John A. Keel

In the spring of 1955, the Times of India printed an article in their Sunday society section. Titled "Yank Snake Charmer", the story was accompanied by a photograph of a young man in a t-shirt and pith helmet who was, yes, charming a cobra.

In India the story brought considerable - and in some ways unwelcome - fame to John A. Keel. John had been traveling throughout the Middle and Far East and was supporting himself by writing magazine articles about what he saw and learned. This included, of course, how to charm a cobra.

Although the snake charming story (plus another one we'll get to later) pushed John to temporary celebrity in India, he is not well known to the general public today. After all, his writings - both in his early years and later - tended to be rather specialized and directed toward non-mainstream audiences. But on the other hand, because of John there's one topic that everyone - and we mean everyone has heard about. That, of course, is ...

Well, we'll get to that later. But first a bit about John.

John A. Keel was born Alva John Kiehle in Hornell, New York in 1930. Like many kids of the time, he had become fascinated with what were then called the "Mysteries of the Orient". These were the tales of mystic holy men, fakirs and sadhus who could perform the famous rope trick, the X-ray eyes, and mind-reading - the stuff that had been a staple of Robert Ripley's Believe It or Not for years. How, John wondered, did they do all that stuff?

John himself had toyed with the idea of being a professional stage magician. He taught himself sleight of hand and by his teens had became a good amateur magician. This skill, which at first seemed to be nothing more than a way to amuse his friends, later would serve him in good stead. Once it literally saved him from starvation.

But while still in high school John also began writing a column for the local paper. Then after selling a story to the Hobo News - and receiving a $5 check - John decided to scrap his stage aspirations and become a professional writer. He dropped out of school and hitchhiked to New York City where eventually he landed steady work writing for comic books.

John probably would have remained in New York eking out a living except that in 1950 the Korean War broke out. The following year, like many able-bodied, unmarried, and non-collegiate young American men, he was drafted. However, the draft produced far more manpower than the US military really needed, and John found himself shipped to Germany.

Although it was probably the last thing he expected, being drafted turned out to be a major jump start for John's career. After his superiors learned of his writing background, they assigned him a job in the American Forces Network (the AFN). This was (and is), the division of the army that provided broadcast entertainment for the troops. At this time television sets were expensive and rare, and so John's job was to write radio scripts. Although the shows were intended for the US servicemen, they were also popular with the English speaking civilians in Europe.

Most of the broadcasts had some educational or informational intent, but one of John's scripts was pure entertainment. This was a broadcast from the Frankenstein Castle (a real castle, by the way) near Frankfurt. The story was that once every hundred years the monster returned to his home, and the night of the broadcast was THE NIGHT. John had stationed reporters around the grounds to provide "on the spot" coverage while not telling them what he planned. So when the actor dressed as the monster finally showed up, enough people believed the stories from the rattled reporters that there was a minor "Orson Wells/War of the Worlds" type of panic.

The show was such a success that after John's stint was over the AFN offered him a civilian job. He continued to write scripts including another special that was broadcast from inside the Great Pyramid in Egypt. He also began sending stories and articles out to magazines.

But the trip to Egypt had rekindled John's interest in the East. So he resigned his job at the AFN, bought some high quality still and motion picture equipment, and took his remaining savings and moved into a small but fancy apartment in the Cairo's Zamalek district (from what he wrote we can deduce John actually lived on Gezira Island in the Nile). His strategy was to support himself by writing articles about what he saw and learned.

Realizing it's hard to handle the business side of being a free lance writer when you're wandering through deserts and jungles, he contacted an agent in New York. Now hiring an agent you've never met and who was over 5000 miles away might seem a bit risky. But as John would later learn, he had made a good choice.

Alas, John soon found, as have many writers, that it's far easier to write stories than to write stories that sell. And even then it took his agent two to three months to find a buyer. By the fall of 1954, John was on his last legs, his savings were gone, and he was living in a basement hovel.

Fortunately, his agent saw that John's writings - if not immediately marketable - had the potential to be so. Knowing that John was in financial straits, he advanced him $100. Although not a huge amount even by the standards of the time, it was certainly enough for John to shake the Egyptian sand from his boots.

John paid $25 for a third class ticket on a steamer to Beirut. From there he planned to take a bus to Damascus and then to hookup with a caravan traveling to Iraq. Then, somehow, he would make his way to India.

There were problems with John's plan, though. First, with all the red tape needed for travel - the ubiquitous "stamps and services" - John's money faded fast. In Beirut, he quickly ran out of money and had to sell his still camera before he could leave. The possibility of catching a ride in a caravan was also unlikely. This wasn't the days of the Arabian nights. Transportation was now by train, truck, and ship. Long range camel caravans were few and far between.

As luck would have it, on the ship John met a young Iraqi newspaperman whom John called Sayed. Sayed had spent a year in America on an exchange program and was returning home. He had a car and he suggested John join him for the drive to Baghdad. They could split the costs even though, as John found out, gas cost three to four times what it did in the States.

Their estimate that it would take a day for their 500 mile trip was also way off (John said the trip was a thousand miles but probably misread sign posts that were marked in kilometers). After leaving Damascus they were delayed at numerous frontier and military checkpoints (one at which they were fired on by an Iraqi soldier), and they got lost once when they meandered off the road without knowing it. Today the drive from Damascus to Baghdad is about ten hours. It took John and Sayed three days.

Once more John was broke. After unknowingly checking into a local - ah - "establishment" devoted to masculine recreation (a service John did not employ), he found a relatively cheap but more respectable hotel. But even after he sold his motion picture equipment, he only had enough money to last for two weeks.

