John A. Keel: The Indiana Jones of the Unexplained

From UFOs, to large hairy monsters, John Keel chased them all half way around the world.

An Interview by Timothy Green Beckley

Originally published in the UFO Review circa 1980s. Resurrected by Brent Raynes via Alternative Realities. 

From the upper Mile, to the lower Ganges and the Roof of the World in Tibet, to remote country villages in West Virginia and Kentucky, John A. Keel traveled extensively in his unending search for the strange, the mysterious, the unexplainable. He has been in over 40 countries and has lived in Paris, Baghdad, Cairo, Calcutta, Barcelona, Hollywood, New Orleans and a thousand exotic places in between. For many years, he wrote a syndicated newspaper column which appeared in major dailies throughout the world and his countless magazine articles appeared in nearly every leading periodical. His monthly column “Modern Mysteries” appeared in SAGA magazine for ten years. He was editor and publisher of ANOMALY, a newsletter devoted to scientific mysteries, and served on the Board of Directors of the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained (S.I.T.U.), founded by Ivan T. Sanderson. He was also the editor of the Society’s journal, Pursuit.

John Keel, 1967

In the 1950s, Mr. Keel worked for the Department of the Army as Chief of Continuity and Production for the American Forces Network (AFN) in Frankfurt, Germany, the world’s largest radio network. In 1952, he wrote and produced a radio program, Things in the Sky, about unidentified flying objects which was heard by millions throughout Europe and very favorably received. He also wrote and produced broadcasts from the original castle of Frankenstein in Germany, and from the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.

An accomplished lexicographer, he had been science editor of Funk & Wagnalls’ encyclopedias and geography editor of the Funk & Wagnalls College Dictionary. It was Mr. Keel who inserted the first definition of the “abominable snowman” and “flying saucers” into the dictionary and thus into formal acceptance by the scholarly community.

Mr. Keel had also been active in television, serving as head writer on programs starring Merv Griffin, Robert G. Lewis, Gene Rayburn, and others. He was employed by Goodson & Todman Productions for a number of years and also was head writer for station WPIX in New York. Author of several screenplays, he wrote 200 slapstick comedies for Trans-Lux and had worked on numerous television situation comedies. His humorous novel, The Fickle Finger of Fate, published in 1966, sold 800,000 copies.

The Fickle Finger of Fate

In the early 1970s, Mr. Keel became a special consultant to the Federal Government, carrying out assignments for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the Bureau of Radiology and the Air Force office of Technical Research.

A regular on many radio and television talk shows, Mr. Keel appeared with Johnny Carson, Jack Paar, Hugh Downs, David Letterman, Long John Nebel, Barry Farber and many others. He also lectured widely and received two honorary Ph.D.’s for his work in herpetology and archaeology. He is well-known in many different fields. For example, he once wrote a column for U.S. Camera magazine and was regarded as a leading expert in 8mm sound filming. Among magicians he was known as the inventor of many ingenious magic tricks and an outstanding commentator on the psychology of magic. In religious circles, he had been labeled “the world’s greatest theologian” and his books are widely quoted by religious writers and evangelists. In Europe, he has been the subject of much controversy and many books have been written about him, such as the ever popular book The Dark Gods by the British authors Anthony Roberts and Geoff Filbertson. The Interview:

John A. Keel with Timothy Green Beckley and a frog which rained upon them.

Timothy Green Beckley: Tell us John. What happened to your beard?

John A. Keel: Ha! I see this is going to be one of those in-depth, highly personal interviews. I shaved off the beard many years ago…but a lot of pictures were taken of me in the 1960’s when I still had it. And those pictures are still appearing in print. So everyone assumes I’m bearded. I’m not. I’m old, fat and balding. People are always disappointed when they meet me. They expect Cary Grant…with a beard. And they get Ernest Borgnine.

TGB: Back in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, you were one of the most prominent and most visible ufologists in the world. Then suddenly there was silence. You disappeared. There were rumors that the government had silenced you, or that the notorious Men in Black had gotten to you. What happened?

JAK: I’m afraid the explanation is very mundane. I felt my work with UFOs was finished. I moved on to other things. And, unfortunately, I had some major health problems which curtailed my activities somewhat. I’ve suffered from hypoglycemia…low blood sugar…all my life, and I had tuberculosis, even appendicitis. Want to hear about my operation?

TGB: Uhhh…maybe some other time, John. Tell us about how you first became interested in Fortean matters…the weird and the unusual.

JAK: I grew up on a farm outside Buffalo, N.Y. so I was surrounded by all kinds of animals from the beginning. Our neighbor on the next farm used to go out and catch rattlesnakes and sell them. I went with him and that was how I first became interested in reptiles…herpetology. I devoured books by Raymond Ditmars, the great snake authority, and so on.

When I was around ten years old, that would be 1940, people on a back road near our farm began seeing a very tall, hair covered creature. They thought it was a gorilla of some kind. It scared several people badly and the farmers all went out with shotguns to track it down. Of course, they never found it. But that was my introduction to Bigfoot. Nobody knew about Bigfoot then. Ivan Sanderson, the zoologist, wouldn’t publish his studies until ten or fifteen years later.

Hairy “Wildman” was spotted in upper NY State in the 1940s.

TGB: So you became a believer in the abominable snowman-type creature at an early age?

