John A. Keel WHY UFOS

een carefully sifted and investigated to the best of theirability, even though some of these organizations did tendto overinterpret their material, overspeculate, and add thecoloring of their own beliefs. They also had an'exasperatingtendency to delete reported details which they felt wereobjectionable or detracted from their "cause."The witnesses, 1 concluded, have been giving honestdescriptions of what they have seen, and their localnewspapers have been giving objective accounts of whatthey reported. The nature and the meaning of what theysaw is another matter. And the answer could not be foundin newspaper clippings. However, it was possible that thoseclippings could supply some broad data about the overallphenomenon. None of the UFO organizations had madeany effort at all to extract such data. The U.S. Air Forcehad tried in the early 1950's but had apparently given up indespair. So my next job was to translate the seeminglyrandom clippings and reports of investigated cases intosome form of statistical information.Patterns in the PhenomenonMore than 10,000 clippings and reports reached me in1966 (in contrast with the 1,060 reports allegedly receivedby the Air Force during that same period). I had checkedout many of these cases personally and had becomeconvinced of their validity. Throughout 1967,1 devoted myspare time to sorting this great mass of material,categorizing it, and boiling it down into valid statisticalform. It was an enormous job, and I had to do it alone. Ithrew out most of the "lights in the sky" types of reportsand concentrated on the Type I cases. I obtainedastronomical data on meteors, etc., for the year, and fromthe National Aeronautics and Space Administration Iobtained information on all of the year's rocket launches.By checking the UFO reports against this data, I was ableto sift out the possible or probable misinterpretations thatwere bound to occur.My first interest was to uncover whatever patterns orcycles that might exist in the flap dates. I ended up with twofiles: one containing the Type I sightings (730 in all, or 7.3percent of the total); and the other, the best of the Type IIsightings (high-altitude objects performing in a controlledmanner and distinct from normal aircraft and natural