John A. Keel WHY UFOS

contactee syndrome. The ET believers rejected his theoriesand continued their fruitless search for physical evidence.In England, the RAF had established a UFO studyproject in 1943 under the direction of Lieutenant GeneralMassey. In 1944, a Chicago editor named Ray Palmerstarted to publish UFO-oriented fiction in his magazineAmazing Stories, and he was quickly inundated withthousands of letters from people who claimed to have seenthe objects or had some kind of close experience with them.Palmer was later the cofounder of Fate magazine and hasdevoted his life to the subject.Other thoroughgoing researchers started to movetoward the paraphysical concept in the early 1950's. TheBritish science writer Gerald Heard published Is AnotherWorld Watching? in 1950, in which he examined theextraterrestrial theory pro and con and postulated his"bee" concept, suggesting that the objects might representa mindless order organized by some larger intelligence.Another famous English science writer, Arthur C. Clarke,turned his attention to UFOs in 1953 and wrote articlespointing out that the general data suggested the objectswere paraphysical and not too likely to be extraterrestrial.If there was an actual turning point in ufology, itoccurred in the year 1955. That year the "secret" was widelyand repeatedly published by many superbly qualifiedinvestigators. Many UFO students reviewed this welldocumentedmaterial and quietly abandoned the subject,feeling that the mystery had been competently solved. Afew held on until they were able to confirm the publishedevidence to their own satisfaction. Then they dropped out,leaving a vacuum in the field which was erratically filled bycultists and the emotionally disturbed types who wereattracted more by the cloak-and-dagger aspects and theanarchistic possibilities of the allegations of officialcensorship.A new UFO wave over England in 1950 inspired a newRAF investigation which was continued behind the scenesfor five years. On April 24, 1955, an RAF spokesman toldthe press that the UFO study was completed but that thefindings would be withheld from the public because theywould only create more controversy and could not beadequately explained without revealing "certain topsecrets." This enigmatic statement hardly satisfied anyone,but soon afterward RAF Air Marshal Lord Dowding, theman who had directed the Battle of Britain in 1940, gave a