JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

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.

Gray Barker also sent John his correspondence with several institutions concerning Morris K. Jessup’s earlier career. Here are one of his letters of inquiry and responses from the University of Michigan, the Carnegie Institute, and the Department of Agriculture. Barker is now perhaps better known for his pranks than his research, but he did both. Jessup too was complicated, and, judging by these letters, apparently inflated his resumé.

Below are the four letters that Gray Barker enclosed in his letter to John (see the last post). He wrote the coroner of Dade County, Florida, to find out why no autopsy was performed on the ufologist Morris K. Jessup. The coroner, Dr. Joseph H. Davis, wrote back with the explanation (Jessup had donated his body to medical research), and asked for more information about Jessup and the possible reasons for his suicide. He also asked about the use of drugs in UFO circles. As Barker said in his letter, his own replies had been lost.

The next item in the “Jessup-Allende” file is a letter from Gray Barker, 9/30/75. He thanks John for plugging his edition of The Varo Edition in unartificially Saga. This was a reprint of a book published by the Varo Manufacturing Corporation in Texas, containing Morris K. Jessup’s book The Case for the UFO, with all of the annotations by Carlos Allende (Carl Allen) in red. “Giant Crock” is, of course, Giant Rock in the Mojave Desert in California, site of a regular UFO convention featuring some of the more colorful personalities in ufology; Barker was apparently amused by it. The title of the Blums’ movie is actually Mysteries from Beyond Earth; Barker also managed a movie theater in Clarksburg. Notable here too are mentions of two Keelian characters, “John Keel’s brother” and “John Keeler.” “Dr. D” and his ravings about hallucinogens are unknown to me. Maybe someone out there can clarify!

I now turn to a file that John called “Jessup-Allende.” It contains a number of documents about the so-called “Philadelphia Experiment.” I assume anyone who reads this site is familiar with the subject, but if not, the Wikipedia article provides the basic background. John’s file contains correspondence with Gray Barker about Morris K. Jessup and the “Varo Edition,” Barker’s own correspondence with several institutions about Jessup, and John’s correspondence with Carl M. Allen (aka Carlos Allende). (I posted a page of it here several years ago, but there’s much more.)

This letter to Gray Barker (March 20, 1968) also touches on reports of Men In Black and on Barker’s upcoming book on Mothman. The book, The Silver Bridge, became more novel than report; at any rate, here John offers to help Barker with it.

I know that most people who read this site are more interested in John’s work in Forteana and ufology than in his earlier career in radio and TV. However, given that there was always a bit of the trickster in him (as commenters here have sometimes noted), I thought I’d post an example of his work as a professional prankster. Here are ten scenarios for the long-running TV show Candid Camera. They’re from around 1964; I don’t know if they were ever used.

Back in 2002, I interviewed John for the Fortean Times, for a special issue prompted by the film adaptation of The Mothman Prophecies. To make the occasion more convivial, I invited John’s old friend George Kuchar and my girlfriend Mamie Caton, since John liked both of them (and who didn’t?). The issue in question was #156, March 2002 in the UK and April 2002 in the US.

A couple of corrections to the bibliography: the correct title for Two Women is Three Women; Kiss My Gun was never published; Bed of Nails was the original title for Three Women; The Hoodwinkers never got beyond the proposal stage; Pattern for Adventure was the original title for Jadoo. John’s memory was never particularly reliable. I’ve never seen a copy of How to Build an Atom Bomb in Your Basement, although John repeatedly mentioned it, and even cited it in one of his columns for Fate. It may have been a joke, in which case I hope it’s included in all lists of his books.

Please click on the images below to make them larger and more legible.

In 1964, John was between books. After Jadoo, he suffered from writer’s block awhile (which he wrote about in 1959), and hadn’t yet started to investigate ufology. He took on a number of TV and movie jobs, many of which never made it to production. He collected his work for that year in a bound volume. And, as usual with John, it’s filled with surprises and puzzles.

It begins with The Keystone Kops, a pilot script for a TV show. Some rummaging around the internet tells me that an animated show was considered in the ’60s, but this script calls for live action. It was never made, and there’s no indication of who was considering it.

It’s followed by a skit for “The Cole Bin,” a regular segment on the Clay Cole Show. Cole was a New York DJ who did a music show on WPIX-11 on Saturday nights; the last 15 minutes were devoted to “The Cole Bin,” in which musical guests did comedy bits. I assume Chuck McCann, who often worked with him, was also involved (no episodes survive). John’s script has a safecracker contending with a safe that’s also a radio, emitting blasts of music when the dial is turned.

Next is an article intended for the magazine Better Home Movie Making, on “Editing 8mm Sound-on-Film.” In the cover letter, John proposes a series on 8mm sound movies, with an eye to a future book. This, too, seems to have gone nowhere.

This is followed by ten episodes of Snooper Scope, a cartoon featuring “the greatest detective in the world,” and his assistants Billy Venture, Pokey, and Flutter, as they battle the evil Professor Disc Spicable. It was intended for Copri Films, but seems never to have been made. I asked animation historian Jerry Beck about it, and he had never heard of it. Copri sometimes imported and dubbed foreign cartoons, so maybe that was what Snooper Scope was meant for. At any rate, John wrote them ten scripts, with exact timings.

“Nosey” is another puzzle. It’s another comedy sketch, this time for two puppets, Nosey and Dosey, and two humans, Dan and Mr. Pumpernickel. Maybe this was also meant for Clay Cole and Chuck McCann; they often worked with the puppeteer Paul Ashley, who created several big-nosed characters.

“How Man Learned to Fly” is the script for a children’s record on one of John’s favorite subjects, aviation. Again, I haven’t found any indication it was ever produced.

How to Murder Your Wife was indeed produced, and starred Jack Lemmon. John wrote a trailer for it, which, again, seems not to have been used.

One of the more curious projects in this file is The World of the Living Dead, a treatment for a remake of the 1932 movie White Zombie. John dutifully turned in 34 pages of zombie story; according to his agreement with the producer Sherman S. Krellberg, he was paid $250 for it.

There are two more brief scripts: a series of skits for Candid Camera, and a brief treatment for a film to be called The Nudists from Outer Space, which I posted here, way back when.

Tucked in among all these is a curious article called “The Year 2000,” in which John imagines the world of the future. Like most prophecies, it often misses the mark, but remains a fascinating look at the dystopia that John (and no doubt others) thought lay ahead. And after all these unrealized projects, there may also be some wishful thinking in his prediction that future audiences will “demand high quality entertainment,” and that “painters, writers, and entertainers will be in the highest income group.”