Page Content (OCR)
the beliefs of the group. In both cases, too, we are told to expect "higher" knowledge to come from the UFOs. And in both cases there is an impact on the collective consciousness. What about the prophetic element? Mrs. Keech predicted a flood and salvation from above. Uri Geller and Dr. Andrija Puharich once forecasted massive flying saucer landings. Many people around the country (whom author John Keel has appropriately called "the silent contactees") are keeping to themselves what they regard as revelations made to them by alien entities. Perhaps people have always had such experiences. Perhaps they were purely religious, hence private, in times past, and only the relative acceptance of modern UFO sightings by a segment of the media and by a few curious scientists has encouraged the partial disclosure of some of the contacts. Whatever the case may be, we tend to discount too easily any phenomena that contain seemingly absurd elements. This is the third coverup. It is tempting to place Mrs. Keech and all people like her into a category neatly labeled in sociological terms, like "doomsday believers" and those with "cognitive dissonance," preferably with the magic term "behavior" tacked on. Examining the details of her story, however, should make us a bit cautious. There is, for example, the matter of the strange man she met in the first prophetic instance. The academic investigators felt they were on such strong theoretical ground that they neglected to ascertain whether the mysterious appearance and disappearance of the stiff-legged entity could be confirmed by others. This lack of follow-up must be deplored. On two other occasions, Mrs. Keech had been visited by strange people. The first incident followed the disclosure of her flood forecast in the local papers. Two men came to her door and asked to talk to her; one of them was a perfectly ordinary human, but his companion was very strange and did not say a single word during the visit. She asked who they were, and the first man replied, "I am of this planet, but he is not." The point of their discussion, which lasted for half an hour, was that she should not publicize her information beyond what she had already done. "The time is not right now," the man said before leaving with his companion. This encounter had been deadly serious. As a result Mrs. Keech gave up her plans to publish a book about her experiences. There was another visit a few months later, this time by five young visitors who spent two hours trying to convince Mrs. Keech and a scientist who was a member of her group that their information was incorrect, that everything they were predicting was wrong. The investigators again made no effort to identify these visitors, which is in my opinion a serious oversight. They simply reported, "Why these young men called at the house, what their purpose was, and who they were — these are things we do not know: they may have been practical jokers, or they may have had a serious purpose." In describing her discussion with the later visitors, Mrs. Keech said, shocked and weeping, that: They kept forcing me to take back things. He kept trying to pressure me into saying they were not true. They kept telling me that what I said was all false and mixed up. And they told me that they were in contact with outer space too and all the writings I had were wrong and that everything I was predicting was wrong. Now the ring of absurdity around Mrs. Keech was complete. She was experiencing the third coverup. The flood would not take place. The believers who had trusted all the signs and the obvious sincerity of their medium or channel would be left completely isolated — having lost or resigned their jobs, in some cases having sold all their earthly possessions, committed to a reality that only they could percieve; they would be forever unable to tell the whole story. The most highly educated man in the group, a local professor, would eventually comment: I've had to go a long way. I've given up just about everything. I've cut every tie. I've burned every bridge. I've turned my back on the world. I can't afford to doubt. I have to believe. And there isn't any other truth.... You're having your period of doubt now, but hang on, boy, hang on. This is a tough time but we know that the boys upstairs are taking care of us.