JAK: Please. Belief never entered into it. I knew some of the witnesses. I accepted their stories. I accepted the fact that a giant “gorilla” was on the loose. You know, I also saw my first UFO when I was very young. I was about seven. We were driving outside a little town called Canseraga, N.Y. one night when we saw a huge, brilliantly illuminated sphere on top of a nearby hill. My stepfather stopped the car and we watched it. At first, we thought it was a barn burning or something. Then it slowly took off, rose straight up a short distance, and shot out of sight. This thing was burned into my memory. I never forgot it. But many years later I asked my parents about it and they had absolutely no memory of the episode whatsoever.

TGB: That would be in 1937.

JAK: That’s right. 1937 was a strange year. There were floods and earthquakes in New York state. And some very weird meteorological phenomena. Years later, when I was sifting old newspapers for UFO reports I came across several. And even back then, back in 1937, the New York Times was explaining away the sightings. Something chased a railroad train across the Midwest and the Times said it was the planet Venus.

TGB: You’re saying it wasn’t?

JAK: I’ll tell you a secret. Venus doesn’t really exist. There never was a planet Venus. The astronomers made it up…just like they make up things like Black Holes. Did you ever really think about the Black Hole theory? Since a Black Hole can’t give off or reflect light, we will never know if they exist or not. So the theorists are perfectly safe. Their theory can never be proven or disproven. I’m afraid Charles Fort was right. Astronomy is 90% bullshit. Each new generation of astronomers throws out all the beloved theories of the previous generation. Fort suggested that all the stars are actually hanging from strings on a velvet backdrop. He was probably just as accurate as the guys who dreamed up the Black Holes. Or the ones who invented Venus so they would have a convenient explanation for UFOs that chase trains.

TGB: Do we trace a little note of cynicism here?

JAK: We Forteans are a cynical lot. The anti-UFO factions never quite understood us. We are ten times more skeptical than the so-called professional skeptics, but we are willing to examine the evidence. They aren’t.

For example, in my book STRANGE MUTANTS I tell the story of a man who was riding horseback in Ohio when a giant snake suddenly attacked him, bit him in the foot and crippled him. When I did an article on this case, the snake experts told me there was no such snake in Ohio…or anywhere else. But the man’s wife happened to see my article and she wrote to me in detail about what he had suffered since. He’s crippled to this day. And the symptoms she described and all, are unknown to herpetology! We don’t know what kind of snake it was. We’ll never know. But we have the evidence…the poor house and the man’s foot. If any snake expert wants to interview these people, he could learn a lot. But the experts in any subject are usually most reluctant to investigate anything firsthand.

Strange Mutants, published in 1982 by Global Communications

TGB: Like the college professor who said the people in West Virginia were seeing a Sandhill Crane?

JAK: Exactly. Back in the 1960’s hundreds of people saw a huge winged, human-shaped creature. It chased cars. That college professor never went near West Virginia. I did. And I carried a picture of a Sandhill Crane with me. When I showed it to the witnesses they laughed. No way could they have mistaken an ordinary bird for a six-foot tall monster.

TGB: That was the famous Mothman?

JAK: Yes. Some newspapermen came up with that name for it. The Batman TV series was very popular at that time. But the Mothman episodes were a major breakthrough in my research. I outline it in STRANGE MUTANTS.

TGB: What kind of breakthrough?

JAK: I really can’t summarize it in an interview. You have to read the book.

TGB: Suppose I don’t want to shell out $9.95 for the book?

JAK: That’s tough, then. You’ll just have to spend the rest of your life wallowing in ignorance.

TGB: Actually, we have read the book. You cover a lot of subjects…ten-foot-long earthworms…

JAK: They’re found in Australia.

TGB: Vampire bats.

Artist rendition of Mothman.

JAK: One of my favorite subjects. Did you know that bats can’t land? If one touches the ground it has a helluva time getting airborne again. That’s why they land upside down on tree limbs or in caves on rock formations. They hang upside down and when they want to depart they just let themselves drop. This gives them sufficient airspeed to start flying. The Air Force released some bats in a room strung with wires once…and they were able to fly in and out and around the wires with great ease in the dark. They use a kind of radar. That little experiment cost the American taxpayer some big bucks. I once met the Air Force officer who was in charge of it. He could talk about bats for hours. And he did! But my favorite military experiment was something the Navy did a few years back. They spent over $200,000 to find out why a frisbee flies. I think they had some cockamaney notion of attaching a grenade to a frisbee.

TGB: You seem well informed on government experiments of all kinds.

JAK: I was consulting at H.E.W. when they hired a company to find out why children fall off the tricycles. They spent $25,000 to rediscover the law of gravity!

TGB: Do you think the government spends any money on UFOs or Mothmen?

JAK: First of all, the government does not spend money. It throws money away! In the 1950’s, General Twining of the Air Force said publicly that the Air Force was then spending one million dollars a year on the UFO “problem.” But as near as I could find out, and remember I was investigating from inside the government, no one in the Air Force…or any other branch…knows anything about UFOs, cares anything about UFOs, and certainly spends no time investigating the subject. In the 1960’s, a civilian secretary was in charge of the UFO desk at the Pentagon. She was paid around $7,000 a year to cut out newspaper clippings. When IDA [Institutes of Defense Analysis] decided to hire some university to investigate UFOs, they were turned down by Columbia, M.I.T. and other big, prestigious universities because they weren’t offering enough money. Only $300,000. Finally, Colorado U. accepted the assignment and I predicted they would get the Air Force to double the grant before they were through. And they did. Everyone knows what happened to that Colorado UFO project. It was a total debacle. Once again the Defense Dept. engaged the U.S. taxpayer in sexual intercourse.

