JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

Bormujos These next entries include some topics that eventually became part of ufology–ghosts, the Shaver Mystery, and fairy folklore–as well as John’s memorable definition 0f a skeptic. Since Shaver and the sidhe are mentioned, I’ll add an old Amazing Stories cover illustrating a Shaver story about the sidhe: not part of his “Mystery,” just a rousing sword-and-sorcery yarn about Irish warriors and fairy magic. Nevertheless, Shaver did maintain that all the folklore about people living underground was evidence for his own beliefs.

We head into the letter S now, starting with “saint.” “Scruff” is a new one to me. For younger readers, George Adamski was one of the first contactees, and quite a curious character. And for some reason, John wrote two definitions of the word “sensitive,” so take your pick.

The next five definitions give us a couple of provocative versions of reality. One note: Korsakoff’s psychosis is caused by both thiamine deficiency and alcoholism. Confabulation is traditionally considered a major symptom (it’s also known as “confabulatory psychosis”), but is not found in all cases.

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.