john keel
Is there a connection between UFOs and the paranormal? John Keel thought so.
As July 1967 comes to a close, we find John transcribing a message from Apol in a motel in Long Island. He doesn't say how it was transmitted, but my guess is that Jaye Paro dictated it over the phone. Much of it is the usual vague rambling studded with scripture, but there are a couple of interesting points. One is the request, "What do you suggest regarding our messages? How can we prove we are we," which John later follows up on with some passwords. I was also struck by the sentence, "We can not let your people all become as a subject controlled by an operator."

To John, that must have recalled the book Operators and Things, a disturbing memoir of schizophrenia by Barbara O'Brien (probably a pseudonym; I don't think the author has been identified). The Operators and Things of the title refer to malevolent disembodied entities, and the humans that they control with rays (a classic influencing machine delusion). UFO buffs in the '60s were intrigued by its similarity to the accounts of Richard Shaver. Its use here may indicate that Jaye was familiar with O'Brien. John was; here's his definition of "operator" from his unfinished UFO dictionary. And then Apol's message in that distinctive Keelian manuscript.

"The messenger," by the way, is Jaye Paro.

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Gin Rummy, an Alien Baby, and Passwords

We're at the end of July 1967, and John continues to keep detailed notes on the daily strangeness. Or, at least, what Jaye Paro reports as daily strangeness. Apol's replacement, Rubin, finally appears, and shows a passion for gin rummy; John interviews him (indirectly, as always). Jaye witnesses an alien birth, and John suggests some passwords for her contacts, to prevent bogus messages from the Fourth Group. John particularly noted the salt under the baby's tongue, in the Catholic/alien baptism, because Jaye had reported that aliens ate large amounts of salt.

A couple of footnotes: Ivan was Ivan Sanderson, writer of many books on animals, forteana, and ufology; Charles Bowen was the editor of the British Flying Saucer Review.
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