John had developed a habit of performing simple sleight of hand tricks as a way to pass the time. Toward the end of February, he was sitting in the bar of the hotel and reading while he manipulated some coins. Then he noticed a young Arab (actually he was Kurdish) was watching him vanish a coin and pluck it out of his elbow. John invited the man to sit down and learned his name was Shaikh Abdullah Haj ("Shaikh", of course, was the Iraqi version of "Sheikh"). He was from the village of Shaikh Addi. Now more commonly called Lalish, Shaikh Addi is about 40 miles north of Mosul which was then (as now), the second largest city in Iraq.

Abdullah was not your run of the mill Iraqi. He was a headman of the Yazidi tribe. After they had talked for a while, Abdullah asked John to come visit his village. This was quite a break. John would now 1) be able to live at no cost for at least two weeks, and 2) write a story about visiting Iraq's famous - quote - "devil-worshippers" - unquote.

Even today you'll read on the Fount of All Knowledge that Yazidis are indeed devil worshippers. Part of this idea is simply because theirs is not a mainstream religion. Also a simplified description of their deity does sound similar to the "fallen angel" of Christian tradition (a tradition, by the way, which isn't in the Bible). What we do know is the Yazidis practice a monotheistic religion which shares elements of many others. But the writings of nineteenth century Christian missionaries trumpeted the Yazidis as devil-worshippers, and the name stuck.

John's writings followed the ideas of the time. He said that the "Yezidis" (as John spelled the word) believed in God. But since God was good, He must be essentially harmless. Therefore the Yazidis spent their time trying to appease Old Man Satan.

Still, much what John deduced was basically correct, at least in fact, if not interpretation. Spitting on the ground, eating lettuce, and wearing blue (at least some shades) are indeed taboos for the Yazidis although not because the Devil lives beneath the earth, lettuce was rejected by the Devil, and blue is the divine color. All in all, though, John learned little about the religion since 1) the Yazidis themselves did not want to discuss it, 2) most of them spoke no English, and 3) John's brief exposure to Arabic had been limited to the Egyptian dialect. Besides in that region of Iraq the major language is Kurdish.

In general, though, John found that the Yazidis were a friendly and hospitable people. He attended feasts, entertained the people with magic tricks (the kids followed him around wherever he went), and he went around the area pretty much as he wanted (most of his travel was on horseback). But John knew for a really good story he would have to write at least something about the Yazidi religion.

So with the cooperation of Abdullah, John tried to sneak into one of the services. If you look at pictures of Yazidi churches (the Yazidis are far less isolated and reticent today), you'll see that John's descriptions of the buildings are quite accurate. But before the actual service began, he was found out and told to leave.

Well, slipping into a private Yazidi worship service (and getting caught) was bad enough. But then to make matters worse, while on a visit to a nomadic camp, John managed to get himself accused of adultery. John was completely innocent but the khanjar-wielding husband was still about to skewer him when the village leader intervened. Fortunately John managed to convince him of his innocence. He then beat a hasty retreat back to Shaikh Addi. But his welcome, he realized, was well worn out. He returned to Baghdad.

Back at the hotel, he found a most welcome $200 check from his agent. His stories were beginning to sell. Now he had enough money to tide him over with enough left over to pay for a passage to India. But there was one story he had to check out before he left.

While visiting the Yazidis John heard about a revolutionary leader who was nicknamed "Ali Baba" after the famous character from the Arabian Nights. Ali Baba was trying to overthrow the current government which was a popular pastime in the 1950's Middle East.

We need to remember that this was the time when the Middle East was still pretty much as set up by England and France (with a little help from a friendly United States) after World War I. True, Egypt had replaced their King Farouk - a fat, feckless slob who had always done the British bidding - with the far more able and capable (and independent) Gamal Adbul Nasser and the other young military leaders who ultimately produced the Egyptian government we have today. But Iraq had remained what it was - a patchwork creation of Winston Churchill with a little advice from now famous "Arabists" like Gertrude Bell and T. E. Lawrence - the famous "Lawrence of Arabia". The country was first ruled by King Faisal I who was the same "Prince Feisel" who was played in the movie by Alec Guinness. But starting in 1939, the Iraqi leader was Faisal's grandson, Faisal II, who by the 1950's had become the very model of a modern major 1950's monarch. He was young, handsome, intelligent, and interested in developing his country into a modern nation. He remained friendly with England and the United States, but sadly this friendship did not serve him well. In 1958 he was overthrown (and murdered along with other family members) during a coup led by - no, not Ali Baba - but the Iraqi general Abdul Karim Qasim.

The truth is Ali Baba (and we really don't know who he was) was just a two-bit bandit and killer who used the excuse of revolution to line his pockets and kill his enemies. But John tells us he finally managed to track Ali Baba down

The good news was Ali Baba agreed to an interview. The bad news was - which John only learned when the two men actually met - that John first had to first join the bandit in a game of Russian roulette. Neither man lost (obviously) and they went to Ali Baba's camp some miles outside of Baghdad. Most of John's questions were adroitly sidestepped but before John left, Ali Baba at least demonstrated the manner in which a good Iraqi revolutionary dealt with his opponents. Earlier Ali Baba had "introduced" John to two bound prisoners whose treatment had obviously not been in accord with the Geneva Convention. Now as John rode away, he saw that they were tied out in the sun crying for water. John was probably happy to get away, but at least now with his interview with Ali Baba and his visit to the Yazidis, he had two good stories that he could sell.

After staying in Baghdad a while longer (and nearly causing a riot after he tried to take photos of a religious festival), John decided to move on. He traveled south to Basra where he boarded an Indian ship, the Mozaffari (renamed the Zofari in his writings). The fare was $95 for a first class ticket although John said he went second-class.

