John Keel, Adventurer

[jimmer]

this 90s video may be a bit insider if you haven't read john keel's telling
of his early exploits, including his investigations into middle-eastern black magic,
in his first book, Jadoo.

in his early twenties, he struck out on his own, virtually broke, seeking great stories to tell –
finding them and more, along the way.

after discussing his early years in new york and then in the army,
he shows a film that brings to life some of his tales from those mysterious lands he traveled,
seeking the truths behind ancient 'black magic' or Jadoo.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILjG35Ps-Mk

[Frances]

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/22...into-Unreality

Interesting article about true paranormal stories that John Keel experienced.
The events that led up to J. Keel writing his book, "The Mothman Prophecies".
The book based on a true event which took place at Point Pleasant U.S.A.
Frances.

[jimmer]

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/22...into-Unreality

Interesting article about true paranormal stories that John Keel experienced.
The events that led up to J. Keel writing his book, "The Mothman Prophecies".
The book based on a true event which took place at Point Pleasant U.S.A.
Frances.

quite a big and lengthy find, frances.
can't wait to dig in.

[jimmer]

that is one heck of a read.
keel could have made a fortune writing
about high strangeness, but after the eighth tower,
he stopped.
throughout the rest of his life, he would become poor,
rich and poor again.
he found his own truth and stuck with it.

"[W]e do not know who we are or what we are doing here.
But we are slowly learning.
Once we begin looking beyond the mere manifestations we will finally glimpse the real truth.
Belief has always been the enemy of truth; yet, ironically,
if our minds are supple enough, belief can sometimes open the door."

I've got two of his earlier books to consume before I dig into 'the mothman prophecies,'
now sitting on my shelf.

what a mind to explore.

[Frances]

http://apmagazine.info/index.php/com...article?id=476

Link to Alternate Perceptions web site.
Article of an interview with Brad Steiger where John Keel gives an account of the manifestation of three men in black.
They manifested themselves into John's house.
Frances.

[jimmer]

touché, frances.

here's a 1973 interview with keel on the occasion
of a recent flap of UFO incidents.

john really opens up and delves into his theory, in a big way.

"Collectively, American ufologists are ill informed and poorly educated in history, philosophy, and the behavioral sciences.
So they have failed to recognize what is actually happening (in contrast to what they think is happening)."

[jimmer]

last keel post today, promise.

this is a nice article about keel, that explores why he just stopped.

here's a link to a website of keel's many personal letters, scripts, unpublished manuscripts and
other left behind artifacts that describe a person of wit and of the mind. (with some raunch thrown in : )

[jimmer]

this is an interesting keel factoid.

how did john keel's new york address correlate with the mount pleasant silver bridge disaster?

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK3FfOW1YEw

[jimmer]

dramatization of an actual letter john keel received as he investigated mount pleasant mothman case.
seems that keel was getting too close to something...

(it's funny. when I first watched the movie, mothman prophecies, I wasn't that impressed.
later, after hearing others discuss the movie, I watched it again and realized I must have nodded off somewhere along the line.
I missed half the movie and it's message.
a second wide awake viewing over the weekend was much more impressive, bordering on great.
keel's theories of what high strangeness is all about came through loud and clear from alan bates' performance.
'we are not meant to know.')

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJhM5EdGT7k


I'm reading, operation trojan horse, his investigation into the heart of ufology and the mysteries of high strangeness.
mothman prophecies awaits on my shelf.

[jimmer]

john keel on 'intelligent lights' in the sky, how the mothman was named and
why he ultimately stopped investigating ufology. (he chokes up)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ16gZldFiQ

[jimmer]

here's a scratchy, yet quite good radio interview with john keel from 1992.

along the way:
will we ever figure this high strangeness thing out, what are crop circles and are ufos actually 'tricksters'?

keel implores someone to research and publish a compiled history of ufo researchers/sightings, so that every new generation has a baseline for further investigation.
currently, that book does not exist leaving each cycle with little context to understand where we are now. (keel did his own historical research.)

