JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

Here, to follow up on John’s 1970 speech to the Humanist Society, is one for a MENSA convention in NYC in 1972. He touches on some of the same subjects, but is more concerned with the connections between paranormal and religious experiences. A few corrections about Charles Fort: he was not a “little man,” but six feet tall and stocky; he died in 1932, not 1931; the quotation “If there is a universal mind, must it be sane?” (with which John closes The Mothman Prophecies) was written by Damon Knight, in his biography of Fort; it was Aaron Sussman who proposed the title God Is an Idiot, which Fort rejected, preferring Tiffany Thayer’s suggestion Lo!

I’ll post the speech in three installments.

Today is John Keel’s birthday; he would have been 91. He would, no doubt, be glad to know his fans are still reading him, and would still be asking, “Yeah, but where’s the money?” Here he is doing magic tricks when he was much younger. Happy birthday, John!

Here are the final pages of John’s 1970 speech for the Humanist Society. There are still many reasons to be pessimistic, but we can only hope there are indeed “unknown psychic forces at work,” and that more people will be saying “Lollipop” in the future.

Here’s the third part (of four) of John’s speech for the Humanist Society, 7/22/70. And what a speech it is!

And here’s the second part of John’s speech for the Humanist Society. Note that the second page below, 5A, is to be inserted after the first paragraph on page 5.

John gave this speech on July 22, 1970. He used parts of it in the last chapter (“The Revolution of the Mind”) of Our Haunted Planet, where he noted that he gave it to the Humanist Society. There have been a number of Humanist societies; I think this one was the First Humanist Society of New York, founded by Charles Francis Potter in 1929.

The material is certainly more trenchant and personal in this earlier, longer version; among other things, he mentions some of his own psychic experiences, particularly at the death of Mary Hyre, his correspondent in Point Pleasant. The speech is 16 pages, so I’ll break it up into sections.

We have here a curious bit of cultural history, and a glimpse of John’s life as a “youthful Greenwich Village poet.”  When he came to New York in his teens, he sold a few pieces to the Hobo News (later the Bowery News), and got to know some of the colorful characters in the hobo and Bowery subculture. In 1949, he read the eulogy at the funeral of Dan O’Brien, “King of the Hobos.” The event was covered by a couple of New York papers. Here’s a clipping from the New York Sun, November 4, 1949.

And here’s the coverage from the New York World-Telegram, also on November 4, 1949. Note that Coney Island Willie is reading the Bowery News.

John saved the business cards of just about everyone he met. Here are the cards of Dan O’Brien, Prof. Giuseppe Ravita, Jim Crouch, and Harry Baronian, editor of the Bowery News. The note on the back of Harry Baronian’s card assured somebody named Alex that the young Keel was “okay.”

Here’s a last bit from the same folder of miscellaneous papers. A while ago, I posted a sample of John’s work for “Mack and Myer for Hire,” the TV show featuring Mickey Deems and Joey Faye. Here are three more excerpts from 1963: the beginnings of “Chimp Chumps,” “Muscle Mania,” and “Barbershop Boobery.” Note John’s bylines! Enjoy!

Here, just in time for the holidays, is some boyish toilet humor from John’s alter ego, Thorton M. Vaseltarp. As Vaseltarp, he wrote several articles for Al Goldstein’s weekly SCREW, mostly mock-scientific sex surveys. Here, he imagines Goldstein receiving an unpleasant package at the office. John prided himself on being able to write in any genre, and this is one of them. Happy holidays!

From the same folder comes this page of letters, apparently destined for a humor magazine. But what was SNAFU? There was a short-lived magazine of that name published by Marvel in 1955 and 1956, but most of the material in this folder is from about ten years later. Was there another one? The Keel files are full of puzzles!