In his book John said there were no passengers in first class and only a few in second. But on the lower deck there were over a thousand people crammed into rows of open bunks that were courteously called third class. These passengers were mostly a combination of religious pilgrims returning from Mecca and smugglers bringing home everything from radio tubes to trunks filled with gold (the two types of passengers were not necessarily mutually exclusive, of course). In the crowded lower decks, some of the passengers ended up being carried off punctured with bullets, knives, and swords, while others simply disappeared. But other than skinning his knuckles when someone tried to steal his typewriter, John made it unscathed to Karachi and afterwards landed in Bombay.

It was in Bombay that John learned how to charm the cobra. This was simply moving his hands back and forth so the cobra followed the motions (the cobra, by the way, was "shaved", that is the fangs had been removed). This technique for charming snakes was also demonstrated a few years later by Marlin Perkins on one of the episodes of Wild Kingdom. John had a bystander take the photo, and he later showed it to one of his friends, a young Indian reporter for the Times of India. When the picture and the accompanying story appeared, John found he was famous.

(Lest anyone want to try to emulate John, it is much more difficult to learn the rudiments of snake charming today than in the mid-1950's. India now requires its snake charmers to be properly trained and licensed. There is even a snake charmers' union. But when John picked up the charmer's flute it was an unregulated industry.)

From Bombay John headed across the Indian subcontinent where (among other things) he interviewed Tenzing Norgay (who with Edmund Hillary first climbed Mount Everest). He also met and got bumped from a guest house reservation by none other than the globe-trotting US Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, learned how to be "buried alive" (for thirty minutes), and visited P. C. Sorcar, the most famous Indian stage magician of the time. He also learned how to do the famous Indian rope trick and tried it with indifferent success before a crowd of Indian and foreign reporters. His attempt (dubbed a "partial success" in the Indian press) was at first a public relations disaster.

But ultimately the disaster was inverted into triumph. Since John's visa had almost expired it looked like he wouldn't be able to continue with his planned itinerary to the Himalayas, especially since the visas were almost never renewed. But when John showed up at the government office in Delhi, the official was so amused to meet the American who publicly botched the rope trick, he approved a two month extension.

But John's tour-de-force was his finally uncovering the secret of the X-ray eyes. John had been intrigued by the trick ever since he had seen it performed at a USO show. Although well-known in India (Sorcar performed it as part of his act), it wasn't seen much in the US until the late 1950's when the Pakistani magician, Kuda Bux, performed the trick on a number of American television shows (including Captain Kangaroo). In the trick, the magician's eyes are first sealed with lumps of bread dough. His head is then swathed in bandages and sometimes covered with a hood. Yet, he can still see well enough to copy letters and symbols and one magician even drove a motorcycle down the streets of Paris while blindfolded.

This had been one of the hardest of the secrets for John to discover. Once he was swindled out of five dollars by a phony fortune teller (you sit for a half hour each day in a dark room for a month with your eyes closed, he told John, concentrating on seeing with your mind), and then he met a man who actually demonstrated the feat. The price this time, though, was 1000 rupees ($210) and well beyond John's means. He even discussed the trick with Sorcar. Sorcar didn't want to part with the secret, but he admitted he could see through the bandages although his vision was limited to about twenty feet and directed downwards.

The answer continued to eluded him until John was walking along the banks of the Ganges River (actually the Hooghly tributary). There John saw a small time sadhu doing everything Sorcar or Bux could do. Five rupees later, John had the answer. When done well it is an impressive trick and a trick requiring considerable skill. But as John learned, it was a trick.

(Even today some people believe Kuda really had a supernatural ability. However if you watch his act you can see he instructs the volunteers to bind his head in a manner that leaves the fewest layers of cloth on the inner side of his eyes. Sometimes the gap in the bandages next to his nose is quite noticeable. And you even see him - quote - "adjust" - unquote - the bandages, which John pointed out was the performer surreptitiously moving the innermost bandages up or down away from his eyes. The bread dough also clearly does not stick to Kuda's skin. Instead, as John also said, it sticks to the bandages. Since the bandages are made of thin cloth or gauze, after the various manipulations the performer has limited - but sufficient - vision to astound his audience. But most of all we should listen to what Kuda himself said if we want to decide if X-Ray vision is a supernatural gift or just a good trick. Anyone, Kuda commented during a performance, could do what he was doing. But it took a lot of practice.)

John's time in India was definitely more adventurous than his months in the Middle East. According to John he got bit by a cobra (but fortunately did have a supply of anti-venom in his pack), almost went over the side of a 5000 foot cliff during a rainstorm (the jeep he was riding in plus one passenger did go over the side), attended a seance, trailed some yeti (abominable snowmen), and wrote how he interviewed a Buddhist lama who was sitting cross legged in mid-air with no support other than a wooden staff.

After leaving India, John landed at Singapore. He hoped to explore the surrounding jungles and then make his way across the islands of the Pacific.

As was often the case when he arrived in a new city, he was almost broke. By now, though, with his stories selling, he would just check into the most expensive hotel in town. There the owners would assume that he, an American, was rich. Then John would live on credit until money arrived.

However, the British authorities weren't as trusting as Singapore's leading hoteliers. They looked at John's empty wallet, seized his passport, and declared him an "undesirable alien". Then they called up the hotel owner and asked if he knew that Mr. Keel, the "rich American" who had just checked in, was actually penniless. Although not convinced that John really had money on the way, the hotel owner agreed to let John stay on for another week. For the next several days John walked miles to the Thomas Cook Travel Agency to see if the money had arrived. But it hadn't.

Something was wrong. His agent had telegraphed that money should have been waiting for him. John was really in a tight spot. The British were going to send him back to India. But he couldn't land because he would have to wait another year for a new visa. So he was facing the very real prospect that he might spend months (or years) shuttling back and forth between India and Singapore, stoking a ship's boilers to earn his keep.