TGB: You mentioned IDA. What’s that?

JAK: Another boondoggle. They have their own building near the Pentagon. They’re funded by the National Security Agency. In the 1960’s, the UFO mess was turned over to them. They made most of the decisions, not the Air Force. The drones in IDA spend most of their time playing war games with computers.

TGB: Based on your experiences, does anybody in government do anything?

JAK: In Washington, the rush hour starts at 3 p.m. People arrive at their offices around 9 a.m., drink coffee until 11, then plan where they’re going for lunch. They return from lunch around 2:30 and then get ready for the 3 p.m. rush hour. The only people who really work are the peons…the lowest salaried employees. They come to work at about 8 a.m. and leave at 5. They’re not even allowed to make private phone calls. They work in jobs like payroll, or running other benefits and services for the other employees. If an outsider…a taxpayer…shows up asking for some service, they are thrown into total confusion. When I was at H.E.W. they had 105,000 people on the payroll, most of them doing nothing. They were trying to cut back then. Today they have 150,000 on the payroll, doing even less. Ronnie Reagan promised to cut back…so I suppose in a year or two there will be 200,000 doing nothing.

TGB: Washington, D.C., is certainly a long way from Tibet. Weren’t you the last American to enter Tibet before the Chinese invaded?

JAK: Yes. That was back in the 1950’s. Things are more relaxed in the 1980’s and some Americans have been allowed in, in recent years.

TGB: What was the Tibet like?

JAK: Bleak and cold. Sort of like my New York apartment. I was looking for the famous Abominable Snowman. I did see a tall, furry animal on the other side of a lake and the lamas with me said it was an ABSM. But it could have been a bear.

TGB: So you never caught up with the Abominable Snowman?

“Yeti” footprint photographed by Eric Earle Shipton in 1951.

JAK: Or he never caught up with me. I’ve also chased Bigfoot here in USA. You know, they’ve been seen only a few miles outside of New York City, in New Jersey. In STRANGE MUTANTS I catalog quite a few sightings and list the characteristics they have in common…like the noises they make, the terrible odors they give off, their general behavior. They’re really an unpleasant lot.

TGB: I see you also have a chapter on something called “Bedroom Invaders.” What’s that?

JAK: That’s a puzzling form of psychic phenomena. People wake up in the middle of the night and find they are paralyzed…unable to move. They feel…even see…another presence in the room. Sometimes they are sexually assaulted by these entities. I’ve come across many instances of this in my investigations. In New England, it is known as “the old hag.” For some reason, many UFO witnesses, contactees in particular, suffer visitations of this sort after a UFO episode. It is one of the many factors that suggest there is a very close-tie in between UFO manifestations and psychic phenomena.

TGB: You were a pioneer in observing that tie-in. Now, today, people like Dr. Berthold Schwarz, the famous psychiatrist, Dr. Jacques Vallee and even Dr. J. Allen Hynek, seem to have jumped onto your bandwagon.

JAK: That’s right. When I first expressed my views in books like Operation Trojan Horse and Our Haunted Planet, I was met with quite a bit of opposition. Then investigators around the world began to use my methods and check out my material. Now all of the leaders in the field agree that psychic phenomena are closely linked with UFOs and that even some of our mysterious monsters are products of that psychic world. But for years, people like Hynek and Vallee fought my concepts.

TGB: So you’ve triumphed in the end. How does it feel?

JAK: It’s a hollow victory. We have just opened pandora’s box. Instead of solving the mystery, we’ve created many new ones.

TGB: How do the notorious Men in Black fit into all this? Do you think they really exist?

JAK: In the beginning, I thought the M.I.B. were just folklore…a ufological legend. Then I began encountering witnesses who had direct experiences with mystery men of all kinds. Men who couldn’t possibly have been connected with the government or Air Force…although they sometimes claimed to be. Others, such as Dr. Schwarz, uncovered M.I.B. cases independently. Obviously, there is more to this than anyone previously suspected. In STRANGE MUTANTS I give details on a number of baffling M.I.B. cases. It has always been my hope that one day we could actually corner one of these guys and get him to talk. Might torture him a little, like forcing him to listen to a Jim Moseley lecture or something.

Photo of Man-in-Black taken by Timothy Green Beckley in Jersey City, NJ.

TGB: That should make anyone talk!

JAK: Seriously, though…I’ve always considered the M.I.B. phenomenon to be one of the most important, least investigated and least understood aspects of this whole business. They are very real. They have a habit of turning up in the damnedest places at the damnedest times. They are definitely tied into the UFO mystery itself. But believers in extraterrestrial visitants have a hard time reconciling their beliefs with the presence of seemingly ordinary human beings in black suits who ride around in ordinary motor vehicles. Strangely enough, the professional skeptics have an even tougher time with the idea. Apparently, they can’t accept the notion of ordinary people in black Cadillacs either. So the M.I.B. are able to carry out their mysterious missions largely unnoticed and certainly unhindered. They’ve got the perfect cover. Disbelief!

