Flying Saucer to the Center of Your Mind: Selected Writings of John A. Keel (37 page)

Police lieutenant Kenneth Mooney and Patrolman James Buckley later said that the boys were genuinely terrified by whatever they had seen. Dozens of people, including several policemen, reported seeing a “huge fireball” blazing across the sky shortly after the boys’ sighting. Chris Ward’s face was partially numb, he complained, and his hearing was impaired for several hours after his experience with the “beam of light.”

All of these incidents indicate that the “flying saucers” are engaged in activities far more complex and searching than a mere “aerial survey” of our planet. It is also clear that they have a need for both human beings and animals. There are hundreds of cases of open and deliberate hostility. The objects and their occupants have rather pointlessly injured innumerable people, pursued or attacked thousands of others, and ruthlessly raided our pastures and farms.

The UFO weaponry is awesome. They can paralyze and immobilize both machines and human beings, and they can somehow tamper with the human mind.

But why do they seem to be preoccupied with children and teenagers? Where are all of the disappearing people going? We only hear about the ones who get away from their abductors. There are undoubtedly thousands of incredible cases that have never been reported to anyone.

As of now, isolated sheriffs and police authorities scattered around the country are fighting a lonely battle, trying to cope with an unseen and dangerous enemy. Thousands of people in small towns and villages are afraid to go out alone at night, terrified of what may be lurking in their once placid skies.

Air Force jets do pursue the objects at every opportunity. When a flap broke out around Columbus, OH in the spring of 1968, the Air Force was on the job, scrambling fighters, trying to seek out these strange will-o’-the-wisps that appear and disappear almost magically.

But how can you fight a thing that can freeze your limbs and blank out your mind? Perhaps the best advice, for now at least, can be found in the words of a sheriff in South Carolina, who has been living with this nightmare for over a year.

“All we can do is keep our windows and doors locked,” he said. “And don’t go joy-riding late at night. There’s something out there, alright, but we’re like a bunch of kids trying to hunt an elephant with a bean-shooter.”

CHAPTER 20

OCEAN-BASED UFOS RING THE UNITED STATES –
MALE
MAGAZINE, DEC. 1970

Early on the morning of June 11, 1970, an eerie luminous sphere appeared in the skies over the Atlantic Ocean, and cruised silently past the tiny papyrus reed boat
Ra 2
, manned by explorer Thor Heyerdahl and a small crew. “It was in sight for several minutes,” navigator Norman Baker reported by radio, “and then it vanished in a bright orange flash.”

The
Ra 2
was attempting to cross the Atlantic to prove Heyerdahl’s theory that ancient Egyptians could have visited the New World centuries before Columbus. An earlier expedition in a similar craft, the
Ra 1
, had been aborted in 1969 when the ship had been engulfed in a storm and sprang a leak.

When Baker’s message reached the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) at Colorado Springs, CO, a spokesman said that the object could not have been connected with a space shot, but that “it might have been a meteor.” However, it is highly unlikely that the seasoned sailors aboard the
Ra 2
would have mistaken a meteor or other natural object for an unidentified flying something. Besides, Thor Heyerdahl had seen and reported UFOs before, during the historic voyage of his raft
Kon Tiki
across the Pacific several years ago.

Unidentified flying objects have been sighted consistently by the crews of hundreds of ships all over the Atlantic Ocean. In many well-documented cases, witnesses have claimed that strange metallic saucer-shaped and cigar-shaped objects have suddenly surfaced from beneath the waters, risen into the air, circled their ships, and flown off into the stars. In other cases, flying objects have descended to the surface of the ocean and disappeared underneath.

There are still other baffling cases of gigantic “mystery submarines” that apparently do not belong to any known nation. They have successfully eluded massive searches by sea and air launched by the navies of several nations. All of these reports have generated one of the most popular and persistent legends in the “flying saucer” mystery – that UFOs are actually based
underwater
in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Oceans. An extension of these legends is the claim that “Lost Atlantis” still survives, and that there are huge, technologically advanced cities existing in the oceans.

