JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

ordering Misoprostol online Carl Allen was obviously annoyed at John’s letter, and answered him with a remarkable 15-page single-spaced tirade. John refers to it in the letter that I linked to before, on Andrew Hochheim’s site. Allen also enclosed the record of his service on the USS Andrew Furuseth, where he claimed he saw the “Philadelphia Experiment.”

I suspect few readers will want to read Allen’s whole letter, so I’ll post just the first and last page, as well as his service record. He veers wildly between jovial friendliness and thundering denunciations, ending with saying he wants nothing more to do with John. But he did write two more (shorter) letters after this.

John answered Allen/Allende’s letter on September 3, 1971. He was, obviously, wary of anyone claiming to be Carlos Allende.

John had just finished writing Our Haunted Planet, which was published by Fawcett later that month. In Chapter 13, he mentions Allende, dismissing him as either a hoax or a myth: “A fantastic array of Allende impostors have turned up over the years to bedevil and bewilder the UFO buffs. He has managed to turn up in several different states at the same time. All kinds of letters and phone calls have been received by buffs in his name. Those who claim to have met him describe him as a swarthy man of Cuban or Spanish extraction. He rides around in a black Cadillac, of course.” He mentions that “a man claiming to be Carlos Allende” gave the Lorenzens a copy of the Varo edition, adding, “The real Allende, if there is a real Allende, would not have had access to a copy.” He equates him with other “mystery men” like Zdeen Alexander, who visited several ufologists in the early ’60s, and Mr. Dixsun, who once called on Edward Condon to announce that he represented the Seventh Universe.

John received, or at any rate saved, four letters from Carl Allen, otherwise known as Carlos Allende. The first of them is undated, and the postmark is illegible, but it seems to have been written in 1971. Allen had visited Jim and Coral Lorenzen, of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), and is responding to a letter from John that they had shown him.

In 1971, Allen was an almost mythical figure, as was the “Varo Edition.” There were rumors that neither really existed, and that various hoaxers were impersonating Allen.

Fred Lee Crisman, whom Allen mentions at one point, was a shadowy figure who, among other things, wrote to Amazing Stories about the Shaver Mystery, cooked up the Maury Island Incident, and was rumored to be one of the three tramps in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated. Apparently John suspected he might have been Carl Allen as well. Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle was a ufologist (and contactee) on the faculty of the University of Wyoming; he died just a couple of months ago, on November 15.

ADDENDUM: Andrew Hochheim maintains a site about the Philadelphia Experiment, and has posted a couple of letters John wrote about Allen and the Varo edition, one to Robert Goerman, one to an unidentified recipient. You can see them here.