TGB: It certainly looks that way. Tell us, where did you get the title STRANGE MUTANTS?

JAK: Well, I was thinking. Although UFOs and monsters have been seen throughout history, things really picked up after 1945…after the introduction of the atomic bomb. Few people realize that over 2,000 atom bombs have been set off in the earth’s atmosphere. The radioactive fallout has been horrendous, approaching the very dangerous level several times in recent years. Then there’s those miserable atomic power plants. They are a terrible danger, too. At hearings in Washington a few years ago, scientists and doctors attributed the deaths of 2,000 infants in the state of Michigan directly to the presence of the atomic power plants. They had overwhelming evidence. Yet the madness goes on.

John Fuller, an author well-known in ufology, wrote a book about a nuclear accident that took place in Michigan. It was called We Almost Lost Detroit. What he skimmed over was the fact that tall, hairy monsters were seen in the immediate vicinity of the Enrico Firmi Plant in Michigan just before it went blooey! Monsters have an uncanny habit of showing up around all these plants. It is quite possible, even quite probable, that many of the critters I have investigated and written about are, indeed, mutants…weird mutations of more ordinary animals produced by the radioactivity we are spreading over the world in our totally illogical, irresponsible fascination with genocide. In short, we have met the enemy and he is us.

Timothy Green Beckley seen on William Shatners Weird Or What?

Editors Note: I want to thank Tim Beckley, known widely as Mr. UFO, for granting me permission to use this great interview that he did with John Keel that appeared in his UFO Review, issue number 18, back in 1984. Mr. Beckley hardly needs an introduction. But, for convenience sake, I’ll use a fairly comprehensive biography from Amazon, where he is well-known for his many books:

Tim Beckley has had so many careers that even his own girlfriend doesn’t know what he does for a living…

Timothy Green Beckley has been described as the Hunter Thompson of UFOlogy by the editor of UFO magazine Nancy Birnes.

Since an early age his life has more or less revolved around the paranormal. At the age of three his life was saved by an invisible force. The house he was raised in was thought to be haunted. His grandfather saw a headless horseman.

Beckley also underwent out of body experiences starting at age six. And saw his first of three UFOs when he was but ten, and has had two more sightings since – including an attempt to communicate with one of these objects.

Tim grew up listening to the only all night talk show in the country that revolved around the strange and unexplained. Long John Nebel’s guests included the early UFO contactees who claimed to have visited other planets and built time machines in the desert. Tim was fascinated by everything that went bump in the night – or even in the daylight for that matter. Years later, Tim was to appear on Long John’s show numerous times and over the years has been a frequent guest on hundreds of programs which have come and gone just like ghosts in the night. He is a popular guest on Coast to Coast AM. Has appeared on William Shatners Weird Or What? And an episode of UFO Hunters regarding the dreaded Men In Black. He has his own podcast, Exploring the Bizarre and MR UFOs Secret Files, on YouTube.

Tim started his career as a writer early on – at age 14 he purchased a mimeograph machine and began to publish the Interplanetary News Service Report. Over the years he has written over 25 books on everything from rock music to the secret MJ12 papers. He has been a stringer for the national tabloids such as the Enquirer and editor of over 30 different magazines (most of which never lasted more than a couple of issues). His longest running effort was the newsstand publication UFO UNIVERSE which went for 11 years. Today he is the president of Inner Light/Global Communications and editor of the Conspiracy Journal and Bizarre Bazaar.

He is one of the few Americans ever to be invited to speak before closed door meetings on UFOs presided over by the late Earl of Clancarty at the House of Lords in England. He visited Loch Ness in Scotland while in the UK and went home with a belief that Nessie was somehow connected with dragons of mythology as well as strange discs engraved on cathedrals and ghostly phenomenon.

The Inner Light Publications and Global Communications’ catalog of books and video titles now number over 200, including the works of Tim R. Swartz, T. Lobsang Rampa, Commander X, Brad Steiger, John Keel, Tracy Twyman, Wendelle Stevens and a host of many other authors.

He probably knows more about the history of the UFO movement since the early 1950s than anyone today. Because of his fair and balanced approach he made friends with everyone regardless of whether or not he believed their stories. Tim has written over 30 books himself, and contributed to dozens more, including:

TIM BECKLEY’S BIZARRE AND UNEXPLAINED WORLDS

OUR ALIEN PLANET-THIS EERIE EARTH
STRANGE SAGA
SECRET PROPHECY OF FATIMA REVEALED
SUBTERRANEAN WORLDS INSIDE EARTH
DAVID BOWIE, UFOS, WITCHCRAFT, COCAINE AND PARANOIA
UFOS AMONG THE STARS (Celebrity encounters)
ROUND TRIP TO HELL IN A FLYING SAUCER

Tim is known among horror movie fans as Mr. Creepo. When asked his major cinema influences he mentions Nancy Reagan as having gotten him involved as a horror host. During the hay day of double features and Time Square grind houses he worked as a movie review critic as well as a publicist for several small film companies. His recent efforts include Skin Eating Jungle Vampires and Blood Sucking Vampire Freaks.

See all of Tim Beckley’s book via his author page on Amazon.