While the existence of Atlantis will always remain a subject for scholarly debate, the innumerable sighting reports of reputable captains and crews indicates that mysterious aircraft and ships seem to have some intangible relationship with the world’s major sea-lanes.

The first known Atlantic sighting is found in the log of Christopher Columbus himself. On the night of Oct. 11, 1492, a few hours before land was finally sighted, Columbus and other members of his crew reportedly watched a strange light bobbing up and down in the distance, following the now-traditional “falling leaf ” motion of UFOs. Columbus’ crew was uneasy and in a state of rebellion after their long and seemingly futile voyage. They regarded the mysterious light as a hopeful omen and, sure enough, land appeared on the horizon the next day (in the same vicinity as the unknown and never-explained light).

When traffic between Europe and North America increased in the 19th century, sightings of UFOs multiplied dramatically. In some of these cases, the now-familiar UFO effects of sudden rises in temperature, blinding headaches, and conjunctivitis (eyes burned by ultraviolet rays from the objects) were noted.

The Captain of the British steamer
Flamborough
was temporarily blinded and suffered a “considerable pain in his head” after viewing a brilliant flying object off the coast of Maine on Nov. 18, 1887. Others were reporting weird “globes of fire” flying in formation, and luminous, circular “clouds.” Sometimes the pungent smell of rotten eggs (hydrogen sulfide) was mentioned in these early reports. Dark spheres and seemingly metallic objects plummeted into the waters near ships, or rose suddenly out of the water to fly away.

“It looked like two balls, one very black and the other brightly illuminated,” Capt. Swart of the Dutch ship
JPA
wrote of his sighting of March 19, 1887. “The latter fell, and as it seemed that it would strike the vessel, she was hove-to under storm sails… Immediately afterwards, solid lumps of ice fell on the deck, and the decks and rigging became coated with an icy crust… On the side of the vessel where ‘the meteor’ fell into the water, the ship appeared all black, and some of the copper sheathing was blistered.”

Captain Swart’s experience, and a large percentage of all the known Atlantic sightings, occurred in a section west of Bermuda. Although this particular area has become known as “the Bermuda Triangle,” it is actually oval-shaped, and encompasses thousands of square miles from Bermuda to Florida. Thor Heyerdahl’s
Ra 2
was passing into this mysterious region when they sighted their UFO.

A British sailor named John Fairfax is another visitor to the Bermuda Triangle who had a strange, almost mystical experience in the spring of 1969. Fairfax was sailing across the Atlantic alone, when he reportedly observed two brilliant lights on the horizon. They separated and flew higher into the sky and, as he watched, he claims he entered a motionless trance state. He had the uncomfortable feeling, he said, that someone or something was asking him if he wanted to join them. The lights finally disappeared among the stars. Such “trances” are commonly reported in land-based cases, also. The witnesses are often in automobiles when “flying saucers” approach them and somehow induce a state of paralysis.

Perhaps Fairfax is one of the lucky few that got away, for the Bermuda Triangle has acquired a sinister reputation. Since 1840, no less than 70 ships and 40 airplanes have vanished without a trace there, along with passengers and crewmen totaling more than 1,100. Massive searches have failed to detect any debris or sign of the missing craft. But, in several instances, the missing ships were later found in perfect condition, without any sign of their crews or any indication of what had happened to them. In June and July of 1969, five abandoned ships were found adrift in the Triangle. One of these was John Crowhurst’s small sailboat, and therein lies another strange saga of the sea.

Crowhurst was purportedly participating in a round-the-world yachting race from England, but the diaries found aboard his craft told a bizarre story of deliberate fraud. He did not even attempt to circle the globe, but merely circled the Arctic instead. His diary described strange “hallucinations,” sightings of sea monsters, and things in the sky. When his boat was found, it was in perfect order. A dismantled radio was found carefully laid out on the deck where he had apparently been repairing it, so theories of his having been washed overboard during a storm were discounted. The only thing missing among his effects was a movie camera. A board of inquiry concluded that he had suffered pangs of conscience, and could not go through with his scheme for winning fame, and a substantial prize, by claiming to be the winner in the round-the-world race. So, on the last lap of his trip, he decided to drown himself. This, however, does not explain why he decided to take his movie camera with him.

