Speaker 1: Hi, it's Martin. I'm giving Charles Lear's audio blogs another
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more of these blogs on this channel. Today's audio blog
Jock Vala and John Keel challenged the E T H
This is the Courses by history buff and author Charles Lear.
By the time Project Blue Book was terminated, most UFO researchers,
especially those in the United States, believe that UFOs were
nuts and bolts craft piloted by flesh and blood creatures
from other planets. This became known as the extraterrestrial hypotheses
or eth But as the nineteen sixties gave way to
the nineteen seventies, two researchers began challenging that idea. Jacques
Vallet published one groundbreaking book, while John Keel published two. Together,
their work caused many people in the UFO community to
begin considering other possibilities. Vallet's first book, Anatomy of the Phenomenon,
was published in nineteen sixty five. His second book, Challenged
to Science, was co written by his wife, Jeanine, published
in nineteen sixty six. Both books argued that the UFO
mystery was worth a lot of serious scientific study. They
presented the elements of the problem in an organized manner
and an effort to make the study a possibility and
what would become characteristic of Vallet's work. He included accounts
going all the way back to antiquity, and he included
a great many of them. The books were very lengthy, academic,
and somewhat dry. They held little appeal for the average
UFO enthusiast who was looking for sensational stories of sightings
and encounters. Then, on October one, nineteen sixty nine, according
to Kirkus Review, Ballet published Passport to Magonia. It was
quite a departure from his first two books. Ballet's central
thesis was that there might be a connection between UFOs
and stories found in religious texts, ancient legends, fairy law,
and folklore. The full title of his first edition was
Passport to Magonia From Folklore to Flying Saucers. Ballet did
not dismiss the UFO mystery as merely a modern myth. Instead,
he suggested it might involve something or someone that has
been interacting with humanity since antiquity. He also proposed that
there could be a trickster element involved, and the section
title conjectures At the u s the end of the
main body of the work, Ballet writes, the behavior of
the entities is consistently absurd. He also states their assertions
have been systematically misleading. Following the main text, Ballet included
an appendix titled A Century of Ufo Landings eighteen sixty
eight to nineteen sixty eight. In its introduction, he writes,
the study of UFOs is more than a descriptive analysis
of folklore, but it has not developed into a scientific field.
He argues, what is lacking is a proper definition of
the phenomenon being studied. As for the book's reception, Vallet
wrote in a forward to twenty fourteen edition that the
original hardcover only sold five thousand copies. He explained that
while it was largely ignored or rejected by the United States,
it was well received in Europe. He believed that European
audience had a greater appreciation for history and the importance
of folklore in defining a culture. Shortly after Passport to
Magonia was published, John Keel's book Strange Creatures from Time
and Space appeared on January first, nineteen seventy. It was
definitely the sort of book that appealed to the average
UFO enthusiasts as well as people who are fascinated by
what we call now as cryptids. It featured a fantastic
cover by Frank Frazetta, and it was packed with cases
involving exactly the kinds of strange creatures promised by its title.
But what separated it from the typical UFO book of
that era was Keel's commentary. It was here that Keel
introduced his idea of window areas. These were locations where
UFOs and strange creatures and other unexplained events seemed to
appear repeatedly throughout history. Like Vallet, Keel was considering alternatives
to the extraterrestrial hypothet. But Keel's thinking had developed through
years of direct field investigation beginning in nineteen sixty six.
Much of that work centered on the strange events occurring
around Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Those events involved UFO encounters,
unusual humanoids, and the mysterious winged creature that became known
as the Mothman. Keel had another book, Operation Trojan Horse,
published on the very same date. In this book, he
took a more scholarly approach to presenting his ideas. An
advertisement for both books appeared in the May June nineteen
seventy issue of Flying Saucer Review. The advertisement explained that
Keel's original manuscript covering his UFO study had become so
large that it was divided into two separate books, each
approximately ninety thousand words long. Strange Creatures from Time and
Space was described as a casebook recounting hundreds of bizarre
incidents involving unknown animals and humanoids. The cases, according to
the advertisement, demonstrated surprising correlations hidden within the testimonial evidence.
It's also stated that Keel's commentary defined and graphically explained
the seemingly hostility of the central phenomenon. Operation Trojan Horse
was described as a hardcover containing hundreds of carefully documented cases.
It also revealed for the first time Kiel's personal contact
experiences of nineteen sixty seven. Experiences reportedly changed him from
a believer to a skeptic. As for its potential impact
on the UFO community, Advance Review is declared it's certain
to become the greatest classic on the subject, and it
will undoubtedly alter the course of all future UFO research. Interestingly,
Keel's UFO study originally began as a magazine assignment. In
a two thousand and two interview with Art Bell, kil
So that Playboy magazine had assigned him to get to
the bottom of the UFO mystery. According to Doug Skinner,
writing in a February eleventh, twenty fifteen posts on John
Keel dot Com, Keel's proposed article was to be called
Operation Trojan Horse. However, the article was ultimately rejected. Skinner
explained that Kiel had decided to write the defenditive article
on UFOs, but it grew longer and longer while the
corresponds between Keel and the magazine became increasingly acrimonious. Eventually,
Playboy rejected the piece. Instead, the magazine published an article
by doctor j Allen Heinik titled the UFO Gap, which
appeared in December nineteen sixty seven issue of Playboy. Together,
both Passport to Magonia and Operation Trojan Horse are regarded
as classics. They remain in print and continue to influence
UFO and paranormal researchers. However, at the time they were
originally published, their ideas did little to advance the stargle
for serious scientific study of the UFO mystery. Major organizations,
including APRO and the United States, and the British UFO
Research Association in Europe, continued to support the extraterrestrial hypotheses.
Flying Saucer Review, however, was much more receptive to the
idea of Valet and Keel. The magazine's publishers had developed
a very similar idea of their own. Founded in nineteen
fifty four, Flying Saucer Review was published in England. Both
Vallet and Keel were frequent contributors. Their continued presence helped
sustain the idea that UFOs and the beings associated with
them might originate from somewhere other than outer space. That
possibility continues to be explored by researchers and investigators to
this day. Charles Lear is the author of Flying Saucer Investigators,
now available and its second edition on Amazon. Thank You