THE HORRIFIC TRUTH ABOUT ALIEN VAMPIRES AND THEIR LUST FOR BLOOD

By Sean Casteel

WHY did the gods of old demand blood sacrifices? Of what use to them was the spilled blood of the innocent? And if we examine the more modern state of affairs in Ufology and the paranormal, specifically with regard to the chupacabras/”goat sucker” invasion that took place in the 1990s in Mexico, Puerto Rico and South America, can we truthfully say that this lust for blood on the part of the Ultra-Terrestrials has ever ceased?

These are some of the many questions asked in the newest offering from Inner Light/Global Communications, an ample, weighty tome called “Alien Blood Lust: Are There Vampires In Space?” Once again, publisher, editor and author Timothy Green Beckley takes aim at the warm and fuzzy approach to the aliens and makes his case for a negative, even monstrous, interpretation.

            The book opens with Beckley’s characteristic frankness.

Are there real vampires living in outer space? Artist Carol Ann Rodriguez’s depiction here indicates that there are!

“Blood is to some Ultra-Terrestrials what water is to mankind,” he begins. “The flesh and blood of humans – and animals, for that matter, when nothing ‘more upscale’ makes itself available – could be the snack of the gods. Is there a rationale for such a bizarre statement?

            “I would say so,” Beckley continues, “and it is a concept that is after all supported by the evidence presented by our primary author, Scott Corrales, as well as our team of seasoned researchers, in what is certain to be a provocative volume.

            “Blood may be necessary for at least some Ultra-Terrestrials to drink or ingest through transfusion in order for them to survive while ‘adrift’ in our physical world,” Beckley added.  “They may be trespassers from a parallel dimension or alternative universe where blood in its various forms has become a requisite to survival while ‘stationed’ here, in effect making them Vampires from Space.”

SOME CASE HISTORIES OF ALIEN BLOOD LUST

in one of the most horrific encounters of its type, a bloodmobile was chased by a UFO and claw-like appendages attempted to draw the vehicle into the off-world object.

As reported by Beckley in the new book, on the night of March 5^th, 1967, two workers in the local Red Cross Bloodmobile in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, were chased by something strange in the sky. Their van was loaded with flesh blood and, despite the fact that they were speeding to get to the hospital with their supply of human plasma, a UFO kept pace and lowered two claw-like projections on either side of their emergency vehicle as if to capture it in its prongs and lift the bloodmobile into the night sky.

On Long Island, New York, a well-respected talk show host was taken to a large “meeting hall” which fronted for the secret headquarters of a strange group of alien “androids” who called themselves “The Council of Ten Men.”

“In the recesses of the building was a hidden laboratory in which what appeared to be several corpses were laid out on examination tables. Next to the ‘corpses’ were rows of test tubes and bottles filled with blood,” the talk show host recounted. “Each bottle was labeled with names, such as ‘CHARLES’ and ‘SUSAN.’ The Ten handled some of the bottles and sampled their contents orally and without facial expressions.”

The whole scene sickened the witness, and she was greatly disturbed by the experience.

THE BLOOD SUCKERS ALMOST LAY WASTE A WHOLE VILLAGE

Dr. Daniel Rebisso Giese.

In a section of “Alien Blood Lust” devoted to the 1977 siege in a Brazilian island town called “Colares,” one reads the account of Dr. Daniel Rebisso Giese. Giese spent five years researching the wave that had locals claiming that, not only had they seen terrifying lights in sky, they had also been attacked by a vampire-like creature they called a “chupa-chupa,” which translates from the original Portuguese as “suck-suck.”

In 1977, strange happenings began to cause unrest in several villages and settlements in Northern Brazil. Unknown lights and unknown creatures were roaming the skies over the Bay of Sao Marcos, in the State of Maranhao, spreading terror throughout the region known as the Lowland Belt.

The people of the backwoods – called Caboclos, the local word for half-breed Brazilian – believed that beings from another world were at large in the area, searching for human blood. The victims were struck by a mysterious light which could penetrate anything and let none escape.

The situation was taken seriously by the Brazilian Air Force, who sent teams into the region and secretly documented everything. They heard the same testimony from hundreds of people, all of whom talked about a “vampire light,” or “a luz chupa-chupa.”

Along the Amazon, a craft nicknamed “Chupa-chupa” (suck-suck) caused panic as it came up out of the ocean to strike local residents with a beam of light, out of which came an alien device which caused puncture wounds on the victims’ skin and removed a great deal of blood from their body.

There are many testimonials in “Alien Blood Lust” of a dramatic nature that show the unparalleled horror the witnesses experienced, such as in the case of Ana Célia Oliveira, a teacher in Colares who was 6 years old at the time:

“I will never forget,” she said. “People and animals were attacked. There was nothing to eat. We were terribly lacking in food. Nobody was fishing. People did not want to go outside to harvest.

“Everyone was trying to move in large groups,” she continued. “Nobody wanted to be alone. All Colares had stopped. At 6 pm it was dark and we went to bed. Groups as numerous as 50 or 60 women and children gathered in a house. The men remained awake all night. They lit fires and tapped pots and pans to make noise to frighten and scare away UFOs. People started shooting in the sky to scare them away.

“We had just heard from our fathers and other men what was happening. We did not know why we went to other people’s houses at night to sleep. At night, people saw many UFOs flying in formation.

“Once I heard a man shoot and I ran to the door and opened it,” Oliveira recalled, “and saw many UFOs in formation. And suddenly they went in all directions. The objects moved very fast. People started shooting in the sky to frighten them. One came over the village, just 15 meters high.”

