JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

http://smragan.com/2015/10/11/my-breadboard-brings-all-the-boys-to-the-yard/badass_breadboard_10/ To close out the year, here’s a Keel rarity: a peppery editorial against censorship and government boondoggles. It appeared in an odd little newspaper called the New York Column, on September 25, 1970. The paper was only 16 pages, and edited by a certain N. H. Mager, who apparently also edited several dictionaries. It contained an assortment of syndicated features (Ann Landers, Hints from Heloise, bridge, horoscopes), TV listings, and very little news. I found nothing about it online; maybe it didn’t last long. At any rate, here’s John’s opinion on the controversial National Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, whose expensive report had just been rejected by President Nixon.

Jaye Paro’s aliens had told him he would be contacted, possibly even abducted, on September 3. He wasn’t, of course, but he did note a lot of activity in Long Island that week.

Gladys Fusaro was a UFO buff; she was in touch with James Moseley, and occasionally contributed to UFO newsletters. Gerda was John’s girlfriend, a dancer who had little or no interest in UFOs.

At the beginning of September 1967, John paused in the onslaught of high strangeness to set down his impressions of his principal witness, Jaye Paro. For those who have been following this often bizarre investigation, please remember that this whole thing had taken only four months, from May through August. Although I post once a week, there were often only a few hours between entries. It does seem longer, since there was so much going on.

I find these pages more useful as a record of what he thought of Jaye than as an objective portrait. His impressions naturally affect his assessment of her supposed experiences, and what he chose to do with them, whether they were accurate or not. They may tell us more about John than about Jaye.

Although John says Paro’s radio show was popular, I haven’t been able to find any references to it. I’d love to see a WBAB program guide, if there was such a thing. And I’m certainly sorry there’s no tape of that show with John!

I posted a picture of Jaye Paro here, and examples of the articles she wrote for Beyond magazine here.

As we continue into September, John now expects Jays Paro’s aliens to contact him directly, perhaps even abduct him. Ivan Sanderson tells him that his (Sanderson’s) wife is dying (she revived, and lived until 1972). He has more strange reports from Paro and from Vicki Hayes, and is disturbed when an Indian man asks him for directions (I assume because Paro said her contacts looked Indian). As he says, “Ordinarily, I would not have given such an incident much thought,” but he’s obviously on edge.

September 1967 begins with a flurry of reports, including a couple of UFO sightings, a couple of sudden departures, and some strange behavior from one of Jaye Paro’s friends. Gerda was John’s girlfriend; I don’t know who Rowdie was. John also traces a map of the Pleiades, speculating that some of the aliens came from there; he was apparently still considering the extraterrestrial hypothesis at this point.

John wrote to the supposed aliens on September 2, 1967. Among other topics, he mentions that Jaye Paro is tired of being a messenger, proposes setting up a communication center in an abandoned farmhouse, offers to let them possess him, and muses on his time in India. And, as he says at the end, “September promises to be a busy month for all of us.”

A few notes: John sent several questionnaires to Apol/Appell, receiving usually evasive answers; the library is the Lucis Trust library; Tim’na is the aliens’ name for Jaye Paro.

In a local thrift shop I found a copy of The White Woman and Her Valley, by Arch Merrill. Merrill was on the staff of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle for many years, and wrote hundreds of articles on New York history and folklore, which he then turned into books. One of the chapters in this collection concerns the so-called Sea Serpent of Silver Lake, to which John devotes a chapter in Strange Creatures from Time and Space (later republished as The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings). For those who mislaid their copies, a hotel keeper in John’s hometown of Perry, sometime in the 1850s, built an inflatable lake monster, which caused some excitement for a while. The “Sea Serpent” is still remembered fondly in Perry. Merrill’s account is rather brief, but he does present another version of what seems to be the only illustration of the hoax, which I posted here. Merrill’s picture is obviously the same, but many details are either lighter or darker, so I’ll post it here for lake monster hoax fans.

In the next two entries in his notes, John receives more strange stories from his usual informants, Jaye Paro, Louise, and Gladys Fusaro. John remained dubious about Gladys’s stories; the alien who visited the Palluccis certainly seems unlikely.

A couple of notes: John’s name, was, in fact, not “John Keel,” but “Alva John Kiehle.” And why shouldn’t he reveal the existence of the Lucis Trust library? It’s public, after all.

At the end of August (we’re still in 1967), Jaye Paro tells John to look for a book in the Lucis Trust library. He does so, and finds passages underlined in red pencil. Apol’s letters were written in red pencil. Did Jaye mark up the book? Did someone else, and then tell her to tell John? I suspect the former, but I guess we can’t know.

The Lucis Trust was founded in 1922 by Alice Bailey and her husband Foster Bailey, to publish her books, which are apparently influenced by H. P. Blavatsky (I’ve read some Blavatsky, but no Bailey).

And we have more stories from Jaye: this time, an attempt to gas her, and a frozen phone.

John’s daily record continues with more drama from Jaye Paro: a new alien, Rodan, threatens to murder four people she knows if she doesn’t stop her contact with “those people.” Apol/Appell had previously given Paro the name “Tim’na” in a letter to John. Of course, if she actually wrote the letter, she would know about her new name. More puzzling, perhaps, is the report from John’s girlfriend Gerda, about a small disc outside her window.