Then the day before his deportation, the money finally showed up. His agent had sent out tracers and found the money had accidentally been wired to Hong Kong. The officials then told him that he could have his passport back - but if he would take the next ship out of Singapore. So the following morning John was on board an old Danish freighter heading to Italy.

John moved to Spain where the low cost of living gave him the wherewithal to stitch his articles together into a book. Titled Jadoo - an English transliteration of the Hindi word, जादू, meaning magic - it was published in 1957.

So after six years abroad, John was back in New York where he continued to live in the precarious world of free lance writing. But as an entertainment and publishing center, New York City was probably the best place for him to be. John wrote for magazines, television (which included supplying ideas for the quiz show Play Your Hunch), and was an assistant editor for Funk and Wagnalls. It was, as they say, a living.

At this point we must pause and note that in some cases we have qualified our comments with prefixes like "John said ...", "John wrote ...", and "according to John ...". So a word of explanation is in order.

We should remember that John's main source of income had been from selling his stories to "lurid" - which is the world that John used - men's adventure magazines. These magazines - now long vanished from the few remaining bookstores - were once found in every town and hamlet in the US. They could be picked up cheaply at the local drugstores and supermarkets or read in the masculine environs like the local barber shops. They blared themselves to the world with titles like Courage, Escape to Adventure, A-OK, Man's Exploits, and Gusto. Inevitably the cover would be a professionally rendered painting of a man fighting off the likes of stereotypical "savages", brutishly bald-headed and monocled Germans (this was, after all, shortly after World War II), or man-eating beasts which included but were not limited to lions, tigers, sharks, snakes, weasels, and lobsters. Most of the time the poor fellow was accompanied by a buxom young lady who had lost as much clothes as the then fairly strict censorship laws permitted.

Now that doesn't mean that there weren't some prestigious magazines of the genre (True Magazine is one case in point). A bit higher in price than the other magazines, these more illustrious tomes often published works by famous authors and paid sizable fees. Of course, even the more trustworthy publications were to a large extent run on the author's honor system since the editors couldn't be expected to double check every claim. But the stories of many magazines were a bit down the Rung of Reliability, and their "true adventures" cannot be taken for absolute verisimilitude any more than the doubly misnamed docudramas of today.

But before we become too smug and overly critical of entertainment for the masses, we need to remember that embellishment in - quote - "prestigious publications" - unquote - isn't unknown. Even if we ignore the cases where Pulitzer Prizes had to be returned because of the whoppers of the writers, famous journalists have been caught pulling a few stretches. For instance, Lowell Thomas was one of the most famous newsmen in the early to mid-20th century, and it was Lowell who first told the world the story of Lawrence of Arabia. The T. E. described in Lowell's illustrated lectures and books was an iconic flawless hero, and Lowell became increasingly irritated at what he considered to be cheap shots taken at T.E. by the "revisionist" historians. Lowell dismissed the stories as hogwash, and as his authority to do so, he cited the "days, weeks, months" that he personally spent with T. E.

Actually we can forget the "weeks" and "months" stuff. T. E. himself said Lowell was in Arabia for just ten days and was actually with him, T. E., for only two. Later, he added, they met in London once or twice for tea. Oddly enough, the brevity of their association is also consistent with a close reading of Lowell's own writings. His first-person dealings with T. E. are remarkably sparse - almost as if the two men spent no more than - yes - a couple of days together and then met later for tea. And we need to remember that one famous "non-fiction" book - hailed in the 1960's as a landmark in new journalism - is now known to have been at least partly fictionalized and even has entirely invented scenes.

But did John ever play - as it was described in a forward of one of his books - "fast and loose"? Well, we can always go through and "analyze" John's writings for internal clues. But this approach - as all who've tried it know - can be pretty iffy. Instead the best thing is to turn to what John himself said.

When he was traveling to India on the Mozafarri John met the ship's doctor. The doctor, John said,

...told me a fascinating story about a man he'd once treated in India who had saved his life by thrusting his arm down the throat of an attacking tiger. But the editors found my ending implausible. I was forced to add a final paragraph where "I" [John used the quotes, too] manages [sic] to unsheathe a knife with his [sic] free hand and kill the tiger with it.

John wrote up the story as "I Fed My Arm to a Tiger". This story, of course, can be no more accurate than the doctor's informant. And strictly speaking John didn't claim the story happened to John A. Keel. He used a pseudonym. But still the story was written as a first person "true adventure" narrative, and there was clearly literary license when John added his own ending.

John drops us other hints that it's OK to ponder over his passages. He himself wrote a review of Jadoo (that is, his own book). In the review John comments that at times "he [that is, John] seems to stretch a point to add excitement to his narrative." So if John says John seems to stretch a point, he certainly wouldn't mind if we at least wonder if he stretched a point. John, by the way, wrote this review under a favorite pseudonym, Randolph Halsey-Quince. Other noms de plume that John used during his career were Harry Gibbs, Greg Hamilton, T. A. Waters (possibly in collaboration with a real T. A.), Thaddeus L. Farnboggle, and Thorton M. Vaseltarp, Ph.D., D.D., O.B.E. People who knew John also said he had a sense of humor.

But others of John's stories are pretty much straight telling. One - for which John received one of those sizable fees we mentioned - was about an adventurer (some say a looney) named Maurice Wilson. Maurice decided that by proper diet and mental conditioning he - who had no real mountaineering experience - could conquer Everest by himself and without the fancy-pants equipment like supplemental oxygen.

