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Speaker 1: John Keel's methods and madness as presented in Anomaly Number

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one by Charles Lear. John Keel, most well known as

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the author of the nineteen seventy five book The Mothman Prophecies,

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was a controversial figure in Flying Saucer Ufo world back

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in the late nineteen sixties and throughout the seventies due

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to his unorthodox views. He was first and foremost of

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Fertien interested in all things strange, and it was his

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view that whatever was behind the flying saucer Ufo phenomenon

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was not extraterrestrial and might be behind other phenomena as well.

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From May nineteen sixty nine to April nineteen seventy four,

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Keel put out the irregular newsletter Anomaly. He asked those

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wishing to receive a copy to send him a self addressed,

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stamped Manila envelope, and the number of copies he printed

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depended on the number of envelopes he received. For fans

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of Keel, Issue number one provides a detailed look at

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his views and investigative methods in the form of concrete

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suggestions for investigating the phenomena. Just after his adventures in

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West Virginia and New York that he conicled in the

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Mothman prophecies. Keel's first foray in the UFO investigation was

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thanks to an assignment from Playboy magazine in nineteen sixty

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six to as Keele put it during his two thousand

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two appearance on The Art Bell Show, kept to the

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bottom of the Flying Saucer mystery. He ended up spending

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a good deal of time in Point Pleasant, West Virginia,

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after the November fifteenth, nineteen sixty six encounter with a

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red eyed, winged humanoid creature that became known as the Mothman,

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reported by two young couples, Roger and Linda Scarberry and

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Steve and Mary Mollett. There were many reports of Mothman

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encounters in the area in the year that followed, as

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well as reports of UFOs and in Black Keel also,

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along with Gray Barker, interviewed Parkersburg, West Virginia, resident Woodrow Dehrenberger,

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who claimed to have had contact with a man named

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Indrid Cold and others who came from the planet Landulos.

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Keel divided his time between West Virginia in his home

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area of New York City, Manhattan, where he got involved

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with the long Island woman Joanne Pirano, who claimed she

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was in contact with and could channel an entity who

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called himself Apple. In the Mothman Prophecies, he describes all

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of the above, as well as strange, robotic voices over

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the phone and various entities giving him predictions that might

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or might not come true. Keel's suggestions to researcher investigators

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and his views as presented in Anomaly number one were

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no doubt heavily influenced by his experiences, and he could

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be forgiven for being a little keyed up. The first

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two words in the first issue are flying saucers, and

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Keel explained that this is the last time they will

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be seen an anomaly and will be replaced with the

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expression aerial anomaly. He then gets into what amounts to

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a mission statement, We hope to establish Anomaly as an

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irregular newsletter devoted entirely to the statistical and scientific analysis

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of all the many neglected ecological, parapsychological and psychiatric aspects

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surrounding the study of aerial anomalies. To help enable this study,

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QL invites his readers to submit reports and he offers

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some guidelines. He says he has found it is more

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fruitful to shift the emphasis to the witnesses and certain

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unusual manifestations which they frequently experience. He asks the transcripts

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and summaries be made of tape recordings, as he doesn't

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have the time to go through hundreds of hours of tapes.

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As for photos, he says this study is interested only

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in superbly detailed photographs taken in the presence of two

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or more witnesses who are willing to sign notarized AFFI davits.

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Keel tells investigators to get their emotions out of the

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way and just collect all the facts and report them

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without jumping to conclusions. According to him, thousands of important

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cases have been slighted in the past because unqualified investigators

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have made hasty negative judgments. Keel then presents an example

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of information formatted using a system he developed that he

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calls the data Reduction System. He suggests that all UFO

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publications print the DRS code for all sightings reported in

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each issue. He argues that quantitative studies have been sorely

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lacking in the UFO field, and that reports are so

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numerous that they become unimportant unless they are reduced to

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valid statistical form. He expresses the hope that the DRS

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will fill the need for or common methodology for everyone

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in the field. Kiel then goes into some more guidelines,

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including being objective and getting a detailed account of the

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witness's emotional and psychological reactions. He explains that sometimes these

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reactions are more important than the citing itself. Keil advises

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against using any one other than a qualified psychiatrist for hypnosis.

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This is interesting as he describes hypnotizing a witness in

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the book and recommends that medical records be obtained in

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cases where the witnesses suffer eyeburn, which is as symptom

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he notes in the Mothman prophecies, where one witness is

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described as suffering from it after an encounter with the creature.

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Then comes some advice that more deeply reflects the experiences

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Kiel wrote about in the book. He starts off with

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the divergence. According to him, a large part of the

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UFO phenomenon is deliberately deceptive. He explains that since eighteen

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ninety seven, UFOs have left behind ordinary debris commonly found

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on earth, such as newspapers, pieces of metal, articles of

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ordinary clothing, mundane chemicals, et cetera that give UFO incidents

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the appearance of a hoax. Keel suggests that investigators study

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Greek mythology. According to him, entities often give Greek names

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for themselves and their non existent planets. A unique idea

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of Keels is that UFOs often employ our own techniques

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of psychological warfare. One technique, he mentions, is to stage

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a landing or seemingly important incidents to divert our attention

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away from important activity. At this point, Keel tells the

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readers that they need to get rid of all preconceptions

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before they can even begin to understand any of this,

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and urges them to reject the extraterrestrial hypothesis that, in

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his view, keeps the phenomenon and its source free from interference.

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He explains that hoaxes had been deliberately staged to make

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the government believe the phenomenon was non real. He says

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that the UFO buffery has served to bring ridicule on

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the subject by advocating the etch, and that this has

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served to allow the UFO source to operate unhindered for

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twenty years. Keel goes on as he was wont to

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do in a section titled Hallucinatory Effects. There he points

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out that some contact cases have proven to be hallucinatory,

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and he introduces the term induced hallucination and says it

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seems that the effects were produced in the witness's minds

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by an exterior influence. He closes this section with this

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cryptic statement, the method and purpose of this effect is

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now known to a select handful of competent researchers. Following

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this is a section titled the DRS Procedure, a section

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on how to format and submit UFO reports. In a

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section titled the Men in Black, where Keel describes the

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MiB as they had been reported, he cautions against alarming

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witnesses by displaying unusual interest in such visitors and trying

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to apprehend one. The remaining five pages consist of what

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one would expect of a Flying Saucer UFO newsletter, with

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news and listings of books on the subject, as well

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as what Keel calls rush off letters, replies to letters

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he wrote to prominent figures regarding the UFO mystery from

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Robert F. Kennedy, the office of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and

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the National Director of the Society for the Propagation of faith.

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Keel's DRS never took hold in Flying Saucer Ufo World

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An Anomaly became mostly a collection of news clippings covering

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subjects ranging from Bigfoot to cattle mutilation. Keel refined his

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ideas regarding the mystery in his future writings, and in

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particular his nightighteen seventy book Operation Trojan Horse and his

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nineteen seventy five book The Eighth Tower. Charles Lear is

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the author of Crashed Saucers and Malevolent Aliens, available at

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Amazon dot com.