THE NIGHTMARE SIEGE BEGINS

Extraterrestrial Vampires in the Amazon.

Giese’s book, “Extraterrestrial Vampires in the Amazon,” constitutes impressive evidence furnished by doctors, journalists, soldiers and rural Caboclos all describing unbelievable facts that challenge the limits of our “reality.”

It was July of 1977, a sunny day after the long rainy season of winter, in the little Brazilian town of Viseu. Normally the families would be seated outdoors in the evening, with the children running to and fro. But on this night strange lights were seen moving across the sky, lights of various colors, not ordinary lights or aircraft lights. These lights were completely silent. Some of the more religious-minded locals thought the lights were “signs of the end times.”

The next morning, people arriving from nearby villages had news of a powerful sort of light which, coming down from space, could paralyze you and “suck out” your blood and your energy.

These reports of the “Vampire Light” came to the ears of the man in charge of the local police post, Sergeant Sabino do Nascimento Costa, who considered them of no importance. The mayor of the town, Carlos Cardoso Santos, laughed and gave his verdict that it was all “just fantasy.” Even the priest, who was alarmed that his parishioners were talking about prayers to ward off the evil force, took the same view, calling the reports “the wild imagination of the rural folk. Nothing to it!”

Photographs of UFOs taken by the Brazilian military over the Colares area.

However, the next day, there arrived in town a fisherman and his son. According to the son: “About ten days ago, we were fishing near Ilha Nova. Suddenly we saw a star moving. Its brightness was very strong, stronger than the rest of the stars, and it seemed to be flashing and it came straight toward us. We remembered what we’d heard about the ‘chupa-chupa,’ so we paddled for the river bank and hid in the bushes. We just managed to escape being touched by the light. It was hanging a few meters above our boat and sweeping the whole area with a sort of searchlight, as though probing, seeking.”

In the end the light or object flew off towards the farm of a neighbor.

Another local resident was not so lucky. A hunter was sitting quietly in the thick bushes, awaiting game. An animal appeared, but something in the sky threw down a beam of light onto the animal and made off with it. Meanwhile, the hunter himself could not escape the light, which he felt bearing down on his body and sucking the strength out of him. He was sure he was going to die.

The flying object was shaped like a cylinder and he could hear voices coming from it, speaking in an unknown language. The object departed, but left him powerless. He seemed to have absolutely no strength whatsoever and was hospitalized.

A cylindrical craft was also seen by a woman schoolteacher, who said it shone its beam down on her house. She reported the incident to the same scoffing police sergeant mentioned earlier. He felt that given such testimony from an educated woman, he could not simply ignore her report.

THE FEAR SPREADS AND THE MEDIA RESPONDS

“By now, nobody in the whole area was venturing out at night,” writes Dr. Giese, “no children were playing out of doors, and fishermen were wary about putting out in their boats.”

The phenomenon began spreading to nearby villages and once again the local authorities there at first refused to believe the reports.

“In due course,” Giese writes, “the wave of cases of ‘vampire lights’ over the region turned out to be the greatest ‘UFO Wave’ ever recorded in the whole of Brazil.”

Giese then quotes an area newspaper: “The appearance of an Unidentified Flying Object in the skies over Pinheiro is producing suspense and panic among the population and has stimulated imaginations to such an extent that some are even saying that the object approaches people and then stuns them with a beam of light and extracts their blood. The presence of the craft has been established as certain. There is general terror throughout the region, folk fear to go outside at night, because of rumors that, when the UFO comes down near the ground, it emits an extremely hot luminous beam that burns people’s skins.”

From the mass of reports at the time, it was evident that the UFO’s beam would first immobilize the victim. Then he would feel intense heat and would collapse, some fainting totally. In general, small rural settlements were mainly targeted, and the victims were single, isolated persons or small groups of people.

The panic continued into October-December of 1977, again with no one venturing forth alone at night “for fear of the blood-seeking ‘vampires.’” By that time, some of the rumors and popular theories had grown to be more fantastic than ever. It was even believed by some that the UFOs were part of a secret Japanese plan for contraband trafficking in human blood. There was of course the belief that the UFOs came from other planets and there was the occasional unsubstantiated rumor that a ship had crashed in North East Brazil. But in all his years researching the area, Giese never found any proof for the crash-related rumors.

The Chupa-Chupa lights frightened people so much that men would stay awake all night. They lit bonfires and banged on pots and pans to make noise to scare the UFOs away.

Local men began to band together into patrols at night equipped with firearms as well as fireworks to frighten off the intruders. With the 1977 Ceremony of the Procession of Our Lady of Nazareth, held the second Sunday in October in the city of Belem (the Portuguese form of the name Bethlehem), there came many folks from throughout the Amazon region to take part, bringing with them fresh stories about the chupa-chupa. Many of the stories were now perhaps a bit exaggerated, but people were talking about “vampires that came down sucking human blood, and especially from women’s breasts.”

As the tales ran like wildfire through Belem, women were all growing hysterical; immediate action was needed. And the authorities indeed took action.

Instantly, the local newspapers, which up until then had been reporting very objectively everything about the sightings of the chupa-chupa and their victims, changed their tune overnight. While one newspaper had proclaimed in November that “The Interplanetary Vampire Only Likes Women,” the very next day that same paper ran the headline “The Chupa-Chupa Is Mere Fantasy.”

