John Keel (1930-2009) had seen everything. He uncovered fakirs in India and enchanted cobras in Times Square. He pursued UFOs, Bigfoot and the feared "men dressed in dark"— and lived to tell the stories. From the February, 1984 issue of High Times comes Jim Cusimano's and Larry Sloman's tale about Mr. Fall, republished beneath on the event of his birthday March 25.
John Keel has gone through a lot of his time on earth being the world's premier position. Notice his name, harking back to the 1950s and the reaction would be, "Goodness, isn't he that person who has a deep understanding of dark sorcery and the mysterious?" By the '70s Keel's name had gotten inseparable from UFOs, as his entrancing thoughts changed the manner in which we took a gander at those puzzling things in the sky.
In any case, Keel was no easy chair scholar. He went through years circumnavigating the globe, looking into the most little known comers of the Third World, exploring their old otherworldly convictions and ceremonies. En route he got world celebrated for his uncover of the Indian rope stunt and skilled at the artistic work of cobra-beguiling.
At the point when he got back to the States during the '50s Keel addressed widely, at that point settled back in his received old neighborhood, New York City, where he filled in as head author for Goodson and Todman, the TV directors, dealing with their hits To Tell the Truth, I've Got a Secret and the Price Is Right. Subsequent to composing all of Merv Griffin's initial advertisement libs, he got together and moved to Hollywood, where he went through a year "detesting each moment of it."
Fall got back to New York in 1965, in the nick of time for the enormous power outage. Captivated by a UFO fold close to his origin in upstate New York, he started exploring an article for Playboy. Ten years and five books later, his fixation on UFOs was satisfied with the distribution of The Eighth Tower, a summarizing of his wrench cosmology.
Set forth plainly, following very long time of field examination and many meetings with UFO contactees, Keel presumed that the UFO wonder couldn't be extraterrestrial in nature. Or maybe, he conjectured that UFOs were important for the fanciful action that has tormented this planet since its initiation—a modem, refreshed variant of pixies, beasts, Bigfoot and other bizarre elements that go knock in the evening.
Other than his 12 books (the most acclaimed of which are UFO—Operation Trojan Horse, The Mothman Prophecies, Our Haunted Planet and Strange Creatures from Time and Space), Keel has additionally figured out how to figure out how to compose more than 200 droll parody films under agreement to the Trans-Lux Corporation. He is as of now dealing with three books, one of which will "tackle every one of the secrets of the Universe."
High Times: When did you start your profession?
John Keel: I was around twelve years of age. I offered an article to an entertainers' magazine when I was around twelve or thirteen years of age. They sent me a check for two dollars.
And afterward I began composing for things like Mechanics Illustrated. In any case, when I was sixteen, I offered to the New Yorker, and afterward I thought I was ridiculously a superstar, on the grounds that the New Yorker was viewed as the hardest, everything being equal.
High Times: You were doing this from your family's upstate New York ranch?
Fall: Yeah. What's more, it was my method of moving away from the ranch. I planned to work out.
High Times: What did your family consider it?
Fall: They despised the entire thought. They needed me to be a rancher, similar to them.
High Times: So when did you at last leave the ranch?
Fall: When I was seventeen. I came to New York with 75 pennies. It was 400 miles. I caught a ride to New York. It required two days. I dozed on park seats what not. In those days it was vastly different. The Village was entirely different than it is currently. It was exceptionally simple to meet individuals; inside an extremely brief timeframe I knew everyone in the Village. I was the proofreader of a verse magazine down there. At that point I began a paper called Limelight, a week after week newspaper about Village specialists and authors.
High Times: Had you composed for the mash magazines?
Fall: I had composed a ton of stuff for the pulps. I used to compose by the pound. I'd compose criminal investigator stories and sci-fi stories. I sold a great deal of sci-fi back then, all when I was eighteen, twenty years of age. The comic books at that point were blasting—what befell the comic books was that a dolt therapist, Dr. Frederick Werthem, came out with an article in a dark magazine, saying comic books were terrible for youngsters, that Batman and Robin were gay people… All this bologna! Furthermore, he destroyed the comic-book business. Overnight this article got a tremendous measure of exposure, and overnight they needed to change every one of the comic books, thus, they… for quite a long time a short time later, you were unable to purchase anything aside from Donald Duck and Archie.
