flying saucer sighting, Richard Shaver was saying extraterrestrials were abducting humans.

Shaver the Experiencer

Richard Shaver's article for the June issue, "Proofs," was a response to the critics of his writings. In his introduction to his essay, he talks about the problems of being an experiencer or witness and knowing and telling the truth:

My strength is dedicated to informing you of the key and the way to the kind of life that produced the beauty and wisdom of those immortal beings of the past, beings whose actual existence has been proved a thousand times to those who, like myself, have had actual experience in the caverns. For we have seen and touched and used those antique mechanisms and we know whereof we speak. But until today, those who knew have feared to broadcast their knowledge, for in olden times it would have meant being burnt at the stake, and today most certainly the insane asylum.

There were giants in the earth in those days

Shaver's Titans were giants, and had been mentioned in the the Bible, and myths around the world. But for those who needed even more evidence, he delivers in "Proofs."

YOU ask for proofs of the giganticism of the far past — and you can find Devil's Tower (Wyoming) in any Atlas. It is a national monument ! If it isn't a gigantic petrified stump larger than any redwood ever hoped to be, I will eat my hat! The stump alone is taller than the Empire State building! What size were men when trees grew that size?

THEY were the men who are spoken of as the Aesir, under Ygdrasil's branches, planning a battle against the Frost Giants! And they had telaug beams (Odin's Eye), and they had "magical" underground dwarfs, and icy underworld realms of magic — and we have only the Devil's Tower to prove it today. But it was a long time ago; when the sun itself was more beneficial and less aging. BUT, BROTHER, HOW CAN YOU ASK FOR PROOF WHEN YOU HAVE A DEVIL'S TOWER?

There you have it, Devil's Tower proves the Shaver Mystery, and therefore, all the extraterrestrial space travel and beings within.

On the need for Disclosure

Richard Shaver fought against skeptical unbelievers, railed against official denials, and can be said to be a founding father for Disclosure:

MANY things could be obtained of infinite value from these people in the caverns, if all of our civilization was aware and trying to salvage even a bit of the mighty wisdom the Elder race left behind them in their miracles of machine art. BUT it can't be done as long as "officialdumb" frowns upon all such efforts as "superstition," "black art," or "crackpots." It is a vital and unseen side of our life WHICH MUST BE OPENED TO THE PUBLIC GAZE! 

“The fact is that any honest investigation of super-normal manifestation always and invariably turns up mighty important data; which data is shelved by fearful, ignorant and bigoted people who are quite sure that the school books are right, and that they cannot go contrary to opinion or they will lose their ‘position.’  ...SOMEONE, SOMETIME, HAS TO CONQUER THAT BLIND DENIAL OF FACT AND COME OUT IN THE OPEN WITH THE TRUTH...”

There's much more to Shaver's argument in "Proofs." For those who dare to read it all:

Amazing Stories, June 1947

The telaug of the dero could affect our minds, so who knows what misinformation they were making Shaver believe... or what they are making us believe now!