John A. Keel WHY UFOS

catastrophes in July. New York City was scheduled to slideinto the ocean on July 2. The contactees did not broadcastthese dire predictions, yet the rumors snowballed. By mid-June nearly all of the hardware stores in the flap areas hadsold out their supplies of candles and flashlights. Late thatMay, the UFO entities had also declared that Pope Paulwould visit Turkey in the coming months and would bebloodily assassinated and that this would precipitate theblackout and the disasters. Weeks later the Vaticansuddenly announced that the Pope was, indeed, planningto visit Turkey in July. Panic prevailed in the secretcontactee circles.I was astonished when I discovered that these samerumors were also sweeping New York's hippie community.People began phoning me late in June to ask me where Iwas going on July 2.1 was not going anywhere. I refused tojoin the exodus, and Manhattan did not sink into the sea.Other predictions received that month began to cometrue right on the nose, however. There were predicted planecrashes—a jet airliner collided with a private plane overHenderson, North Carolina, killing, among others, J. T.McNaughton who had just been appointed U.S. Secretaryof the Navy, and the next day, July 20, an identical accidentoccurred in Brazil, killing some leading Brazilian politicos.I started to get nervous.What astonished me most was that these predictionswere coming in from a wide variety of sources. Trancemediums and automatic writers in touch with the spiritworld were coming up with the same things as the UFOcontactees. Often the prophecies were phrased identicallyin different sections of the country. Even when they failedto come off, we still could not overlook this peculiar set ofcorrelative factors.So convincing were these demonstrations that I finallypacked up my equipment, rented a car, and drove out tothe flap area near Melville, Long Island, to await theassassination and the blackout.Just before I left Manhattan, I stopped in a localdelicatessen and bought three quarts of distilled water. Ifigured that a three-day power failure would certainly beaccompanied by a water shortage. On my way out to LongIsland I stopped in on a silent contactee, and he told me hehad received a brief visit from a UFO entity a short timebefore. This entity had mentioned me, he said, and hadgiven him a message to relay to me. The message didn't