JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

http://sargeantstudios.net/?cat=9 Here’s another article from the same file of carbons as the last few posts. John wrote this on January 23, 1967, presumably for the North American Newspaper Alliance. He’s strictly a journalist here, compiling the significant sightings of the past year. There are two oddities. One is that he was fooling around with a cipher in the second paragraph; I assume it has no connection to the article itself. The second is that he refers to James Moseley, with whom he had a long-running feud, as an “expert”!

Incidentally, John kept a sample of a “fragile silvery substance” collected in Point Pleasant in 1966. I posted a picture of it here.

From the same file as those last few posts, here’s an article from Jan. 25, 1967, written for the North American Newspaper Alliance. John reports on a curious subset of MIB reports, imposters in military uniforms, and discusses the reactions of Colonel George Freeman of Project Bluebook and the experiences of two UFO photographers, Rex Heflin and Joe Perry.

And here’s the second part of John’s article on the 1965 Virginia flap, picking up from the bottom of page 4. As usual, we get UFO sightings, creature reports, hoaxes, questionable confessions, and general confusion.

I’d like to note the death of Timothy Green Beckley, who died on May 31 in Manhattan at the age of 73. He was. of course, a noted polymath: not only an indefatigable publisher of forteana, but the producer of such cinematic gems as Barely Legal Lesbian Vampires. I only met him a couple of times, but he struck me as a hard-working entrepreneur who enjoyed life. John was astonished at his ability to go out partying every night. Here’s a picture of John giving him the prestigious Falling Frog Award, and here’s a letter from him about a number of investigations from 1967.

Here’s an interesting little article about a Virginia flap from 1965. John wrote it in 1967. I think it appeared in the second issue of the Dell magazine Flying Saucers: UFO Reports, under the title “Occupants: Yes or No?” I haven’t been able to check a copy; maybe some of the Keel fans out there know. The article is eight pages; here are the first four.

As a supplement to the last post, and, I hope, a treat for Jadoo fans, here’s one of the first stories John sent to Alex Jackinson. As I mentioned, he bound all the stories he wrote that year in a volume he just labeled “1955,” with all sales and prices noted. The first entry is dated January 16, and, as the scrawled “Shelved!” indicates, didn’t sell. “Creeping Death of the Nile” is plainly fiction (John was not, in fact, planning to go big-game hunting in South Africa), and as pulpy as it gets. In the course of it, John and Jock escape from a flooded pyramid, only to end in a ruined temple swarming with scorpions. As you can imagine, they barely escape with their lives. He hadn’t caught the formula yet, but four days later, he wrote another one, “End of the Hunt,” which he sold to Sport Life for $200.

Here’s the beginning of “Creeping Death of the Nile,” which is probably sufficient!