Students of the paranormal are speculating that, like Fairfax, Crowhurst may have received an “invitation” from a light in the sky. The last entry in his diary indicates that he was drowned or disappeared on June 24
^th
, 1969. June 24
^th
has special significance to mystery-watchers. Private pilot Kenneth Arnold made his historic sighting of nine “flying saucers” on June 24, 1947, and there has been a long chain of important UFO and occult events on that date.

Ufologists are now becoming aware of specific “flying saucer” routes spread around the world. The objects seem to follow these routes year after year, century after century. One of the most active of these routes originates in the Arctic Circle, looping down over Spitsbergen, Greenland and into the Bermuda Triangle. Sightings along these routes have become so commonplace that you need full-time use of a computer to keep track of them. Dozens of nations are involved. But the historical records show that scholars were aware of these routes thousands of years ago. In ancient China, the mysterious lights in the sky were often regarded as “dragons,” and Chinese historians noted that they followed regular paths across China. In fact, real estate along these “dragon routes” was especially valuable since the early Chinese considered them to be lucky areas. Modern-day researchers have traced these dragon paths across Asia and northern Europe, and have found that they coincide exactly with the routes followed by modern UFOs.

The Scandinavian countries have been besieged by UFOs for years. The chilly waters around Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark have produced a fascinating stream of reports describing gigantic submarines of unknown origin, huge unmarked airplanes (in 1934!), and a wide variety of puzzling lights. One such report came from the crew of the Russian ship
Izhevsk
as it was crossing the Norwegian Sea on August 2, 1967.

“There were three of us in the cabin – Capt. Markov, Senior Engineer Ivanov, and myself,” First Mate Bazhazhin told Dr. Felix Zigel, Assistant Professor of Moscow Aviation Institute.

The navigator on duty reported a strange phenomenon in the sky. We ran to the bridge and saw a sphere-like whitish spot moving southward. It was 11:30 p.m. Moscow time. A few minutes later, a bright spot flared up high in the sky. For a couple of seconds, it rushed headlong from west to east at an angle of 45 degrees to the Earth, getting much larger. Suddenly it came to a stop and, with a play of bright rainbow colors (yellow predominating), began throwing off sparks and became enveloped in a white shroud.

Once again the sphere-like white nebula began moving south. The procedure was repeated four times. On the fifth and last time, the spot’s behavior changed. It stopped midway, turned over, and assumed the shape of an egg with the thicker end up. Then a powerful white jet squirted from the lower end, after which the “egg” grew pale, became enveloped in white mist and, with its white tail, began to head southward. All of this was visible for an hour and then vanished into thin air.

“Vanished into thin air…” This phrase appears again and again in the UFO reports of the past 100 years.

The crew of the fishing boat
Fram
described the sudden disappearance of a strange giant airplane off the coast of Norway on Feb. 11, 1937. The
Fram
was circling a cape near Kvalsvik, Norway at 9 p.m. when they sighted the plane resting on the water. Thinking the craft might be in trouble, the captain changed his course and headed for it. Red and green lights were visible on the machine but, as the boat approached, the lights suddenly went out, and the object was enveloped in a cloud of smoke. It disappeared, almost magically.

In more recent years, there has been an epidemic of disappearing submarines all over the world. They do not seem to belong to the Soviet Union or the United States. Reliable, trained observers such as pilots and sea captains have described these objects maneuvering in shallow waters (where no sensible submarine would dare venture). The navies of New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, and Venezuela have turned out in force, thinking they had trapped the mystery subs within their territorial waters. But the objects always manage to elude their pursuers.

One such submarine turned up north of Stockholm on Sept. 13, 1969. It was first sighted by a Finnish ferryboat near Norrtalje. Then a boatman on the island of Hamtan spotted it. Swedish authorities became upset, because the unidentified submarine was obviously headed into “the prohibited military sector of Bjorko-Arholma.” Planes, ships, and troops were rushed to the area, and an extensive search was held. No trace of the object was ever found.