Maurice's first plan had to been to fly an airplane and land high up on Everest's slopes. From there he could walk the rest of the way up. But permission to pilot a plane to the mountain was scotched by the British authorities (who controlled India until 1948). So in 1934, Maurice hired two Sherpa porters to help him carry supplies, and he just trekked toward the top. He managed - amazingly - to reach what is known as the North Col where he pitched a tent at 23,000 feet. From there he began a number of forays toward the top. The consensus among mountaineers today is that Maurice did not reach the summit and died after a storm blew his tent away.

John had heard the story from none other than Tenzing Norgay who had actually been on the expedition to Everest in 1935 when the two British mountaineers, Eric Shipton and Charles Warren, discovered Maurice's body. It also seems that John may have spoken to or at least read something by someone who had known Maurice personally. John's story was published in 1956 - which is the earliest connected narrative that the current writer can find about Maurice - and is pretty much what you read elsewhere.

Jadoo is largely an expose of the methods of the fakirs, sadhus, and magicians. But there were some things that John couldn't explain and so withheld judgement. For his own part, John labeled himself as a skeptic who when failing to find an explanation gently conceded to the failure of his skeptical nature. But there was one area where John's skepticism never completely prevailed. In the 1960's John began writing about UFO's, and this is where he gained a true following.

John himself said he saw a UFO above the old Aswan Dam in Egypt. But the true UFO craze had really begun earlier in the late 1940's when an American airplane pilot sighted some unidentified and fast moving objects over Mount Rainier. Although it is strange that visitors from other planets just happened to have spaceships that look like those from early 20th century science fiction, the stories had achieved near mainstream acceptance by the 1950's and 60's. The accounts even reached into the curriculum of public schools, and the author of CooperToons remembers a junior high reading module that was about flying saucers.

John had found his niche and soon became one of the most well-known writers of The Unexplained. His fame led to more articles and books and then to lectures and TV appearances. Among the latter was an interview by a young David Letterman before Dave took over the Late Night desk. But more was to come.

In 1968, John wrote an article "UFO Report - The Sinister Men in Black". This told the stories of how some people had been receiving strange visitors. The men - and they were always men - were described as having black hair and wearing dark suits and dark glasses. Sometimes they had a "foreign" look and spoke in a stilted accent as if English (and all encounters are with English speakers) was not their first language. The stories also appeared in John's book Our Haunted Planet, and the world knew of the Men in Black.

But just who were these men? One supposition was that they were aliens trying to silence the stories about their UFO's. An alternative interpretation was they were government agents trying to cover up that there really are aliens from outer space. This latter interpretation led, of course, to the popular (and yet still quite funny) comedy film Men in Black starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith.

And now you know about John A. Keel!

Today we still have UFO reports and stories about other unexplained mysteries (called "Fortean phenomenon" after the early 20th century writer Charles Fort). These stories have become particularly rampant on former educational networks whose producers found out that you can only have so many shows about Hitler. The debate of the stories' veracity continues and mostly are back and forth arguments on various web sites between the Fortean Advocates and (ptui) "skeptics" with each side inevitably decrying the narrow mindedness of the other.

The Advocates of the Unexplained say that there are just too many sightings of UFO and other Fortean phenomenon to be dismissed. And far from the Advocates being simple minded "I-will-believe-anything" enthusiasts, they point out that they readily concede that many, if not most, of the strange observations reported are indeed misunderstandings of natural phenomenon.

But, they add, there remain a number of sightings that cannot be so easily explained. There is also a coherence in the stories that belie any wavy-handed "natural phenomenon" dismissal. And for the sightings to be hoaxes there would have to be a massive whole scale conspiracy of the type that the skeptics themselves hold in disdain when proposed by others.

But the skeptics (or "rationalists" as some prefer) say that if a phenomenon is unexplained then it simply means that there are a variety of possible natural explanations but there is simply not enough information to select which one is correct. So reports of so-called Fortean events, which are often vaguely described, are most easily explained as misinterpretations of natural but low probability phenomena. Due to their fleeting nature, it is impossible to investigate them in the sense that the Forteans demand from the rationalists but do not practice themselves.

A major problem, the skeptics continue, is that the stories seem amazing when told (and they usually get better with the telling), but the actual - quote - "evidence" - unquote - is less than stellar when it's actually seen. For instance, one of the - quote - "educational channels" - unquote - had a story about an amazing sighting of some space vehicle which was seen in the American Northeast. Naturally the show depicted the space craft (or whatever it was) as a mostly-off screen and complex and spidery structure with flashing and pulsating lights while actors playing the local inhabitants stared past the camera in amazement. Finally after a weary half hour of talking heads and more re-enactments, the writers and editors deigned to show the "real" evidence.

What you saw was a videotape of some blurry lights in a roughly arrow pattern against a night sky. The trouble is the lights were not moving completely together - as they would if they were part of a single airship - but were slightly out of sync. It looked for the world like it was a few small planes or helicopters flying in formation. As always, the rationalists say wearily, it's amazing that the Advocates - whether of ghosts, UFO's, Big Foot, or the Loch Ness monster - always need blurred out and of focus images to prove their case.

The skeptics are also quick to point out that they do not deny that at least some of the strange events - unusual lights and loud noises - could be of extra-terrestrial origin. But an extra-terrestrial event does not equate with visiting aliens. The recent meteor plunging through the skies of Chelyabinsk and the subsequent airburst was witnessed in daylight by a large number of people. Since the event was clearly seen and recorded on numerous video recorders, it was easily recognized for what it was - a small asteroid that exploded in the atmosphere. But had the meteor been smaller, witnessed by a few, and fallen at night, we would have yet another "unexplained" UFO story.