"...a much larger phenomenon than this extraterrestrial group."

feel free to advance past the intro stuff. (or not)
the interview begins at 5:26.

http://www.theparacast.com/darkmatters/JohnKeel.mp3

(be prepared to adjust your volume. the audio is a bit rough.)

[jimmer]

within a tribute letter upon john keel's passing, dr. steven mizracht condenses
keel's 'high strangeness' belief system in 5 points:

1
That the phenomenon might be ultra-terrestrial,
i.e. not so much originating from other planets, but possibly other dimensions of existence.
That in fact it wasn't really coming from somewhere else so much as something parallel to here.
Maybe around us all the time but not normally apprehensible to our senses?
Keel sometimes liked to say the phenomenon is much a part of our planet as the weather.
2
That the phenomenon had historical roots deeper than 1947.
The flying saucer era may have begun with Kenneth Arnold in 1947, but things that were called different things in earlier epochs,
such as Mystery Airships, or Foo Fighters, or Ghost Rockets, or just Strange Stuff in the Sky, might have been earlier manifestations.
In fact, Keel was so adamant on this that he devoted himself to debunking the Roswell obsession of many of his peers,
insisting that the Roswell incident was a Japanese fugu bomb balloon.
3
That the phenomenon seemed to respond to peoples beliefs.
Keel always cautioned people that Belief is the Enemy.
Certainly, it's generally a good admonition in general, given the damage dogmatism, fanaticism, and fundamentalism cause, in general.
But Keel was speaking about what seemed to be its adaptive nature, that it molded itself to peoples expectations.
Vallee suggested the same thing, except I think he leaned more generally to the Magonia school that peoples perceptions were molded by their culture,
which is why medieval people seeing the same thing as modern people called it angels, whereas we call it spaceships.
4
That one should be cautious of the UFOlogical establishment.
Keel in response to my letter to him sent one of his pamphlets lampooning the UFO people.
He said they had a diet too heavy in science fiction and everything was always being force-clawed into alien technology explanations.
They should look more at the history of religious apparitions, mythology, faeries, and folklore and realize they weren't dealing with something new.
Vallee often said the same thing. So did Carl Jung, way back in the 50s.
5
That the phenomenon was part of something that could be considered a control system.
Of course, I was always fascinated most of all by this subject.
Control for what purpose?
Forteans have always danced around this subject ever since Charles Fort opined in his tomes 'We are property'.
Vallee hinted that the control was more or less benevolent, perhaps for the betterment of our evolution.
Keel was always more pessimistic.
He saw manipulation.
I think he was at his most ascerbic in books like Disneyland of the Gods or the Eighth Tower.
Keel liked to discuss how the ancient gods seemed to manipulate human beings, pretty much treat us like cattle, serfs, puppets.
He didn't see the situation improving now that our new gods were the Ashtar Command and the Space Brothers.

keel's findings and beliefs were extremely unpopular amongst the ufology establishment, as you can imagine.
big picture: he was ostracized for life.
he didn't give a rip.
he solved the greatest mystery of all time.

swipe and read the entire letter here. it's quite good.

[jimmer]

this is an image of the photocopy keel made of the original, contactee sketch of mothman.



http://www.johnkeel.com/?m=201105

[Frances]

I am enjoying this thread, John Keel is helping me understand a great deal.
I have Charles Fort's, Complete Books.
I have trouble reading it, it's just the way he writes. It makes a great reference book though.
John keel makes the paranormal more understandable.
Frances.

[jimmer]

I am enjoying this thread, John Keel is helping me understand a great deal.
I have Charles Fort's, Complete Books.
I have trouble reading it, it's just the way he writes. It makes a great reference book though.
John keel makes the paranormal more understandable.
Frances.

wow. how many books are we talking about?
how far back in history did Fort go with his long lost stories?

I read that Fort's system of recording his found oddities were 1 x 2-3" scraps of paper dumped into labeled boxes.
funny.