Around then, TV was coming in. I worked in TV. WABD, down at Wanamaker's Store, down on Astor Place. Also, everyone worked in vain in TV. The cameramen, the chiefs, everyone was working to no end, just to begin in it. What's more, I was composing a wide range of inept shows. They had truly stupid shows in those days since they had no cash. Their greatest cost, their serious deal for creation, is discharge inflatables, and we were going off the deep end attempting to consider approaches to utilize inflatables on the grounds that they were modest.
High Times: Then you got drafted?
Fall: I got drafted in '51, the Korean War broke out.
High Times: Where were you sent?
Fall: They sent me to Europe, yet first they sent me to Indiantowngap, Pennsylvania, in light of the fact that consistently they would disclose to us that the slopes there were very much like the slopes in Korea. Furthermore, they made them run here and there these slopes, playing trooper. The military was something enchanting back then. The entirety of our officials, the majority of them, were Southerners, and the greater part of the folks that I was drafted with were from the North and a large portion of them were dark, and after we completed fundamental preparing they sent every one of the people of color to Korea and every one of the white folks to Europe. What's more, this was a military strategy, and the Korean War was battled to a great extent by individuals of color—talk about racial bias conveyed to a limit.
High Times: What did you do in the military? Didn't you get into Intelligence or something? Promulgation?
Fall: Well, they revealed to us how horrendous it would have been in Europe, that we would live in tents and that we would go in these cows vehicles to our objections, etc. So they sent me to Frankfurt. I had no clue about where I was going. They just had numbers on my orders. I didn't have a clue. We got off the train, and every one of these other G.I.s that were with us… I was with another person, a companion of mine who went through fundamental with me, and the entirety of the other G.I.s were being stacked into trucks and we were glancing near—Where's our truck? A limousine pulled up and this German driver gets out and he's dressed like a Nazi tempest trooper, and he gets down on our names, and we get into the limousine and every one of these others are getting into trucks, and he began passing during that time in Frankfurt, Germany, and we asked him, "Are we going to live in a tent?" And he said, "No, you'll live in a manor," and he drove us to this stronghold outside of Frankfurt, and that was a radio broadcast, the American Forces Network, and we lived in a palace.
High Times: You were working for the Armed Forces Radio?
Fall: Yeah. It turned out it was the greatest radio organization on the planet. They had stations all over Europe, and inside a year's time I was the head of congruity and creation. I was the top of the entire creation arrangement for the entire organization. It took me about a year to move gradually up to that position, for the most part since no one else knew the slightest bit about anything, and I was the one in particular that had any insight, and, you know, from composing Superman…
And afterward I composed my own specific manner. I cooked up tasks for myself and sent myself all over Europe. I delivered the fighters' singing challenge all over Europe. I went all over France and all over Holland, etc, discovering vocalists in the military to record them for the radio program, and when there were debacles, as in the Po Valley in Italy, I would fly down and cover the calamity.
At that point on Halloween in 1952 I conjured up a public broadcast from inside Frankenstein's palace. There truly is a Frankenstein manor there, and it was a colossal achievement. It terrified everyone, and the British papers reviewed it, Time magazine reviewed it, and they were contrasting me with Orson Welles, thus the following year, in '53, I needed to top myself when Halloween moved around. I recommended to the colonel who was responsible for the organization that he send me to Egypt and I'd do a transmission from the Great Pyramid, and he said, "Sure," and they sent me and an entire group down to Egypt and we did a transmission from inside the pyramid. I spent around eight or ten hours inside the Great Pyramid.
High Times: What happened when you returned?
Fall: I took my release in Europe. I concluded that I might want to proceed to live in Egypt for some time. And afterward from that point I worked my way around the planet.
High Times: When did you begin composing magazine articles?
Fall: Well, while I was still with the military.
I have six scrapbooks at home loaded up with clippings from Stars and Stripes. They would review me consistently on the grounds that I was the one in particular that was busy. They would convey these John Keel stories, and pictures of me—I was a superstar there. What's more, I went into a dance club in Berlin and they turned the focus on my table. Had me hold up.
High Times: When did you compose Jadoo? How did that happen?
Fall: Well, first I did the entirety of the going in India, etc. And afterward when I got to Singapore the British tossed me out of Singapore. I wound up broke in Singapore. They considered me an explorer and tossed me out. They made me take the principal transport out which was going the entirety of the route back to Eu