As far as the reports being hoaxes, the skeptics deny they claim universal fraud. One or two hoaxers and many uncritical believers (with some help from not too savvy news reporters) result in wide spread transmission and acceptance of completely bogus evidence. Analysis of some famous UFO photographs show some are indeed frauds. In one photo the disk - which looks remarkably like a hubcap - is in relatively sharp focus with the foreground while even the near background was blurred and fuzzy. So the "saucer" must have been a hub-capped sized object not more than fifty or so feet from the camera. And one film of a flying "flying saucer" was so obviously a small disk being swung back and forth on a string as to be laughable.

Returning to the MIB encounters, the skeptics add that the so-called coherence is illusionary. The reality is that there are large differences in what are later dubbed MIB encounters. For instance, some MIB's could indeed be government agents with guys dressed in dark suits and who try to look cool with their shades. But this doesn't mean they are trying to silence information about aliens. Instead they might be government spooks puffed up in belligerent self-importance checking out things like people snooping around - quote - "secret" - unquote - government installations.

Besides, not all MIB reports mention stereotypical dark glasses and attire. They might just be some whacko showing up at your home or calling you up. Say you, like John, are writing articles about UFO's. Then you get a phone call. The caller speaks in an aggressive but stilted manner, saying he is "interested in UFO's" and wants to learn more. So he would like to see your original notes of UFO stories, previous drafts of articles, interview transcripts, and such stuff. You mention this conversation to a friend and hey, presto!, suddenly the word is out that you had a first person MIB encounter. Of course it could also be a rival writer trying to pinch a story, something that just might happen a bit more often than visitors from another planet calling you up or showing up at your house.

So MIB and other "strange visitor" stories have perfectly innocent explanations. One irony is that John himself pointed out that he had actually been the unwitting cause of such a tale. Once he was driving in West Virginia when his car skidded off the road. He had to try at several houses before he could get help.

Later John learned how people in the region had been telling the story that a sinister, bearded, black-haired and dark-suited man had been paying the residents a visit. Had John's car skidded off the road near Roswell, New Mexico, we'd have a clear-cut MIB encounter. But in West Virginia it was given a more traditional and supernatural explanation, and some inhabitants thought John was the Devil himself! The story was still part of local folklore years later.

Finally, the skeptics conclude, if the MIB stories really were from aliens who could fly across galaxies or were from a massive all-powerful government organization, couldn't they do something more effective to silence a witness than just paying a visit wearing dark suits and glasses and speaking in stilted tones? This is like saying there are massive and powerful intelligence organizations and organized crime syndicates that can assassinate a president, but can't stop a writer from publishing a book revealing their plot.

Of course, we shouldn't assume that just because authors write about weird events that they themselves buy all stories as factual. Once a reader of Our Haunted Planted asked John for more information about the story regarding the mysterious voices that had been received by a radio receiver - but before the days of voice transmission. In his reply John said he couldn't supply further information and suggested that the story was likely untrue. Two other questions from the same reader also resulted in a reply that the stories in question were at best hearsay, speculation, and possibly complete fiction. Later to another reader John commented that some of what he wrote shouldn't be taken too seriously.

Now admittedly this "Point-Counterpoint" type of brouhaha can get a bit tedious. So in a spirit of objectivity the Author of CooperToons will cite some - quote - "unusual phenomenon" - unquote - that he personally has experienced. But also in the spirit of objectivity he stipulates the Honest CooperToons Caveat that they all seem to be simple coincidences of ordinary phenomenon.

For instance, the Author happened to be present in a region of the country when there were supposedly numerous UFO sightings over a number of days. However, look as much as he did, he saw no UFO's and knew no one who did either. That's none. Keins. Zip. Nada. A local newspaper even joked about a new epidemic of the region: "Stiff Neck From Looking For UFO's". And yet within a year a book came out mentioning the numerous sightings in that area.

Weeeeeelllllll, there is actually one case where the Author knew about someone who claimed to have seen a UFO. Shortly after not seeing the massive UFO invasion, the Author was visiting a Quaint Town in the American Southwest. One of the inhabitants mentioned that a local citizen had actually seen a UFO. Not only that, but it had landed on a county road, and the UFO pilot - described as wearing mechanics coveralls and a baseball cap - was outside doing some work on the saucer. When the pilot saw he had been spotted, he got back in his vehicle, and it flew away.

The Author might have been more impressed - except he had read the same story almost word for word a couple of years before - including the bit about the coveralls and baseball cap. And it wasn't in the Quaint Town in the American Southwest. It was from a state hundreds of miles away. Alas, the author had to delegate this "sighting" to a local blowhard swiping a story that said blowhard had himself heard or read.

Moving on, it was in the Same Quaint Town in the American Southwest that there was a well-verified case of what many did indeed interpret as an ultra-normal event when a local man drowned in a nearby lake. After searching for several hours, the police had been unable to recover the body. Then a woman stepped up to the officers and said everyone knows how to find the body of a drowned man. You simply toss the victim's shirt where he was last seen, and it will be magically drawn to where its owner lies. Well, why not, the officers thought. Normal search and recovery procedures weren't producing anything. They had no shirt but they did have the man's hat. So they tossed it into the water. The hat stayed afloat with the crown just peeping above the surface and moving very slowly for nearly an hour. Then it stopped. Sure enough, directly below was the body.

It was hard for the Author (who at the time was of a rather tender age) not to be impressed when told the story by a reliable and honest resident. After all the event was seen by a large group of people and happened just a few weeks before the Author's visit. It was literally the talk of the town.

But then one of the local citizens - a successful farmer who was familiar with the workings of nature and who was also quite well-read - pointed out that as mysterious as the episode sounds, lakes do have currents. They move across the surface, descend to the bottom, and then turn back on themselves to form a circulating loop. So rather than exhibiting some paranormal attraction for the mortal remains of its owner, the hat simply drifted along the same current that pulled the man's body from where he first disappeared. Because of the hat's buoyancy it didn't sink and remained on the surface above where the body had descended and lodged on the bottom.