This section of “Alien Blood Lust” also includes Q and A’s with Giese and a psychiatrist named Dr. Wellaide Carvalho, who came to believe the strange stories told by the locals and refused to be cowed by the Brazilian military into calling the victims crazy. There is also an interview with a Brazilian military official named Colonel Uyrange Hollanda, who similarly would not discount some of the bizarre testimonies he heard while investigating the area where the suck-suck events had occurred. After publicly stating his sympathy for the victims in A.J. Gevaerd’s “UFO Magazine,” Hollanda died from an apparent suicide which many in Ufology feel is, at the least, very suspicious.

The story of the 1977 chupacabras wave is a tale of intense bewilderment, frustration in not knowing what was going on, and, in some cases, a sense of complete panic.  Over time, the chupa invasion faded away, but it left its horrifying scars, both physical and emotional, in its wake. 

DOWN IN THE TRENCHES WITH THE CHUPACABRAS PHENOMENON

Longtime investigator of UFO incidents in Hispanic communities worldwide, Scott Corrales has kept a journal detailing dozens of encounters with the bloodthirsty Chupacabras creatures.

But all of the above is mere prelude to the meat of the book, the reprinting of the book “The Chupacabras Diaries,” by well-known researcher Scott Corrales. “Alien Blood Lust” also includes a sampling of other related material Corrales has written in the years since.

This is a thorough and scholarly examination of the chupacabras phenomenon that wreaked havoc throughout the countryside in Mexico, Puerto Rico and South America.

Corrales’ sections are intelligently written by the longtime veteran researcher of Ufology and the paranormal who is also a gifted translator by profession. Corrales’ language expertise helps to make heartfelt connections with the largely Hispanic population who have suffered the goat-sucker and who still seek answers to the nightmarish mystery. Corrales spoke firsthand to witnesses and visited some of the locales where the events had taken place.

Corrales’ work features several transcripts of conversations on talk radio in which real people grapple with the terror and strangeness of the chupacabras. It demonstrates that the phenomenon is not just a hoax but something real people have been forced to deal with on an ongoing basis.

Corrales teaches many of us a new word: “Exsanguinated,” meaning drained of blood, made bloodless. He also points out that the amount of blood consumed by a chupacabras would be many times its own body weight, so perhaps the creature is collecting blood for someone besides just itself?

THE MONSTER THAT REFUSES TO SIMPLY GO AWAY

“If reality resembled the world of fiction more closely,” Corrales writes in “Alien Blood Lust,” “monsters would be put down with the finality of Lieutenant Ripley purging the hideous alien xenomorph out of an airlock, consigning it to the vacuum of space. The sense of finality and justice delivered by a wooden stake through the undead heart of a cinematic vampire imparts catharsis, but we find none of that with the monsters and visions that persistently manifest themselves in our reality. After eighteen months of depredations in West Virginia in 1966-67, the Mothman disappeared into legend and the uneasy dreams of those whose encounters changed the course of their lives. Hunters and scientists emerge from forays after the elusive Bigfoot with little to show for their efforts, save the tell-tale strands of hair and plaster casts that have become a trademark of their avocation.

The Chupacabras have caused terror far and wide.

“The same can be said for the Chupacabras,” Corrales continues. “The protean creature manifested for the first time in Puerto Rico in the mid-90s, followed by a rash of sightings throughout Latin America, each time described a little differently than before. Media burnout and the trivialization of the subject by popular culture – the cascade of t-shirts and bumper stickers, rap and ranchero songs, cheap plastic memorabilia sold in marketplaces – resulted in a loss of interest in the creature’s exploits in Brazil and Chile later that decade.

“But the Chupacabras keeps coming back like a prize fighter, unmindful of the fatuous pronouncements of skeptics, as well as efforts at fitting it into the UFO totem-pole by researchers bent on seducing the media once more, their prize a conference invitation or the lure of a television show. The demon is triumphant.”

The Puerto Rican media approached the subject of the paranormal predator again in 2012, when reporter Yaritza Santiago wrote an article for El Nuevo Dia about the entity’s return to the scene, this time in the island municipality of Vieques: “A strange wild animal prowls the verdant fields and communities of this island municipality. This is the only way to explain the discovery of dead horses, hens and rabbits in situations that terrified Viequenses have ascribed to a panther that allegedly escaped from an American tourist’s possession. Others say it is a jaguar; still others speak of the return of the Chupacabras, whose existence they do not question for a second.”

THE BATTLEFIELD OF THE KILLER WHO OPERATED AT LEISURE

Thirty chickens met an untimely demise on the property of José Martínez and his wife Jeami in Barrio La Hueca. The couple had gone off to a birthday party on the previous night, returning home an hour before midnight. They went to bed and Mr. Martínez woke up at half past five in the morning to feed the family animals. In the cold glow of his flashlight, José was startled to find the roosters dead in their cages, with deep puncture marks on their backs, drained of blood. The couple told reporters that they had not heard any abnormal sounds in the night.

José, 26, and Jeami, 21, described the massacre of their animals as “a battlefield” where the unknown assailant had operated at leisure. Jeami remained convinced that the perpetrator was none other than the mysterious being that spread fear throughout Puerto Rico during her childhood. “It wasn’t a dog. I think it could be the Chupacabras.”