(This technique for recovering drowning victims is, by the way, reported in Vance Randolph's Ozark Superstitions, a highly readable and entertaining [and available] book which was later reprinted as Ozark Magic and Folklore. Vance's informants said a cork would drift over the body and then begin to bob up and down. The reasons for the cork's effectiveness is the same as for a hat or shirt. As for it indicating the location of the body, most corks in water do bob up and down, particularly if floating at the top of a descending current)

Another time the Author was almost impressed was when one of his acquaintances at university (as the British say) was trying to write down the lyrics to a popular song. This was way before the Internet and printed lyrics were often hard to come by. This song - although technically a hit - was played rather infrequently and so if it began to play, the gentleman in question would scramble for a pencil and then write down as many words as he could. It was a slow painstaking process but eventually he had reached the point where he only needed a few more lines.

Then one time the gentleman (snicker) was studying (chuckle) at his desk in his dorm room while listening to the hourly news on the radio. Suddenly an odd feeling came over him. He felt the impulse to go over and get the notebook where he had been recording the lyrics. Feeling that he was being drawn by some mysterious force, he walked over, picked up the book, and grabbed a pen. Then he sat still with pen poised. He waited.

Suddenly on the radio, the song began to play. So he was able to write down the last of the lyrics.

After being told the story this Author thought the matter over. Although willing to concede perhaps his friend (guffaw) could have had some mysterious power, he - to paraphrase Arlo Guthrie - didn't think it was very likely and he didn't expect it.

Instead, he pointed out that the last time the song had been played was right after the news. Not only that, but the station had also just brought on a new DJ to start a new show (this happened about every three hours). Perhaps, just perhaps, that was when the station scheduled the song. So the hearing of the news had been an unconsciously recognized cue that the song was going to play, a cue strengthened with the announcement that a new show was starting. Was this true? Well, it was at least a testable hypothesis.

So the next time the news came on and before a new show, the Author and his acquaintance both waited. Sure enough, right after the news ended, the song came on the air. The hypothesis was tested several more times and confirmed without exception.

So, the Author pointed out (admittedly a bit smugly), rather than the listener having prescient powers, he had simply been a subject of Pavlovian conditioning.

And ghosts? Yes, there is a CooperToons Ghost Story of sorts. There was a time when some professional film producers were working at the Gettysburg Battlefield at the site of the famous (and staged) "Dead Sharpshooter" picture taken by Alexander Gardner. Try as they might, they were unable to get the cameras to work. But once they moved away from the site, the equipment functioned perfectly. The obvious interpretation (we suppose) is the Ghost of the Sharpshooter didn't want anyone mucking around where his spirit reposed. The story was told on a cassette about the Ghosts of Gettysburg.

Later the Author was also trying to take a picture at this spot. But his camera failed to work, too - or at least he couldn't get the film to advance (this was in the days when cameras used film). The trouble is that the author had a photo of him taken on the same spot earlier with no trouble. And the cameras of many other tourists have worked fine there. So once more (sadly) the Author had to admit that a couple of coincidental problems with cameras is hardly evidence of the supernatural.

In a similar vein, in another Quaint Town to the Northeast of the Other Quaint Town of the Southwest, there was a "spook light". Although this Author never saw the light, he knew people of at least moderate reliability who said they had.

Usually the modus observerandi would be to park your car at night along a particular county road. Then sometimes the light would appear as a bluish glow above the ground some distance off. For a long time no one would ever dare to drive closer.

But finally a young man decided to find out once and for all what the ghost light was. So at evening he parked his car along the road and waited. Then when the light appeared, he girded his loins, turned on the ignition, and slowly moved toward the light.

Unlike some other ghost lights, this one stayed put. When the young man pulled alongside the light it turned out to be nothing more than an electrical transformer which had ionized the air. Or what the eggheads call a corona discharge. The Mystery of the Ghostlight at ----- -----, -------- had at long last been solved.

And what about the Men in Black? Yep, there is even an Official CooperToons MIB story. At least the Author of CooperToons personally knew someone who suspected that - ah - well, let's just say a "relation by marriage", might, just might, have been a Man in Black. And a Man in Black from another planet, no less (as the Author remembers, the planet was Venus).

Now the suspected MIB did indeed have black hair and wore dark suits and dark glasses. He also spoke with an accent. Or at least it would have sounded like an accent to someone from New York. The Author, though, for a number of reasons does not currently believe the Man with the Once Black Hair Who Sometimes Wore Black Suits and Dark Glasses and had an Accent of Sorts was really a visitor from another planet or a government agent.

In his later years, John began to suffer problems with diabetes and cataracts which hindered his ability to write, and he died in 2009. However, in 2002, he had the good fortune that his book, The Mothman Prophecies, was used as the basis of a movie called (what else?) The Mothman Prophecies. Although the film wasn't exactly a blockbuster nor did it get particularly good reviews, it received a decent return on its investment. Besides it starred Richard Gere of An Officer and a Gentleman and Pretty Woman fame. So all in all, John's record as a writer wasn't bad.

References

Jadoo, John A. Keel, Messner 1957, Tower (paperback) 1966, Re-issued and expanded, Anomalist Books 2013. John's first published book and was about his time in the Middle and Far East. A very entertaining and well-written book. The newest edition, also available in hardback, softcover, and a Kindle e-book, has text that was excised from the original manuscript restored. There are also additional photographs, a sample of John's travel notes, and John's own review of the book. The 1966 paperback edition, titled Jadoo - Mysteries of the Orient and its subsequent reprints, was abridged from the first hardcover edition. It left out bits and pieces including the chapter telling of John's difficulty with the British authorities in Singapore.

John Keel: Not an Authority on Anything, http://www.johnkeel.com/. A website about John. The tagline is taken from John's business card.

Our Haunted Planet, John A. Keel, Neville Spearman (Publisher), 1971; Fawcett (Publisher), 1971.

"Why It's So Hard to Make a Living as a Snake Charmer Nowadays", Brad Tuttle. Time Magazine, Feb. 23, 2012. Today even snake charmers are subject to environmental, conservation, and health and safety regulations!

Play Your Hunch, Episode on June 20, 1962. Starring: Merv Griffin; Ideas by: Robert Lane, John Keel, and George Simon. Although you'll find references that John wrote scripts for Get Smart, Lost in Space, and The Monkees (in an old newspaper article), a review of the credits of these shows list no episodes penned from John. This doesn't mean he did not supply scripts or ideas, and we need to remember that not all scripts submitted are produced. But on this Play Your Hunch episode, John is definitely credited.

But boy, did Merv look young.

"The Devil Worshipers of Iraq", Sean Thomas, the Telegraph, August 19, 2007. This spelling of "worshipers" is standard American English. But the double-p is also listed in dictionaries and an Official CooperToons Opinion is it looks better. Also John spelled it with two p's.

Also some people like to smugly point out the that "p's" indicates the "p" owns something and "ps" indicates the plural. But adding apostrophes to show plural of abbreviations is quite common, accepted in standard writing, and also looks better.

The identification of Shaikh Addi with Lalish at first was a bit tenuous since the current maps only showed the other "holy cities" of the Yazidis mentioned by John - Ahn Sefni, عين سفني , ('Ain Sifny, ) and Tel Keef, تل كيف‎, (Tal Kayf). These towns are indeed north of Mosul. But Shaikh Addi (or Adi) was one of the most famous religious figures of the Yazidis and his tomb is in Lalish. So the process of elimination equates the John's "Shiekh Addi, the Capital of the Yezidis" with Lalish.

Also John's description that Shaikh Addi was a little further on from Mosul than Ahn Sefni fits the description of Lalish. John told us he took an "unexpectedly comfortable" train for the 220 mile trip from Baghdad to Mosul (John said the trip was 400 miles, but as on his drive to Iraq, he probably misread signs marking the distance in kilometers). They then went into the Yazidi villages by bus. They passed through Ahn Sefni and then while John was still musing over some comments Abdullah had made - an indication the rest of the drive was short - they "bounced into" Shaikh Addi. On modern maps, Ahn Sefni is about 30 miles north of Mosul and Lalish about seven miles further on.

However with a bit more fiddling with variant transliterations of شيخ and الشيخ (that is, "sheikh" or "the sheikah"), you'll find there is not only a town called شيخ عدي or الشيخ عدي, but you can even get a weather forecast for it.

The problem of the elusive town of Shaykh Adi (as it's often spelled) is easily explained if we go by John's description. He said it was "a loose little village tossed helter-skelter across rocky valleys and ravines". Lalish is actually an area rather than a town pers se and on websites where they mention Shaykh Adi as a town, the pictures are of Lalish. So Shaykh Adi is best thought of like a "village" in certain American Atlantic Seaboard states.

Of course things have changed since John's visit. Ahn Sefni, which John described as a small lifeless village, now has a population of 40,000. Also the climate of the Yazidi region is far from desert (which you might think from John's descriptions) and is actually temperate and fairly wet. It's annual rainfall is only an inch or so less than the average in the United States and is virtually identical to the Quaint Town in the American Southwest mentioned in our narrative. And truth to tell the vegetation looks remarkably similar.

"John A. Keel (1930-2009)", David Clarke, July 9, 2009, http://drdavidclarke.blogspot.com/2009/07/john-keel-1930-2009.html. Professor Clarke interviewed John for the Fortean Times (http://www.forteantimes.com/features/interviews/2053/john_keel_rip.html) and left us his memories of John.

"A Note on the Passing of John Keel", http://vinnysreflections.blogspot.com/2009/07/note-on-passing-of-author-john-keel.html. Comments from one of John's readers and correspondents.

"Oceanography - Currents and Circulation (2)", Ashford University, http://www.seafriends.org.nz/oceano/current2.htm. Includes discussion and diagrams of circulating currents in freshwater lakes.

Ozark Superstitions, Columbia University Press (1947), reissued as Ozark Magic and Folklore, Dover (1964 to date). One of Vance's best books, it's particularly instructive to note the similarities between the - quote - "backwoods superstitions" - unquote - and the beliefs that so permeate the modern Hollywood jetset and others of that ilk no matter how much the latter try to put their superstitions into a pseudo-scientific patois. If anything the Ozark hillfolks were more discerning before accepting the outlandish.

Vance was always quick to point out which "superstitions" were actually just customs and regarded more or less as jokes - such as the saying that the man who takes the last biscuit at dinner will soon kiss the cook. Others have a more rational - or at least practical - basis such as eating black-eyed peas at New Year's Day for good luck, particularly in the dish called "Hoppin' John". Hoppin' John with a slice of warm buttered cornbread? Beats the pants off anything from elitist haut cuisine establishments around UPenn or Berkeley any day.

Performances by Kuda Bux on various television shows. The author of CooperToons saw at least two performances of Kuda. From his memory and cross checking on the Fount of All Knowledge, these were apparently the performances on Captain Kangaroo (which he remembers well) in 1958 and I've Got a Secret in 1963 (with a faint memory of Kitty Carlyle as one of the panelsts). In any case, Kuda is clearly following the procedure as described in Jadoo.