Reporters from the local media who investigated the incident were told of a “radar image” of a strange creature taken by a U.S. Marines radar, and observed that the fear among the island’s population was quite real.

Physical descriptions of the chupacabra vary. Some reports describe a creature with a row of spines reaching from the neck to the base of the tail.

Corrales writes further that, “On the main island of Puerto Rico, news organizations were covering the ‘gargoyle’ that supposedly haunted the vicinity of Guánica, the city with the magnificent bay on the Caribbean Sea. This nightmarish vision had attacked not only animals, but allegedly humans as well. Its patterns of attack resembled those of the Chupacabras, but not exactly the same entity. ‘Some identified it with the Chupacabras, but others believe it was a different creature, a sly and sinister one, using the ruins and tunnels of the [abandoned] Central Guánica sugar mill as its lair,’ wrote Pedro Bosque in an article for El Nuevo Dia. It was in this warren of half-flooded, weed-choked tunnels that the skeletons of its victims were reportedly found.

According to Corrales, “Despite its predilection for lovely Guánica, the ‘gargoyle’ had reportedly been seen in Lajas and San Germán, communities in southwestern Puerto Rico that acquired notoriety in the late ‘80s and throughout the 1990s as paranormal hotspots. And unlike those relatively distant years, eyewitnesses were reluctant to share their names with the media, particularly when it came to the attacks on humans.

“These incidents were discussed in hushed tones. One witness interviewed by the press claimed seeing injuries on a man’s belly, produced by an ‘animal with large wings’ whose claws had torn at his flesh ‘to the extent that his fat could be seen.’ The unnamed witness spoke soberly of seeing the victim lift his t-shirt to display the wounds received in his own backyard.

“Police officer Miguel Negrón, on the other hand, admitted to hearing ‘a loud sound of flapping wings’ while patrolling the abandoned sugar mill. Was an unknown avian taking off from the rusted cranes of the old mill? According to the officer, the ‘gargoyle’ had been described by some as a very large bird reeking of sulfur or rot (hydrogen sulfide?), feeding on live animals such as dogs, cats and horses by exsanguination.”

OTHER VOICES ARE HEARD

“Alien Blood Lust” also includes a contribution by a writer named Hercules Invictus, who interestingly enough still believes in the Greek pantheon of gods, to include Zeus and all his fellows. With his thorough command of Greek mythology, Hercules gives us a lesson on how blood and blood sacrifice figure in the stories of the denizens of Mount Olympus. Is human blood the true nectar and ambrosia of the gods?

Newly discovered evidence exists in the form of a 16th century oil painting, indicating that the real Dracula might have been an alien. One can see a decidedly disc-shaped device hovering above the home of Vlad the Impaler.

Nigel Watson, a British writer on paranormal topics, discusses how the Dracula legend may offer hints of a UFO connection. One has most likely heard of Vlad the Impaler, said to be the historical template for the later Bram Stoker character. Watson explains that there exists in a church in Romania (in the town that was Vlad’s old stomping grounds) a 16^th century oil painting of dear old Vlad with what looks like a UFO – a strange disc-like craft emitting smoke – hovering over him in the background. It’s not exactly “proof,” but it does help to illustrate the notion of a flying saucer/vampire relationship rather neatly.

And finally there is a chapter by Tim R. Swartz, the veteran of much psychic warfare, who gives an overview of the history of cattle mutilation in the US, a phenomenon that peaked in 1975 but continues to linger in sporadic incidents. Swartz also writes about cases of human mutilations that have been covered-up by military and government officials. One such case is the 1956 incident at the White Sands Missile Range, an army base in southern New Mexico, where a soldier’s body was found mutilated with surgical skill and with no traces of blood left behind. The official verdict was that the soldier had died in the desert of “exposure.”

WHY THE BLOOD SUCKER PHENOMENON IS EVIL

While there are those that might characterize the blood lust phenomenon as repellent but basically “morally neutral,” we should give some thought to the Biblical Book of Leviticus, chapter 17, which unequivocally declares:

…13 And if any Israelite or foreigner living among them hunts down a wild animal or bird that may be eaten, he must drain its blood and cover it with dirt. 14 For the life of all flesh is its blood. Therefore I have told the Israelites, ‘You must not eat the blood of any creature,’ because the life of every creature is its blood; whoever eats it must be cut off. 15 And any person, whether native or foreigner, who eats anything found dead or mauled by wild beasts must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean until evening; then he will be clean.…

The verses are clearly saying that eating the blood of an animal is an unclean thing and reason for expulsion from the community. Since there is this Biblical law unmistakably against consuming blood, one would think the chupacabras is something demonic, since it openly defies the laws of God and consumes blood as a nourishment.

Blood has always been part of the hidden agenda of the Ultra-Terrestrials, from the days of “ancient astronauts” – and their apparent demand for human sacrifices – to the animal mutilations of today.

“We think nothing of butchering a steer,” Beckley writes, “in order to get its most succulent cuts, so who is to say the aliens don’t see us in the same light, figuring us for a welcome meal on their journey through the cosmos?”

Sean Casteel

SUGGESTED READING

 

ALIEN BLOOD LUST: ARE THERE VAMPIRES IN SPACE?

ROUND TRIP TO HELL IN A FLYING SAUCER

UFO HOSTILITIES – EVIL AGENDA OF THE ALIENS

SCREWED BY THE ALIENS

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